Gazing in the Mirror

April 4 - De-briefing With An Open Heart

People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget
how you made them feel.
~ Maya Angelou

As I listen in the silence,
the voice of all humanity speaks
to me and answers the love
that I hold out to it.
~ Ernest Holmes

One night I approached our banker (who attends the same yoga class as I do) during the break in our class to express "sympathy" for the recent death of a woman we knew of who also worked at the same bank. I had noted in the obituary here locally that he had actually been one of her pall bearers. I had also had an opportunity to go to the bank after her death and in a face-to-face meeting with one of the employees there I learned something about the circumstances of her demise. The woman was a year or two younger than I am now. So this one hit home for me personally – especially as it involved issues of stroke/heart inadequacies which have been a topic between me and my internists (more than once) owing to genetics I may or may not have inherited from my mom.

He was sitting on his yoga mat when I approached him. He is usually not very social in class and is very quiet tending to keep to his own self. However one week while he was in class and as he had previously been to our home 25 yrs ago when we were thinking "business expansion" (which was when my husband and I first married) it occurred that the banker and I talked in a friendly yet business-like manner a bit more than I have previously experienced with him and he also inquired about my husband at the end of our conversation. I shared with him how we had managed to "hang in there" through the economic contractions of 2001 and then again in 2008. So this particular evening I simply wanted to offer our sympathy and as I started to speak he stood up to greet me face-to-face.

He began talking about the woman's death. He mentioned that he had known her through their association at the bank for 30 years. He mentioned that for many years she and her husband actually lived on the same road as he and his wife live on. She had suffered a stroke and was recovering from that challenge when there also occurred some heart condition and so she was hospitalized for that reason. Then he spoke of visiting her at the hospital in St Louis shortly before she died. He seemed to have already been aware that she was not doing very well at all. He mentioned being surprised that he was actually allowed in to see her. She had contracted pneumonia. There were just too many attacks upon her well-being simultaneously for her body to recover. I realized as I listened to him that this circumstance had had a profound and unsettling effect on him personally.

As he spoke I felt my own heart open wide to fully hear whatever he wanted to say, as much as he wanted to say, with very little coming back from me beyond occasional acknowledgments of his feelings. Those who know me well enough to have talked with me on the telephone know that I can pour forth a lot of words. This seemed not the time for my own perspectives or experiences on death and I remained for the most part mute. I realized afterwards that in his position as the president of a hometown bank with several branches in nearby towns (a role he inherited from his own father but had expanded upon regarding the overall size of the bank's holdings during his own term) and as he was not actually this woman's husband – there were probably few people who he could have felt as comfortable with, saying out loud all those feelings about her death, than I was in that moment. He probably really didn't have much of an outlet for his feelings. I felt blessed to have been available to "be there" for him in that moment, when all I had intended to do was offer an awareness of her passing by extending "sympathy".

It was a wonderful lesson on the gift of listening and an affirmation of my willingness to reach out to someone that I did not know very well but "well enough" to justify my doing so. It's often hard to know what to say or do when someone we care about is grieving. I could have listened to my fear of intruding on his privacy. I may have worried that I would say the wrong thing or somehow make him feel even worse. I know that I felt that offering my sympathy was only this very small and polite gesture. Yet I discovered that my impulse actually provided some much needed comfort and support for him. That was a need that I was not even aware that he had. I never would have expected that. There are many ways to help a grieving friend or family member starting with letting the person simply know you care.

I feel that the gift that I gave this man that night was a gift of compassion. Active compassion for HIS feelings flowed from me to him silently. There is a quote from C S Lewis which I like very much – "Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape". I doubt that most people would have even considered that this man was suffering grief. I don't even know if he was consciously aware that he was in grief. Yet I could see the grief in his face. There was a shocked and stricken quality in his face as he shared his genuine feelings with me even if the words did not seem all that emotional. Something in me touched something in him and it just flowed so gently kind and beautiful.

~ perspective

At times it is possible for
our own light to flow outward
sparked by the needs of another
person drawing upon us.
I know from personal experience
that time does soften the sadness
of grief leaving behind mostly
happy memories and the emotional
sad memories are less enduring.
A friend of the heart is one who
"knows" you simply as you are and
seems to understand what you have
been through and accepts you just
as you are and in that acceptance
such a friend can invite you to grow.
Each of us has cause to feel with
a very deep gratitude the blessing
of those who genuinely listen to us.
I realize better now how important
it is for coping with grief to have
someone willing to debrief us without
trying to "fix" things for us.

#communication #compassion #concern #death #economy #empathy #grief #kindness #listening #sympathy