I mean, it is.

What other human emotion do people actively run away from, lest they get some of it on them? Emotion; people also run away from disabled people, lest they catch the disableds themselves. But grief, as an emotion, is so unique and human, yet we really don’t understand it or know how to really deal with it.

It’s a scar that never goes away, never crusts over, never ceases to be. The analogy I picked up on was that grief is like a rock in the bottle of your life. As you get older and do more stuff and have more things happen, the bottle gets bigger, but that rock remains its same size. It’s not as big as how it was when it popped up, proportionally, but it also isn’t getting smaller in a real way.

Anyway, I’m thinking about this because I find myself around people going through grief, and I don’t really know what to do. “Let me know if you need anything” doesn’t cover what is needed, really. I’ve heard a lot about just..DOING things, mainly because the person who needs the grace and help isn’t really thinking straight.

When my stepdad died, I cam down home, and I’ve never seen my mom the way she was. They had been married more than 30 years, and she forgot his middle name for the forms we had to fill out. I’m glad I was there to help out with the legal and paperwork and funeral details and stuff, but that rock in my bottle of life ain’t smaller. It’s still a lump I deal with when something reminds me of him, or a realization that he would have liked to see what I was seeing or hear about what I was doing.

Every now and again, I go back to the words of one of my friends who had her husband die unexpectedly and painfully.

From Maya

People keep asking what they can do for me and for <their kid>, and I hardly know what to say. Mostly I just want people to take their shock and grief and disbelief, and use it to make their own lives better and be more prepared. Get life insurance. Don’t put off seeing the doctor. Spend extra time with your family instead of working so hard. Vaccinate your kids for HPV (<his> cancer was not HPV-related, but most head and neck cancers are, and you can vaccinate your kid against cancer, so why not do it!). Organize your freaking passwords. We knew this day was coming for over six months and we were still almost entirely unprepared. Even the dying think they have more time. Please learn from us, please please please. None of us are leading the charmed life we think we are.

So, in this newest case, my friend’s wife is going through it, and I would like to think that, if I shuffle off this mortal coil, my friends would want to make sure that my wife and mom are okay. But what can I do, right now?

Words without action is meaningless, and all the good wishes in the world don’t mean anything if no one is being helped. I’ll figure it out.