In gister se NYT verskyn die berig oor die lyding van 'n familie wat twee trauma's beleef het. En hulle reaksie op die meelewing wat hulle van ander ontvang het.
'n Inspirerende berig.
Tragedy has twice visited the
Woodiwiss family. In 2008, Anna Woodiwiss, then 27, was working for a service
organization in Afghanistan. On April 1, she went horseback riding and was
thrown, dying from her injuries. In 2013, her younger sister Catherine, then
26, was biking to work from her home in Washington. She was hit by a car and
her face was severely smashed up. She has endured and will continue to endure a
series of operations. For a time, she breathed and ate through a tube, unable
to speak. The recovery is slow.
The victims of trauma, she writes in a remarkable blog post for Sojourners,
experience days “when you feel like a quivering, cowardly shell of yourself,
when despair yawns as a terrible chasm, when fear paralyzes any chance for
pleasure. This is just a fight that has to be won, over and over and over
again.”
Her mother, Mary, talks about the
deep organic grief that a parent feels when they have lost one child and seen
another badly injured, a pain felt in bones and fiber.
But suffering is a teacher. And,
among other things, the Woodiwisses drew a few lessons, which at least apply to
their own experience, about how those of us outside the zone of trauma might
better communicate with those inside the zone. There are no uniformly right
responses, but their collective wisdom, some of it contained in Catherine’s
Sojourners piece, is quite useful:
Do be there. Some people think that those who experience trauma need space
to sort things through. Assume the opposite. Most people need presence. The
Woodiwisses say they were awed after each tragedy by the number of people, many
of whom had been mere acquaintances, who showed up and offered love, from across
the nation and the continents. They were also disoriented by a number of close
friends who simply weren’t there, who were afraid or too busy.
Anna and Catherine’s father,
Ashley, says he could detect no pattern to help predict who would step up and
provide the ministry of presence and who would fumble. Neither age, experience
nor personal belief correlated with sensitivity and love.
Don’t compare, ever. Don’t say, “I understand what it’s like to lose a child. My dog
died, and that was hard, too.” Even if the comparison seems more germane, don’t
make it. Each trauma should be respected in its uniqueness. Each story should
be heard attentively as its own thing. “From the inside,” Catherine writes,
comparisons “sting as clueless, careless, or just plain false.”
Do bring soup. The non-verbal expressions of love are as healing as eloquence.
When Mary was living with Catherine during her recovery, some young friend
noticed she didn’t have a bathmat. He went to Target and got a bathmat. Mary
says she will never forget that.
Do not say “you’ll get over it.” “There is no such thing as ‘getting over it,’ ” Catherine
writes, “A major disruption leaves a new normal in its wake. There is no ‘back
to the old me.’ ”
Do be a builder. The Woodiwisses distinguish between firefighters and builders.
Firefighters drop everything and arrive at the moment of crisis. Builders are
there for years and years, walking alongside as the victims live out in the
world. Very few people are capable of performing both roles.
Don’t say it’s all for the best or
try to make sense out of what has happened.
Catherine and her parents speak with astonishing gentleness and quiet
thoughtfulness, but it’s pretty obvious that these tragedies have stripped away
their tolerance for pretense and unrooted optimism.
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COMMENTS
Ashley also warned against those
who would overinterpret, and try to make sense of the inexplicable. Even devout
Christians, as the Woodiwisses are, should worry about taking theology beyond
its limits. Theology is a grounding in ultimate hope, not a formula book to
explain away each individual event.
I’d say that what these experiences
call for is a sort of passive activism. We have a tendency, especially in an
achievement-oriented culture, to want to solve problems and repair brokenness —
to propose, plan, fix, interpret, explain and solve. But what seems to be
needed here is the art of presence — to perform tasks without trying to control
or alter the elemental situation. Allow nature to take its course. Grant the
sufferers the dignity of their own process. Let them define meaning. Sit simply
through moments of pain and uncomfortable darkness. Be practical, mundane,
simple and direct.
Ashley and Mary went to Afghanistan
a few months after Anna’s death. They remember that as a time out of time. They
wept together with Afghan villagers and felt touched by grace. “That period
changed me and opened my imagination,” Ashley recalls. “This thing called
presence and love is more available than I had thought. It is more ready to be
let loose than I ever imagined.”
