I mean, what do you say to people when you learn they’ve had a very close family bereavement?<\/p>\n
‘I’m sorry’ is so lame.<\/p>\n
And meaningless.<\/p>\n
It doesn’t really convey anything and anyway, what is it that I’m<\/em> being so apologetic about?<\/p>\n There are other circumstances that are just about on the same level of devastation as a close family bereavement.<\/p>\n Losing a much loved pet (I still grieve for Beech, every day my friends, every single day) is in that category.<\/p>\n And another kind of bereavement.<\/p>\n The death of a relationship.<\/p>\n This week one of my colleagues at work told me that his (grown up) daughter has been dumped by the guy she was living with; he just walked out.<\/p>\n God that’s just so similar to a bereavement – the poor girl. I’m not taking sides, I don’t judge him… I just understand how she feels.<\/p>\n And then someone else I know, someone I worked in London with, told me that her Mum had passed away.<\/p>\n The words ‘I’m sorry’ seem so inadequate.<\/p>\n I’d never met her Mum but that’s not the point – I’ve listened to my friend speak about her.<\/p>\n And now she’s gone, just like the relationship that my colleague’s daughter had (past tense).<\/p>\n Different kinds of death, but death all the same.<\/p>\n A few days ago (this really hasn’t been a good week for this kind of stuff) another colleague took me aside and said that her husband of 20 years had walked out on her and their two children.<\/p>\n Another relationship to grieve over, another instance where ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry’ seems so completely inadequate.<\/p>\n People. Glass Houses. Stones.<\/p>\n I’m far, far, far from perfect.<\/p>\n I’ve done my share of dumping, I’ve caused the death of some relationships – I still feel bad about one or two of them even though my actions were the right thing to do…<\/p>\n Doesn’t mean I still don’t grieve.<\/p>\n But there’s my former colleague friend and her Mum, my colleague and his ‘widowed’ daughter, my colleague and her new status as a single mum…<\/p>\n All grieving in their own way.<\/p>\n And I suppose I am too; empath that I am.<\/p>\n Feeling very sorry for everyone.<\/p>\n But ‘sorry’ is such a lame word.<\/p>\n B<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I mean, what do you say to people when you learn they’ve had a very close family bereavement? ‘I’m sorry’ is so lame. And meaningless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}