One of the things grieving Mom’s tell me about is the discomfort they encounter when trying to introduce the name of their scary sick, terminally ill or dead child into a conversation. To a person, they cite tears as the main contributing factor. Nine times out of ten; no matter how hard both parties try and hold their emotions in check, as soon as that child’s name is spoken the waterworks start. When that happens, regardless of who is doing the crying, both parties instinctively take steps to stop it. Sadly that behavior immediately ends any chance of offering or receiving support.
In my early grief years I felt bad about crying. I would introduce Kalei’s name, lose the battle to hold back my tears and then start apologizing for my lack of control or worse, making them cry. I would say things like: “I’m sorry, I usually don’t cry in public” or “I’m sorry, I did not intend to make you feel bad” or “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything about her”.
My apologetic ramblings were always followed by a re-direct question that would guarantee our conversation went as far away from the Kalei’s-name-makes-me-sad talk as possible. I would say, “Enough about me, how are you?” and then follow that up with a question about their kids. To a person, their faces brightened with relief as they returned to their happy world of healthy living children.
This behavioral dance is very interesting when you think about it. The truly heartbroken put their grief aside in order to comfort the non-grieving person, and they do it with the very thing they are not allowed to talk about. Go figure!
In time I rarely lost control during those discussions, but my audience continued to react emotionally to Kalei’s name. That sucked for me because I wanted to say her name but I was getting tired of having to deal with the guilt of upsetting them all the time.
After thinking about this situational behavior for a while, I realized that the problem is in the mistaken belief that the emotional words encapsulated within grief tears are all bad, when in fact that isn’t true at all. Without that understanding, our immediate response is to divert, deflect or deny all discussion away from what we believe is causing the water works.
So I asked myself, what do I think my tears really mean? My answer is in the following words…
“The tears your see on my face communicate two things; one is grief and the other is gratitude. The grief tears are mine and mine alone. I am not giving them to you, as a matter of fact, I will be offended if you try and forcibly take them from me. The gratitude tears, now those tears are yours for the taking for they are my thanks to you for allowing me to say Kalei’s name today.”
Without fail, that explanation always seems to bring comfort, ease and gentle smiles to the moment.
Understanding the language of tears, and helping people appreciate the messaging, has made it possible to talk about my Sweetie Pie in the same conversational way everyone else does about their children. For that opportunity, I will always be grateful.
