Dealing With (Someone Else's) Grief

I don’t know what has been eating me the past several days.  Things in my world are going relatively well.  I have the new hair (upon which I have been getting an embarrassingly large number of positive comments…) and the new nails (of which I have only broken one, so far L.)  Business at the restaurant has been surprisingly un-bad, considering this has traditionally been the time of year when sales fall off into winter oblivion.  I hired a new cook who is actually a mature woman with experience, though I suppose it remains to be seen whether that is in fact a plus or a minus (she starts this afternoon…)  I’m making headway on some of the major projects that have been hanging over my head for months.

 

So why do I feel as if, somewhere in the back of my conscious mind, someone is scraping fingernails on a black board?

 

I think I may be suffering from some kind of weird variation of survivor’s guilt.  I have two good friends who are going through horrendous bad times right now.  One has lost a husband, one has lost a child.  I feel so sad for them.  I hate the walk that they will be walking for the foreseeable future, for the rest of their lives, actually.  And since these are internet friends who live thousands of miles away, I hate that I can’t help.

 

Not that there is anything anyone can do for someone who is deep in grief.  Everyone grieves differently; there are no rules.  Even in my personal experience, I’ve handled grief for my sister and grief for my dad in two different ways.  When my sister died, I lived entirely IN my grief, and then gradually climbed out of it, healing myself as I went (well, you’re never healed, but you learn to pack it up and take it with you.)  When Dad died, I had to completely step away from the pain, and then revisit and assimilate it in small pieces at a time.   There are probably as many “formulae” for handling grief as there are human beings on the planet.  Or more.

 

The disconcerting thing about having internet friends going through bad times is that in the worst of times, there are just no words.  Shortly after both my sister’s and my dad’s deaths, people we knew lost loved ones, too.  And I remember very clearly being physically unable to offer words of comfort, because I knew from all-too-recent experience that no words were adequate.  We come up with things to say or write upon occasions of bereavement because…why?  Because we think we need to?  Because we’re uncomfortable and seek to fill the sad silence with something?  Because society tells us we need to? Mostly a waste of breath, or ink…

 

But my relationships with my internet friends are built upon words.  We havebeen all about sharing words since we “met” almost five years ago.  So what comfort can you offer someone when the thing upon which your friendship is founded has become more hindrance than help?  I feel frustrated and helpless.  And then I feel like an ass for making their grief “about me.”

 

All I can really do is hope that they know I’m thinking about them every day.  And try to write the right thing when the need arises…

Tags: grief