All in Sympathy
Rich and I were gifted two very different children. I used to hate this. It has made me cry and feel completely at a loss sometimes as we navigated the road to do what “was best” or “would work” for two boys who function in completely opposite ways but over the last few years I have grown to appreciate their uniqueness.
Actually, that is the wrong word. I don’t just appreciate it, I have come to celebrate it. I love that our boys are their own people. But it has taken a lot to get there.
Your life looks completely different now. Who knew that one person could change the entire world with their absence – but it has. For you. And I am so incredibly sorry for your pain.
After a few months (sometimes even a few weeks or days) the texts and phone calls stop. Friends and coworkers continue with conversations as “business as usual”, because they don’t know how to help or what to say. The gift of normalcy is offered so quickly but it offers no relief. Because nothing is normal anymore. They try, people genuinely care and want to “fix” it but there is no “fixing” this because they didn’t break you to begin with. Life did. Death did. And although everything changed in the blink of an eye, it will take months and years to navigate back to something resembling life before this dreadful news.
Conversations are tricky these days. Not that the words are tricky or that people are tricky… ok, maybe sometimes people are tricky… but emotions, those are the trickiest. At any given moment death is at the forefront of my mind. The loss of every moment that passes that my brother will never get to hear about. Every birthday that he will never know me “this old” as. Every funny story that he will never have the chance to laugh at. It is perpetually in front of me and while I can go whole days without crying (I have had a handful of those), more times than not those tricky tears leak out at the most inopportune time.
To anyone who has a loved one that has lost someone, I want to share a few ways that you can help… even though when you ask they will say “nothing”… because they either are overwhelmed with how much there is to do and can’t pin point one thing, or they don’t want to feel like an inconvenience. Either way, I have asked some friends whom have recently lost family members and we have come up with a short list of thirteen great ways that you can prove that love is an action word!
When is the last time you bought a car? My husband recently purchased one for me that was a beauty and the oddest thing happened (and no it wasn’t that it may or may not have been totaled within the first month - I’m okay, I’m okay, everything is okay): I saw that same car everywhere. It is like all of a sudden the Toyota Corollas were all waving back to me in solidarity like I had just joined a club that I never knew existed until I was knee deep in it.
