Bereavement Mentors Community Group
This group is for anyone who is grieving the loss of someone close to them. It helps to have someone who understands what your going through by having been there and can share with you the grieving process. Even though you think you wont make it, you will. You will be okay. Members walk the journey together.
The great American poet Langston Hughes once wrote this simple but powerful poem:
I loved my friend.
My friend went away from me.
There is nothing left to say.
The poem ends as softly as it began--
I loved my friend.
I don't let a lot of people get too far into my heart, but in the past year I've made a conscious and deliberate effort to really try to enlarge myself, emotionally. In the process, I have formed some of the finest, richest, and most amazing friendships I have ever known. I have also experienced a very sad loss of a friendship.
This friendship was with a particularly special loved one--someone who inspired me and gave me a lot of hope and a restored belief in the goodness of people, and the power of a person's courage and spirituality. Truth be told, I thought I had been something of an inspiration and guide to this friend, too--maybe even a bit of a hero. It felt so tremendously joyful to think I could be looked up to by someone I looked up to!
This bond has passed away....not with a bang, but with a whimper. With something altogether more painful: the (apparent) choice by my friend to simply regard me as unneeded, an option, a charming but transitory character. The friendship didn't collapse under stress, conflict, dispute, death, or abandonment...It eroded through acts of negligence and silence. It was as if all my efforts to provide something positive, healthy, and even plain-old FUN were seen and evaluated with the critique, "nah." The very best of me didn't suffice.
I'm not sure my friend understands the awe and the respect and the purely hopeful view I had of this friendship, or how the loss of it is grieved by me. It hurts that I hadn't meant more to my friend, and that the loss of ME is seen as tolerable, and isn't grieved in return.
So there I am. I've gone through denial (making excuses, telling myself there must be some other answer, my friend doesn't mean it, etc.), anger (this is unfair! I've done nothing but be decent, loyal, supportive, and kind! I've invested SO MUCH, and it's just offensive to be treated like an expendable thing!), bargaining, and not sadness.
One thing I am very proud of, though, is that my conduct through this loss has been healthy. I haven't become needy or obsessed, I haven't gone to inappropriate measures in efforts to manipulate the friendship back, I haven't become controlling or passive-aggressive, I haven't stalked or directed overwhelming attention to the person or the problem, and I've been very vigilant about who I even process this with. I can be assured at the end of this that I have been healthy and mature, and responded to the loss in the best manner possible.
But it's still sad, and I'm heartsick.
I loved my friend.
My friend went away from me.
There is nothing left to say.
The poem ends as softly as it began--
I loved my friend.
I don't let a lot of people get too far into my heart, but in the past year I've made a conscious and deliberate effort to really try to enlarge myself, emotionally. In the process, I have formed some of the finest, richest, and most amazing friendships I have ever known. I have also experienced a very sad loss of a friendship.
This friendship was with a particularly special loved one--someone who inspired me and gave me a lot of hope and a restored belief in the goodness of people, and the power of a person's courage and spirituality. Truth be told, I thought I had been something of an inspiration and guide to this friend, too--maybe even a bit of a hero. It felt so tremendously joyful to think I could be looked up to by someone I looked up to!
This bond has passed away....not with a bang, but with a whimper. With something altogether more painful: the (apparent) choice by my friend to simply regard me as unneeded, an option, a charming but transitory character. The friendship didn't collapse under stress, conflict, dispute, death, or abandonment...It eroded through acts of negligence and silence. It was as if all my efforts to provide something positive, healthy, and even plain-old FUN were seen and evaluated with the critique, "nah." The very best of me didn't suffice.
I'm not sure my friend understands the awe and the respect and the purely hopeful view I had of this friendship, or how the loss of it is grieved by me. It hurts that I hadn't meant more to my friend, and that the loss of ME is seen as tolerable, and isn't grieved in return.
So there I am. I've gone through denial (making excuses, telling myself there must be some other answer, my friend doesn't mean it, etc.), anger (this is unfair! I've done nothing but be decent, loyal, supportive, and kind! I've invested SO MUCH, and it's just offensive to be treated like an expendable thing!), bargaining, and not sadness.
One thing I am very proud of, though, is that my conduct through this loss has been healthy. I haven't become needy or obsessed, I haven't gone to inappropriate measures in efforts to manipulate the friendship back, I haven't become controlling or passive-aggressive, I haven't stalked or directed overwhelming attention to the person or the problem, and I've been very vigilant about who I even process this with. I can be assured at the end of this that I have been healthy and mature, and responded to the loss in the best manner possible.
But it's still sad, and I'm heartsick.
I am one myself who doesn't react in what everyone would see as 'the normal fashion' Has caused some to see me as crazy or stupid but the true friends try to understand that I am just very different 'cause of my turbulent past.
I do realize that some people just don't see life as I do and I just let them have their opinion etc.
Hope you have found others to enjoy your friendship and care as I can tell you would make a splendid friend. (HUGS 4 U)
susan
hang in there.
thinking of you.
Traci
I bumped into my friend by accident recently and nervously asked for any kind of explanation, but was given vague and nervous answers about setting aside "that whole part of my life right now" and school "being my first priority." I can understand BOTH of those answers, and respect and agree to them. But what I cannot accept--because it's rude and even cruel--is the way in which these changes were implemented. Not a word to me about it! Not a "Thank you, but I need time alone" nor "I care and want you in my life, but I'm going to withdraw for a while" or even "I decided I don't want this friendship anymore, so goodbye." No, this went from "I love you, I am so honored to know you, you mean so much to me, you are one of the two closest people in my life" to total shunning--no transition at all.
And it wasn't as if I made some mistake or did something wrong in-between the positive and the negative. It literally happened in-between the last time we visited, which was a positive, happy, and even boisterously fun time, to "sudden death." My friend had even gone to dinner with my wife so they could visit and hang out and just spend a casual Friday having a chat (they are friends too), and my wife returned home to report all the wonderful, positive, warm things my friend had said about me to her! And that was the last time my friend ever showed up! Their last comment to my wife was "I'll call to come over this week."
I've gone through stages of grief/loss...
Denial - "They don't really mean it, they're being a butt/life is crazy/they're just busy/they're out of town"
Bargaining - "Maybe if I reach out...Maybe if I sent an email explaining my concerns (which was never replied to)...Maybe if I try calling or texting (no replies)...Maybe if I...Maybe if I..."
More Bargaining - "Did I do something wrong? If I could just figure out what I did...Am I a jerk and I don't realize it? Is this a test of some sort? Did someone set my friend down and convince them to avoid me, or convince them that I'm not worth having in life? How could they do that??"
Depression - "I am so sad. I am heartsick." I'm not too proud to admit that I poured out tears unexpectedly as it began to dawn on me that this was a deliberate effort by my friend to cancel this bond, and to not even see our legacy as worth a single note or word of goodbye at the end of a remarkable process.
Anger - "I do not deserve this! I've done nothing wrong! I'm a good person: a kind and intelligent, funny, well-liked, respected, and high-quality person! I would never treat a friend this way. This is unacceptable. After all we've been through, and all the work I've done for this friendship, to just leave it behind and go on without even a proper ending is not only callous, it's cruel. I'm a human being, and while nobody is required to like or befriend me, I think it's well within my rights to expect to at least be treated with dignity." Oh, and this friend and I had previously accepted several requests for "freelance" work in our community, collaborating on projects for various clients. So now I'm stuck doing these jobs solo.
Acceptance - I'm getting very, very close to that. My fear is that "Acceptance" will mean finally resolving myself to the loss of the friendship, finalizing my "I'm through"-ness, so that even if my friend--who I still deeply love and care about--came back someday, I'd decline to reconnect the friendship because my will would have ended. I'm afraid that even in this sadness, I want to love the sweetness and the poignancy of the memories form when it WAS good. I don't want to cancel the significance of what mattered in this era. I don't want "acceptance" to mean that it stops mattering to me. I don't see how it can.
You know what I realized hurts the most? It's not the loss I'm going through and grieving. I'm an emotionally healthy person and I can get through that. What hurts is that I thought I meant more to THEM, that they regarded me so highly in return that the loss of ME would be a grief and a sadness to my friend. And I'm learning that it was not so, that what I judged as a pearl of great price in my life was judged as expendable, optional, or temporary in theirs.
(listen to mp3 by clicking: http://resurrectionafterrape.org/mp3/DoneWrong.mp3 )
The wind is ruthless
The trees shake angry fingers at the sky
The people hunch their shoulders
Hold their collars over their ears and run by
It's a cold rain
It's a hard rain
Like the kind that you find in songs
I guess that makes me the jerk with the heartache
Here to sing you about how I've been done wrong
And I am sitting, watching
Out the window of the coffee shop
And I am waiting, waiting
Waiting for it to let up
I am rocking like a cradle
Warming my hands with the cup in between
I am leaning over the table
Holding my face over the steam
And before it gets so cold
That the rain turns to snow
There's just a couple things
I'd like to know
Like how could you do nothing
but say, "I'm doing my best"?
How could you take almost everything
And then come back for the rest?
How could you beg me to stay,
Reach out your hands and plead
And then pack up your eyes and run away
As soon as I agreed?
It just all slips
Away so slowly
You don't even notice till you've lost a lot
I've been like one of those zombies in Vegas
Pouring quarters into a slot
And now I'm tired
And I am broke
And I feel stupid and I feel used
And I'm at the end of my little rope
And I am swinging back and forth about you
Before it gets so cold
That the rain turns to snow
There's just a couple things
I'd like to know
Like how could you do nothing
And say, "I'm doing my best"?
How could you take almost everything
And then come back for the rest?
How could you beg me to stay,
Reach out your hands and plead
And then pack up your eyes and run away
As soon as I agreed?