One thing I've discovered is that the phrase "I understand" hurts more than it heals. I met with another friend in mourning, a widow, and she emphasized how much it hurts to hear this phrase and know that the other person can't fully understand your particular loss because each kind of mourning is so very different. Even two people who experience the same kind of loss or even lose the same person can't possibly fully understand what the other is going through. I once told this widow friend that I understood when I did nothing of the kind but was too naive to realize. To claim "I understand" is to simplify and dismiss someone else's pain, to assume we can fully understand, we can possibly know, what another is going through when so much of the time, we don't really understand even what's going on inside us.
That's why I try not to use that phrase as I reach out to mourn with others who are in mourning. My brother's ex-wife recently had catastrophic heart failure, which landed her in the ICU. The doctors didn't expect her to last the night. I drove with my sister the hour down to the hospital the night it happened. Kids who found home and belonging with her adult son, her boyfriend, her support dog and her in that little apartment stood in line to go in and tell her how much they loved and missed her. Her kids hovered outside that room, praying like they don't usually pray, mourning in their own way a mother who was there but not there. Her Catholic boyfriend frequented the chapel next door, praying for the one person who gives his life purpose, the love of his life. My brother, her ex, brought one of her children, so we could all commiserate together. I walked into that ICU room to see an empty shell of her sweet face, looking like she was already dead as the machine pushed air in and out of lungs that were no longer committed to life.
Members of the church to which some of us belong came at the adult children's request and gave her a blessing. Everyone united in prayer. And the miracle came. She survived that night and the next and the next. She started to wake, to interact, to show her frustration at being trapped in her pain, unable to fully express herself. We all have been filled with hope for the last week as she showed more signs of recovery.
Then, today, just as our large family gathering had dispersed far enough that many of us could do nothing, the hospital called her eldest son to tell him he was facing her loss again. She had taken a turn for the worse. They told him chances were she would either pass away or become a vegetable. Both options are grim and ones I would not want to face. In my place, someone may say, "Well, at least they had two more weeks." Well, the miracle of two weeks was a blessing, for which they are all grateful. But "at least" for those in mourning is almost as bad or worse as "I understand." A day, a week, or more. It's never enough. The loss they face is still real, raw, and filled with agony with which I can empathize but never understand. I've lost my brother and my baby. This family is praying they don't lose their mother.
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We have commonalities in our pain. We can mourn with each other, hold onto each other's healing warmth. We can look---as at least one of them has--to heaven for comfort, healing, and miracles. It may be their miracle was the weeks. We may not fully comprehend each other's pain, but we can be there to mourn together, knowing that even if we are not fully understood, we are fully loved. We are a community of mourners.
Update: Two hours after I wrote this post, the worst happened. She went Home, beyond the veil, where her mourning family can't follow. Now, we pray for peace and healing as we deal with the agony of the aftermath and the hole left behind.
