On Grief

The revelations of loss.

Gustave Caillebotte

I was distraught when my sister fell ill. But I still had to function back at the hospital, still had to smile at people, carry on. I learned to cope with this event in a most unusual way.

Suddenly, the wells of empathy inside me opened up. I felt profound love and openness to everyone I met. I wondered what silent battles they were fighting back home, what bad news they had just received, what despair weighed on them as they chased life-changing dreams with all the right qualifications and skills, and still found every door shut.

I grew more intentional with kindness. To pacify and tell anyone I met they would be ok. I felt more love toward those I loved, more patience, grace, and kindness toward anyone who made a mistake, toward those who wronged me, and even toward those I disliked — even if only from a distance. I was them and they were me; I could see and connect with them through the painful human condition we share but are courageous and humorous enough to bear.

The least I could do was be considerate, compassionate, buy someone lunch, encourage them, give more benefit of doubt, tell some jokes, buy my lover flowers that I took the pains to assort and personalize myself, complement something I liked about a stranger or friend that day — anything but not add to any suffering they could be going through.

You never know how much hope and light you’ve restored in a person struck by angst — I know I needed the smiles, laughs, kindness and consideration I got while braving the sad event, I know my sister needed the positivity I’d extend to her. Paradoxically, I felt better embodying this attitude. It was a bittersweet experience.

We can’t let our pain callous us to the suffering of others. If we can do something good, we do it. We make the small circle around us better — and somehow, that work, that attention to others, becomes a balm for our own grief, even if that’s not why we do it. Cynicism, resentment, and rage do nothing but sharpen the knives already twisting inside us. It’s that quote by Charles Bukowski saying,

“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”

We can’t afford to wait for the haunting, reflective moments in the night, unable to sleep, “beyond the reach of warm milk and phenobarbital,” Joan Didion talked about, where we regret losing our temper, where we wish we were a bit kinder — or worse, wish we hadn’t been cruel to those who were nothing but good to us.

Previously,

LXXVIII. The Stoics Used This to Handle Obstacles