On a recent visit to the beauty of Southeast Alaska I was privileged to encounter an Elder who had recently lost his wife after many years of an illness which led eventually to her passing.
I refer to this encounter as a privilege because it validated – above all other reasons for my being there – the true importance of being at this spot on the earth at that moment, willing to listen to and share another person’s story of loss, grief and bereavement with an understanding and non-judgmental heart.
Too often in our busy world and our even busier lives we push aside those in grief – let alone grant them the time to sit down and listen to their stories of heartbreaking pain. Because we find it ‘uncomfortable’ to have to deal with the subject of death, we expect them to just “get over it and get on with your life” as though it had never happened.
Nothing could be further from the truth for someone in grief.
As a person still recovering from my own grief experiences, it’s become my belief that we dishonor both them and their memories of the one they’ve lost when we so callously ignore the reality of the grief from which they suffer by refusing to listen. Someday this reality will be reversed for each of us, and who will listen to our own stories of uncompromising pain of loss when the role is suddenly reversed?
It’s never easy losing your wife of over thirty-five years like it was for this Elder, especially when it was a marriage filled with the strength of love and devotion to each other and to the children they brought into the world together.
It’s much more difficult when that loss has occurred over an extended period of time and feelings of guilt wash over you after they’ve gone, because part of you is relieved they died and are finally past their illness, and part of you feels guilty for having such thoughts in the first place.
Coming to understand that those kinds of feelings of guilt are a natural part of the grieving process isn’t easy – and it’s made even less so when we’re unwilling to give a grieving, hurting person the room in our hearts, or the time to listen to, the things they so desperately need to be able to give voice to in order to find their own healing path.
It’s in the listening to, understanding and sharing of these painfully true events of life that we are able to bring a significant measure of healing to another person’s pain, as happened in the situation I describe.
I’m grateful I was in that spot on the earth when a grieving Elder needed to talk about his pain and feelings of guilt about his loss. I know it made a difference for him to be able to talk to someone who was willing to hear and understand his feelings, and to the path of his individual healing – because he told me it did.
And therein lies the importance of listening – you too will make a profound difference in the life of a grieving person by opening your ears along with your heart of caring, to help them take another step towards their healing.
You’d want them to do it for you if you needed it, wouldn’t you?
With Love and Understanding,
Ken Matthies
HeartSpun Posts from the Crucible of Experience
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