Finding A Way

"It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way.

So we must dig and delve unceasingly." 

 Claude Monet

One of my friends lost her mother this weekend; another lost his mother a year ago. I've been thinking about loss quite a bit.

I've said before that I often find myself perplexed when trying to find the words for someone who is mourning. I've been told that this is because I am a cold person, but I don't tend to think that's the case. I think that sometimes -- a lot of times -- when people don't know what to say, or they are afraid of saying the wrong thing, that they retreat into silence. Better, they reason, to say nothing at all rather than the wrong thing.

I think, though, that keeping silence is kind of selfish. Because it's about you wanting to keep your foot out of your mouth; it's focusing on your own comfort levels, keeping yourself from feeling stupid or being perceived improperly, and it leaves the grief-stricken feeling singular and alone.  They do not feel your intentions. They only see your actions, and your actions have been to withdraw.

Or at least, mine sometimes are. Even though I know from experience how hurtful that is. So I fight with my ego, my worry about saying or doing the wrong thing and how that will make ME feel, in order to find the right thing -- the most loving and comforting thing -- to say or to do to help my friends feel, if not better, than at the very least less alone.

I have come to believe many things about this life, but the thing I believe the most strongly is that, while we are here, we need to find ways to reach out to and support one another. When we can, where we can. Even -- maybe especially -- when it's hard and we don't know how and we're scared and sad ourselves. The moments when we're able to reach past who we are and reach for someone else? I think that's what we're here for. To learn. To live. To love.

I know that I learned that from my friends, and their mothers, and their loss, and I hope that in some small way I am able to pass that on.