I attended my first grief support group last night. I’ve done a good job of avoiding this until now. Yep, the ultimate queen of denial. But I see now that perhaps talking to people who’ve experienced some of what I’m going through can be good and actually quite helpful. I know that I’m not the first to go through this and surely won’t be the last so I decided to open myself up to the experience, bite the bullet and just go, damn it.
It was odd listening to others as they expressed their pain, confusion and even acceptance. I found it comforting as I identified with each person in the room. From the man who agonized over finding a note his wife wrote to her family and friends, to the man who just came back from spreading his wife’s ashes, to the woman who still struggles with emptying her closet of her husband’s clothes, to the woman who is still in a state of shock and not knowing what to do with herself.
This last woman I mentioned (I’ll call her Dee) was like me in that it was her first time coming to the group and I believe to be somewhat close to me in age. However unlike me who has lived this strange new existence for 10 months, this woman was thrown in to widowhood within the past two weeks. She was lost and didn’t know where to turn. Feeling like she was going crazy, she came. Her pain, anger, guilt and confusion held everyone’s rapt attention. It was clear that she needed someone outside of this group to talk to.
And this is where I failed. Serious epic failure. The man leading this group asked if one of the women there last night would give her phone number to Dee should she feel like she just needed to talk. An older woman, who has obviously been part of the group for a while, piped up and told Dee she would give her cell phone number to her after the group ended. I decided I would also offer my number and get Dee’s and just call her and offer to have dinner with her. You see this kind of help was offered to me by another widow when I needed it most. I didn’t take my friend up on the offer (A million thanks to you Ginny) and instead tried to deal with things on my own. Remember me? The queen of denial?
You see, after the January 8 shootings occurred in Tucson and the call for a gentler, kinder nation was made I decided that I would make a conscious effort to always pay it forward in some small way, each and every day. It’s the way I want to live my life. I’ve done that since then in many ways and this was my opportunity to do so again, in a way that is much more powerful and fulfilling than paying for the guy’s order behind me in the drive thru at Chick-Fil-A or Starbucks.
But I failed. Maybe it was selfishness because the meeting lasted way longer than I expected and all I wanted to do when it finally ended was go home. Maybe it was fear. Fear that if she took me up on it, I’d be forced to feel things I’ve been avoiding. So while I wasn’t so sure that this group was the right fit for me and was unsure about going next week, I do plan to go. I will go in the hope that Dee can bring herself to attend again and I’ll be given another opportunity to pay it forward. I won’t pass it up next time.
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