Good morning…
2015 was a hard year for many. Loved ones leaving earth for heaven. Health issues plaguing, paralyzing. Affairs, divorces, accidents altering life. Facing “firsts” is difficult, the first night alone, the first holiday without, the first anniversary pain; each “first” marks movement away from an old beloved normal. In May of 2015, Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg lost her 47 year old husband, Dave, in a heart related treadmill accident while on vacation. In a Facebook essay crafted in June, Sheryl shared the lessons she learned in her first thirty days of coping with extreme grief. I have pulled out my favorite portions of her life-saving wisdom.
1) “A childhood friend of mine who is now a rabbi recently told me that the most powerful one-line prayer he has ever read is: ‘Let me not die while I am still alive.’ I would have never understood that prayer before losing Dave. Now I do. I think when tragedy occurs, it presents a choice. You can give in to the void, the emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even breathe. Or you can try to find meaning.”
2) “I have gained a more profound understanding of what it is to be a mother, both through the depth of the agony I feel when my children scream and cry and from the connection my mother has to my pain… She has fought to hold back her own tears to make room for mine. She has explained to me that the anguish I am feeling is both my own and my children’s…”
3) “A friend of mine with late-stage cancer told me that the worst thing people could say to him was ‘It is going to be okay.’ That voice in his head would scream, How do you know it is going to be okay? Do you not understand that I might die? I learned this past month what he was trying to teach me. Real empathy is sometimes not insisting that it will be okay but acknowledging that it is not.”
4) “Even a simple ‘How are you?’—almost always asked with the best of intentions—is better replaced with ‘How are you today?’ When I am asked ‘How are you?’ I stop myself from shouting, My husband died a month ago, how do you think I am? When I hear ‘How are you today?’ I realize the person knows that the best I can do right now is to get through each day.”
5) I was talking to a friend “…about a father-child activity that Dave is not here to do. We came up with a plan to fill in for Dave. I cried to him, ‘But I want Dave. I want option A.’ He put his arm around me and said, ‘Option A is not available. So let’s just kick the shit out of option B.’ Dave, to honor your memory and raise your children as they deserve to be raised, I promise to do all I can to kick the shit out of option B.”
Learning from Sheryl’s wisdom as we begin 2016, let’s resolve not die while we are still alive. Let’s remember, the anguish we feel is both our own and our children’s. Let’s offer real empathy, acknowledging that sometimes it is not okay. Let’s ask those grieving, “How are you today?” For those of us whose option A is no longer available, let’s do all we can to kick the shit out of option B.
Be made complete [be what you should be], be comforted, be like-minded, live in peace [enjoy the spiritual well-being experienced by believers who walk closely with God]; and the God of love and peace [the source of lovingkindness] will be with you, 2 Corinthians 13:11 (AMP),
Sue
