Take, for instance, the interaction I had with friends and acquaintances and peers the first week I returned to work following my father’s funeral. Most conversations began something like this:
“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”
It’s a perfectly normal thing to say, and I appreciated the sentiments of everyone who took the time to express them. But, as the week wore on and I would have first, or chance, encounters with people, it seemed as if they all had the same thing to say.
“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”
There were those who actually sought me out those first few days, and they were thoughtful enough to ask about how I was feeling, how things went, or about my father and his life. Their compassion was genuine. Yet invariably we would reach that awkward moment where we both felt the need to segue to topics of work, or news, or just simple, friendly chatter. Then we would part, I would move on, and, moments later, I would run into the next person.
“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”
After a couple of days I developed a succinct “Thank you” as a reply, and I would couple it with a sincere and appreciative smile in response to their equally sincere look of sorrow and empathy. I think we struggled with how to communicate the nonverbal, just as much as we wrestled with the words we chose.
There came a time when everyone’s comments became a disruption of my attempts to return to the rhythm of life, where each exchange served as a reminder of my father’s death, and of the start-stop emotions of the previous week. Their kind offerings also began to sound like a mantra.
“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”
I thought I recognized code in what everyone was saying and possibly not actually expressing. It was as if they were warding off the same for themselves, because they recognized that the loss of a parent can, and will, happen for every one of us. It was possible my father’s death made their parents more mortal, and by extension, themselves more mortal as well. In their words, I began to hear hushed prayers.
“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”
For some it may not have been what they feared in their future, but instead a remembrance of the same event previously happening in their lives. A few people spoke to me about the previous losses they’d experienced, but they often spoke of it with the detachment of something which took place long ago. I wondered if cataloging it in such a manner was their way of eventually coping with it, and if I would one day do the same with my father’s death.
After a few days a card came in the mail. I recognized it as one of the cards we keep around the office and leave at the central desk for everyone to sign. There may have been over a hundred different signatures squeezed on to this card from various people with whom I work, all written in the tiniest of handwriting to accommodate space for everyone that might want to sign the card. We’ve become practiced at such things.
I read through each of the comments. They were all well-intended and—I am sure—heartfelt, but even in that I saw a pattern of difficult communication. “Sorry for your loss,” and “Thoughts and prayers with you,” were among the most common expressions scribbled into all of the available space of the stark, white cardstock. The miniscule writing and the density of the comments made me hear a chorus of whispers as I read them.
We do, say, what we can, I thought to myself, when I finished reading them all and set the card aside for safekeeping. I’m still not sure what to do with it now.
Late in the week I ran into a friend and peer who is similar to me in age and who had recently come to work with me in the same building. She also had lost her father just a few short weeks before my father died.
“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”
“Thank you,” I replied. “How are you doing?” In my voice inflection I heard my involuntary reach toward someone I knew must truly understand something I was still attempting to wrap my head around.
She smiled, and I thought I could see her eyes moisten a little.
“I’m okay,” she said. “But, every once in a while I feel like there are things about it that are still hitting me, still settling in. It’s like it is still becoming real to me. I think there is still more to come.”
“I know,” I added.
We talked for a few minutes more. I think she was the first person all week with whom I could make prolonged and sincere eye contact. It felt as if our two separate experiences folded together in the small space between us. For a brief moment, we each knew the other’s feelings on an almost palpable, and deeply personal, level. It was comforting.
Eventually work called us each separate ways. We promised to talk more when we had the chance, and we went back to our beckoning tasks. Walking away, I turned to find someone approaching me, and I felt myself brace in anticipation:
“I’m sorry to hear about your father,” they said.
© 2011 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.
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