Talk About It

This past year has certainly been a very tough year for a number of people I care for dearly. Since Tony’s passing there have been further deaths to mourn, further losses for my family or friends to endure.

It has seemed to me that Tony’s dying was the first of an episode of untimely departures; not that any death could be called ‘timely’ but for those around me there have been awfully unexpected departures of loved ones.

Nine months after Tony’s death my much loved and ever energetic step-mother passed away, only a week after competing in a 10 kilometre walking event in Rotorua.  Between her death in December and May, the month I left New Zealand this year, there were two other dreadful and sad losses occur to people who really matter to me.  

Since arriving in the UK three months ago one more dear friend and two other long term, sweet and lovely friends have departed our living world.

The obvious conclusion is that I have reached the age when my contemporaries will die as we are in the latter part of a normal life span.  But not all of those who died in this past period were contemporaries.  There were heart breaking tragedies.  The tragedies are the hardest for family and friends to deal with, due to their total unexpectedness.  The trauma of the unexpected only adds to the agony of the sudden bereavement.

It is not until you have experienced death of someone you deeply love that you can truly comprehend the heart break, anguish and misery it gives those closest to the departed.  I know, as even though I lost both of my parents some years ago, the effects of losing Tony, my partner, my husband left me in a  far deeper chasm of torment and misery than when I lost my parents.  We live with the knowledge that inevitably a parent is going to depart – and as great a loss as it is, there is a deeper, yet more agonising grief of the untimely loss of a partner or a child.

Losing Tony has given me a greater understanding and insight of the difficulties families and friends of those who have recently departed are going through, at the time of the initial bereavement and in the many months and years that follow.  A much greater understanding.

Due to my own experience I know I have better tools with which to be a more helpful and supportive friend, for which I feel grateful.  Not a great way to learn, but at least a learning has come out of it, as I hope does for many others. 

Wherever possible I shall share with others the value and skills of what Tony’s death has taught me, and whenever possible I shall point the learnings out if I consider it would be helpful for the future for anyone who listens.

We have all gone to funerals or wakes and shed a tear for the departed and the family they have left behind but we have not always fully comprehended the depth at which some may be feeling that grief.  Naturally so, until it occurs to us.

And of course, the post period of someone dying is the time when those left need to feel the support and comfort from all areas of their lives – whether home, family, work, social, sport. Knowing there are people there to reach out too is vitally important.  Usually it happens that there is a rallying call for those closest to the inner circle to do just that, rally around and provide the support and love required to help the bereaved in those challenging days afterwards.

And then time passes.  Months pass.  The support is there, but there with less intensity.  Friends stop calling in as often, the phone calls become less, and the invitations to socialise become less.

It is not a criticism this occurs, it is a mere fact of life that people’s lives are busy and there is only so much support in grief time many people can give before moving on with their own general lives.

Then a year passes, maybe two.   To everyone’s relief the one left behind appears to have moved on with life and overcome the initial obvious signs of grief.  Those who have lost partners are often lucky enough to meet someone else, others don’t.  Sometimes by choice, often not.

During the past three months here in the UK I have spent times with others who have gone through their own distressing losses.  Two tragically, two along similar lines to me (which in our view is still a tragedy but am sure the reader understands the difference).  

Whilst some may deduce that my being with others who have lost a loved one could possibly create a depressingly solemn and mournful situation, it has actually done the opposite.  After all, we have all had something very life changing in common.  We have all shared the deepest grief and despair one could possibly endure.    That has given us mutual understanding.

In each case with each person I spent time with it was the mutual understanding which gave us all the common thread that made talking about our losses sometimes up lifting, supportive, often encouraging, always enlightening and many conversations were delightfully happy.

It felt good.  Because we could talk about it.  Certainly there was the odd tear shed, but hey, that’s what losing someone does, and very often that was momentary before the conversation ended with a touch of humour or warmth on our reflections.

There was never a time limit on these conversations.  They were never planned.  They were never melancholy or distressing.  They were naturally occurring through a mutual understanding, a bondship almost.  

They were nice.  They were nice because they allowed each of us at some time, time to talk.  To talk about the loss, the grief.

That is what all this long script is about.  Talking about it.

I am one who experienced bereavement fairly recently.  One gorgeous lady lost her loved one eleven years ago, yet the loss is as great now as it was then.  I know, because we talked about it.

We talked about our own experiences, the way we managed our ways through, the serious, the light hearted and macabre of our losses.  We talked and shared.  It was good.  It felt uplifting.  And there was an almost relief of a heavy weight being share and lifted off the shoulders. A little of the burden lessened.

Uplifted and unburdened because of talk.

It was this that had most of us realise a commonality that we had each noticed.  A thread that became a theme.  And that was - the friends, associates or family, who we see or meet whether regularly or infrequently, who don’t, or won’t talk about it.

All of us found it baffling, sometimes irritating, sometimes awkward, often perplexing – and usually difficult to understand.  People who won’t talk about it, or seemingly can't talk about it. Whether it is because they don’t know what to say, or whether they feel awkward or embarrassed; whether they think it will upset the bereaved and therefore try everything possible to completely skirt around the topic. Or whether they don’t want to raise sad memories for either the bereaved or themselves. Or whether it is just plain inconvenient and they are not the least bit interested in conversing about it, or you, or the parted one -that is, those that don’t give a damn and don’t care.

Each one of us had experienced glaring examples of this, of the elephant in the room.  Of being somewhere with someone or some others where silence seemed a preferred option to them rather than bringing the deathly topic up.

Of all the people I have had who come to visit, or call, or who I happen to encounter in the supermarket, the gym, at dinner parties, over a coffee, on a run, a walk or at a social function, the ones I have truly appreciated the most are those who have the intelligence and sensibility to say to me, “Do you want to talk about it?”  

It is as simple as that.  “Do you want to talk about it?”  

The best support a friend can give is to ask if it will help to talk, and if it is not wanted the person has the option to say, no. Let it be their choice to talk or not – if they would rather not then move onto another subject.  The weather is always a good fall back!

It’s so easy to do. It stops those awkward moments, the squirming moments of finding something else to talk about. It is better than the short, yet long moments of deathly silence.  The elephant in the room moments that you pretend you cannot see.

“Would you like to talk about it?”   “Do you want to talk about it?”  Then talk.