Last night we found out that an in-law of an in-law died. (My mother-in-law’s sister-in-law’s father, in case you needed to know.) The funeral is today at noon, and there’s no way my husband can go, so we went over to the wife’s house (who’s husband died, can this get more confusing?) to see the family and pay our regrets last night.

I’ve watched my sister handle grieving people. She is a nurse, who used to work in hospice and now works on an oncology nurse. She knows how to say the right thing at the right time. She’s comfortable dealing with this stuff head on.

Me, not so much. I’m usually the person who says the wrong thing, “How are you?”. How are you? how do you think they are? Their husband/father/grandfather just DIED! Shut UP, Paige! SHUT UP! Yeah. I just don’t know what to say. I do the “I’m so sorry” but always feel like… how many times do these people have to hear that. Sheesh.

I haven’t had to manage alot of personal grief in my own life. Some, yes. But not alot. But- and I do not mean this to be trite- I’ve read something about grieving people that has stuck with me. How they feel like people are nervous around them.

Nervous that their grief, their pain, their suffering, might be contagious. Grief makes us sad, and it makes us scared. It makes us- me- sad for the people who have lost someone they loved. And it makes me scared- if that could happen to someone else, it could happen to me. I was watching Miami Ink the other day, and they had a young wife who’s husband had died. I. Lost. It. Royally. Just cried and cried. If husbands actually do die, that means mine could too. I just couldn’t go there.

It’s kind of ironic. I do therapy, and I can be around grief when I am working with clients. But I pull on a different skin when I’m working, in a big way. And how to manage grief is different when I’m working and when it’s in my personal life. It’s easier when I’m working, because I can depersonalize it and focus on something else- helping my client walk through the grief. I have something to do.

Because isn’t helplessness the most frustrating part about watching people who are grieving? There’s just nothing you can do but be there. Just- be there.

The man who passed away last night was not someone I was close to. But it still made me sad, and made me very sad for the people who I am more close to who had a significant loss this week.