Being alone after death is a difficult subject. Many of us have been there. The goal of this writing is not to make anyone feel guilty when reflecting on the death of someone in a family member’s or friend’s life. It is not to make anyone feel guilty over a response to someone else’s loss. It is merely to reflect on thoughts that have been shared with me over the years.
Typically, the response to the death of a friend or a community member is the outpouring of sympathy, prayers, encouragement, offerings of help, and food. Family members who are not part of the immediate family may come to offer support and for themselves to grieve. Friends and family need to be a part of saying goodbye. I am not going to concentrate on responses and actions related to the events and changes of this past year because thoughts shared with me occurred in the years prior to our adjustments to life in 2020.
The first days and weeks after a loss may be full of friends, calls, letters, and people in the house. Then, it is quiet. There may be other family members living in the house, but it can still be quiet. We may be encouraged to call if we need something, but the days are moving on. Friends have been well meaning, but their world is moving on.
Most of my thoughts are those shared by friends who became widows and had no children living at home. The after death stillness was intense. The usual activities that gave purpose to each day seemed meaningless. As days passed, they didn’t want to interrupt the lives of family and friends. It became difficult to talk about their loss because they felt that others assumed they were adjusting and accepting the loss. It became easier to sit in an empty, quiet house, wondering if the phone would ring.
It is difficult for those with the loss and for those trying to understand and support after a loss. It is hard to know what someone else needs. I reflect upon a friend who lost her husband to cancer when she was in her sixties. He had been a widower with grown children when she married him. Her life had revolved around her love for her late-in-life husband. After he died, she didn’t seem to encourage talking about her husband and how she was doing. It became easier not to bring up the subject and to assume she was adjusting. Several years later, she confessed that she had become very angry over the fact that no one had pushed her to talk about her loneliness. Over the years, we socialized, attended church together, and she babysat our children. But, she felt she had been left alone. I felt sad and guilty because I thought I had failed her as a friend.
Another friend recently shared how she felt the intense loss of being alone after her husband died. She has many friends and a wonderful family to support her. But, she too talked about the quietness after the community’s initial response to his death. I, too, can remember the alone days, the quiet evenings, and wondering what I was to do.
There are no easy answers or resolution to grief and aloneness. When it is our own grief, we often do not know what we need. We may not know what we need others to do. We may need something, but we aren’t sure what it is. As a friend or family member, we don’t know what to say. How does one know where to begin to help someone else?
Perhaps we need to remember that appearances and easy words don’t reveal how someone is coping. Perhaps we need to remember that a phone call or an invitation to get together may help in the quiet of an empty house. Perhaps your friend may seem to be reluctant to talk, but perhaps it’s because that person may not want to “burden” someone else. Or, perhaps it is difficult to admit things are bad, life is overwhelming, and grief seems to be forever. Reaching out can be difficult for the one bereaved and for the friend or family member.
Looking ahead to when life may be more normal, perhaps all we can do is reach out with a cup of coffee or a cup of tea, and a listening ear. Oh, cookies might be helpful, too.
