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Wednesday's Woe
Where O Where Did My Good Friends Go?
~Tommy Prince
I called a good friend this weekend, and I ended up going over to his house for a visit over a hunting opportunity we needed to discuss. The last time I saw him was at a Christmas dinner with friends. Which was great, except that the last time I saw him before that was two years ago at another Christmas dinner with friends… It is very unusual for me not to see this good friend as over the years we had pretty much stayed in contact, but I knew he had been very busy with his business and his teenaged children, so I wasn't too worried.
But he had been one of the few that had kept up with me during that first year of my grief. We would go to lunch together fairly routinely, and he didn't seem to mind asking the hard questions… like, "How are you really doing?" and that was always nice. But it seemed like after the one-year mark hit, he fell off the face of the earth. I chalked it up to his busy-ness, and went on with my life, uh grief, uh life of grief.
His family was not at home when I went to see him this weekend, so we were able to have a nice visit and even got past all the joking after awhile and entered into some serious talk. He began apologizing to me (which is totally out of character for this cut-up kind of guy) that he has not kept in contact with me any more than he has. His words were something to the effect,
"I haven't been able to call you --- I've wanted to, but I just haven't known how to comfort you."
Later on in the conversation however, he admitted, as he is a very honest guy, that
I really do represent "the unimaginable" to him...
(as his children are nearing the age that Merry Katherine was when she was killed).
I reassured him, and pretty much responded to him,
"To a Child-Loss griever, minimal contact is best. Anything more really feels too intrusive.
"All I need from you is just an occasional pat on the head and a little scratch behind my left ear."
Picture, thanks to ~Deeper than Tears: Promises of Comfort and Hope by Terri Gibbs
