I am lucky to have a fantastic team of friends and family who support me through my grief. The problem isn’t them, it’s me.  No matter how patient, wise, or reassuring any of them are, I live with a near constant fear of losing their love.

This isn’t a new feeling for me. Throughout my life, I’ve scanned the horizon, looking out for the next storm. It’s a sort of trauma response - protective, predictive, and preventative. I overcame this habit after falling for my fantastically awesome wife.  My shrewd cynicism was wounding. Questioning fate’s ulterior motive was unfair to my wife’s love.  Instead of bracing for the next sucker punch, when the universe finally sent an angel I let her in.  

I learned to take in and trust her sweetness.  She loved me and I believed her.  At the core, both of us were “givers” and benefited from learning to receive.  Accepting acts of love is a gift in itself.  Most of the time, my care was merely staying present while she talked and validating her concerns.  By expressing herself, she invested in our relationship and reflected my importance.  She showed me my efforts were effective, trusted, and influential.  The gift is knowing I mattered to her.  

Spoiler alert - a new storm did eventually come.  I was sucker punched again when my wife unexpectedly died.  An out of order death is usually unexpected, isn’t it?  Even when illness foreshadows, we still think this cruel turn of fate is theoretical.  You never think it can happen until it does.  Despite this terrible ending, the universal balance is still in my favor.  Letting her love me was, for us both, a higher quality of life.

I read about the awful things people do to my fellow grievers.  I’m crossing my fingers but so far, this hasn’t occurred in my circle.  Invalidation, criticism, fixing, hurrying grief along.  It happens when a well-meaning person takes on the griever’s painful feelings as their own.  In the beginning, it’s enough for the griever to merely survive.  The grief tsunami floods each day with crushing waves of sadness.  Watching from the shore, a supporter must resist a rescue and bear witness to the drowning.  Feeling inadequate is normal but from inside the storm, I have this important message.  Being available, listening, checking in, and spending time together is more than enough and frankly, all you can do.  Love is an ocean we cannot tame by force.  Grief is not fixable in conventional ways.  

My support system seems to coordinate their care of me by tossing ringed buoys into the water.  No one person calls or texts every day but I connect with someone each day.  This life preserving support keeps coming but some days, I can’t keep my head above the surface.   I, too, want to control grief.  I have some choices - swim or sink into the fear that I’ve become a waterlogged burden.  Anxiety saps the energy I need to rescue myself and again, I am bracing for the knockout blow.

To the angels in my life - I want you to know it’s me, not you.  When I question the tenacity of your support, it’s not a reflection on your efforts.  It’s not feedback to use for improvement. Rather, it is an investment in our relationship.  By describing what it’s like to drown, I’m letting you see the murky depths.  I know it’s difficult but trust that you’re saving my life and I’m trying to swim.  It is important work for both of us.