In the understatement of the season, I’ll begin by saying that empathy is not my strong suit. I have a hard time putting myself into the shoes of others. I sometimes come off as selfish when it’s more of lack of empathy thing. It’s not so much that I care more about myself than others or that my desires have a greater weight as much as it is that — in my mind — it’s more of a “there is no one else” kind of thing. It sounds horrible, it sounds selfish, but it’s not a malicious or an “all for me” kind of thing. It’s more an inability or a lack of awareness.
If that makes any sense.
Which is why death and grief are so alien to me.
Part of it is that I rarely have to deal with it. Any deaths of family or of friends is usually at least once removed. It’s a friend of a friend, it’s a distant family member…something to that effect. And before…it wasn’t that I didn’t care as much as that it didn’t affect me. Never directly. I would recognize that someone has died, and I would see the effect that it had on another. I would see the tears but I wouldn’t understand. I’ve never understood, not really.
But it’s made me into a bad friend. A bad son, and a bad brother. I guess I don’t know if that’s a true statement because if one doesn’t know, then can one be at fault? Regardless, when friends would feel a loss, I could be there for them, but I’d be at the edges of the room. I’d have, sometimes literally, one foot out the door. I didn’t understand and I felt useless. And I wanted to run from it. I wanted to be anywhere but close to someone feeling a grief I wouldn’t understand.
And I still don’t understand the grief. I don’t understand the sense of loss that would cause the tears and depression and emptiness. I have been fortunate enough to not yet have cause to understand the vacuum. But I am trying to be that better friend, son, and brother.
That’s all I’ll say about that. That I’m trying to be there. That I realize that it’s not even about fully understanding the grief or the emptiness or the loss. That maybe it doesn’t always have to make sense to me as much as I just have to learn to have faith that sometimes just being there and holding them can be enough. If that can be the foundation, then empathy, insight, understanding, and a world full of friends and family and deep and full connections may follow.
More importantly…the realization that it’s not just about me.
Will be out of pocket this weekend.