There are few things as lonely as a world without the person we loved. Our only solace is that grief is so universal we have plenty of company. This week I watched a podcast featuring Anderson Cooper. I knew he had lost his father and brother years ago, and more recently his mother, but I didn’t expect his reaction to so starkly reflect my own; Like me, he’s the only surviving member of his birth family and he described this as “incredible loneliness,” for there’s nobody who knew him as a child. As Cooper would probably agree, fame and wealth can’t barricade against loneliness. But empathic voices can help bridge that emptiness.
I have learned that help is available and that reaching for it isn’t a sign of weakness but of strength. No wonder there’s such a profusion of support groups. But if you’re the type who shuns groups, there are also counselors you can talk to privately. Years ago I had my first major loss when my husband died. I felt totally alone, until I discovered that Cancer Care offered free counseling. I began weekly sessions that led to a transforming moment. I was talking about my husband and our futile struggle to keep him alive, when my counselor interrupted me. “I just had an image of you writing about this,” he said. That stunning remark planted the seeds for my memoir “Widow’s Walk” and two other books about coping with grief. From then on I was no longer alone because I’d found a way to share my feelings and also hear from hundreds of strangers struggling with the same challenges. I still treasure the brief note from a Wisconsin widow: “Thank you for giving my grief a voice.”
Of course, you don’t have to write a book to express your feelings. I urge my memoir writing students to use a journal. Looking through an old one of my own I see a tear-smudged reminder of a terrible evening during my husband’s illness. In a desperate attempt for normalcy, I had made a dinner with his favorite foods. He tried to eat, but was so nauseated he could only stumble upstairs to throw up and go to bed. I sat alone in the darkening room, desperate for someone to talk to but whom could I trust? Reaching for some paper and a pen, I began to write about feelings I’d kept hidden – anger at my husband for “abandoning” me and guilt about this shameful feeling. Surprisingly I felt better after confiding in this paper “friend” who wouldn’t betray me.
It reminds me of a widow I interviewed for my second book. She said, “My mother was horrified when she heard me cursing God for my husband’s death. So I bought a notebook and each morning I write the thoughts that would shock my mother and the priest. Then I hide the diary and can go about my day.”
If we’re able to, we can also keep the words of our loved one. When my father-in-law was dying, my daughter visited him with a tape recorder. She wanted him to tell her about his life as a young man she had never known, and he was happy to do this. Like many other people who have recorded, she’s still able to hear that beloved voice . I interviewed a man who said he had never had a good relationship with his mother. But in her last months he visited her often and recorded her memories. “She’s gone now,” he said. “But I feel close to her for the first time.”
Still, there’s nothing like being able to share with friends – as long as we choose ones who will listen without lecturing! “You’ll get over it, ”is profane and should never be uttered. The same for the cliché, “I know how you feel.” I’m ashamed that when I saw my widowed sister cry at a wedding, I told her I knew how she felt. “The hell you do,” she shot back. Rude, but right. None of us can fully know what’s inside someone else. As Willa Cather wrote, “The heart of another person is a dark forest.”
A friend who was widowed after forty years of a loving marriage, told me she was being criticized because she couldn’t cry. “Is something wrong with me?” she asked. The only wrong is heeding the judgments of those who think they have a right to tell us how to grieve. The most important voice is the one that speaks from our own heart.
Website: www.annehosansky.com
BOOKS: Widow’s Walk, Turning Toward Tomorrow, Ten Women of Valor available through Amazon.com. Role Play , Come And Go, Arising –also available through BookBaby.com..