#77 Awkward moment at funeral stirs concern

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Gabby
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#77 Awkward moment at funeral stirs concern

Post by Gabby » Sat Jul 09, 2005 10:50 pm

#77 Awkward moment at funeral stirs concern / Neighbor's death revealed my unconsciousness

DEAR ABBY: My husband and I went to a funeral to pay our respects to our neighbor and his family for the loss of his father. I had met the parents on a few prior occasions; my husband had not.

As I was expressing my sympathy and talking with the widow about her husband and their life together, she became a little teary-eyed - so I continued to stand with her and hold her hand and speak with her. The incident lasted about two or three minutes.

My husband feels I should have only expressed my condolences and quickly moved on. I am mortified that I may have done something inappropriate and caused this woman pain. What should I have done? - WONDERING IN PENNSYLVANIA

DEAR WONDERING: A funeral is not an assembly line. You did the right thing by taking the widow's hand, expressing your condolences, and allowing her to share her feelings. Your husband may have been embarrassed, by the grieving woman's display of emotions, but that is his problem, so please don't allow him to make it yours. –Abby

Gabby's Reply

Hi Wondering, Yours is a valuable question because most of us have not been taught what to do when another expresses an emotion such as sadness or grief, to include upset and anger.

You did the natural thing, to reach out and touch her, to communicate that you were there for her. However, if you look closely you'll see that your gesture was more for yourself than for her. Touching her got you through the moment. You did it because you were unwilling to experience the experience of being with another’s grief. To "be" you must be willing to experience uncertainty and uncomfortableness so as to see what’s there for you. And, when you have, then to remain silent in service to the bereaved in support of them completing their experience. Later you can share with them your thoughts or clear with another what came up for you. A funeral is in service to the bereaved. You simply were afraid to do or say the wrong thing, so you tried to console her, which in fact was not supportive of her completing her experience of grief. Now she has to create that experience all over again without you there to interrupt it with your imitation of communication. In truth you went unconscious.

The problem with touching another when they are experiencing sadness or grief is that you immediately ground them, you bring them out of the realm of experiencing back into the physical world, into the realm of thinking. You caused her to think of you (holding her hand and of her crying while you held her hand and of others watching her, and you, etc. etc.) instead of being with her experience. What you did in fact was distract her from experiencing her pain. What works is to intend (nonverbally) for a grieving person to experience their pain.

The way to discover what happens is to be aware the next time some tries to console you when you’re experiencing upset, sadness or grief. Even the seemingly compassionate act of handing you a tissue causes you to think instead of experience.

What’s so is most of us live our lives with thousands of incompletes, interactions in which we are still dragging part of it around with us because we have not completed the experience of upset, anger, or grief.

Millions of grieving partners drag around their grief for life because of friends who interrupted their experience with words of wisdom, sympathy, and consolation. “I just can’t stop thinking about him.” “I know, it takes a long time. Try to think of something else. Keep busy. Volunteer. It’s time to move on. Etc.” Even good advice, “You’ve got to keep thinking about him until you don’t” serves as a barrier to facilitating someone in completing the grieving process. What works is to be there in silence. To get another’s communication and not do anything with it. Be with your uncomfortableness. Choose to have your own experience—of what it’s like to not say anything when another is experiencing sadness. Choose to experience confusion, not knowing what to say. Thank you, Gabby

PS. It appears that what this was really about for you is you completing your experience of abuse. You set up your husband to invalidate your experience and apparently did not communicate cleanly and responsibly to have him acknowledge that he got that it didn’t feel good to be criticized for grieving as you did. You are still dragging that conversation around with you. It's an incomplete on top of thousands of similar ones. You did not do anything wrong. You needed to have done everything exactly as you did so as to get to this part of my letter. It is abusive of your husband to make you wrong. It is abusive of you to set up your husband to make you wrong. This behavior of yours and his was supposed to have been nipped in the bud long ago. “That doesn’t feel good.” “Well honey, I was just trying to point out…” “Please stop. I need to hear you tell me that you know it didn’t feel good.” “Well, you don’t have to get so….” And in that moment you would either make a decision to get counseling (for yourself alone) to see what’s going on that you cause (unconsciously intend) him to invalidate you and to persist in arguing; that, or you would issue an ultimatum for him to get therapy or that you would be leaving. It could be said that the death of your friend’s husband was the beginning of you choosing to be alive, to awaken from being unconscious.

I trust you can see that your letter is a covert argument intent on making your husband wrong for making you wrong? A woman who is whole and complete, not addicted to arguing, would know that his communication was really about something else. He was dramatizing an upset, one that happened earlier than the funeral.

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