Come On, People (Gabrielle)
I was talking to a very sweet woman today. She knew that Adiel and Josh had recently lost their baby and so she was asking me how they were doing. All in all it was a very sweet thought, but how she asked took me aback. She said, “I heard your sister had suffered a setback recently. Do you think she’ll be able to (and here she searched for a word) regroup?” ‘Suffered a setback’? ‘Regroup’? I had to remind myself that she meant for the best and I had to make myself not lash out at her. What is so wrong with us that we can’t even talk about death? Or did she not even see a baby who had never been born as alive? From what I know about this woman I would say that the latter statement doesn’t apply to her, but why couldn’t she ask me how my sister and her husband were mourning? A baby’s death is not a setback. It is a death. You regroup from a setback. You mourn a death. Have we come so far that we can’t even talk to each other about death and sadness, but we have to use business terms to express what has happened? Come on, people, what is so scary about recognizing pain and sorrow? Do you actually want to be helpful and supportive? Then ask me about what really happened and use words that mean something. Use words of comfort and help not words of cold and distance. No one weeps for a setback. The word is safe. But caring for people isn’t safe and if you want to care you need to go all the way. Otherwise the person you talked to will walk away upset and you will have given no comfort and no help.
Your comment “caring for people isn’t safe and if you want to care you need to go all the way” is right on the money. I think people are afraid of saying the wrong thing and upsetting someone even more. But it’s a chance we should be willing to take. The alternative is to sound as though one is just fullfilling an obligation of caring versus the real thing.
In our culture, we do not like silence, so we fill up the seemingly empty spaces with meaningless words. I agree with you. “Setback” is heinous. When I lost babies, I just wanted someone to say, “I’m sorry” and mean it without trying to change my outlook or solve my “problem.”