People Don't Get It.

People don't get it.

(Be warned... anger lurks...)

People say stupid things like...

"Take care of your dad, now, you hear?" (can I mention how many of my parents friends/relatives said this to me at the funeral, in the funeral line... right, exactly, because I haven't lost anyone here... but hey, thanks for the concern)

"I don't know if it makes you feel better, but my friend's mom died and her dad married within six months..." (ummm.... yes... does that make me feel better? yeah, uh, right. how?)

"Well, couldn't you ask your dad to fly down here and fix up a foreclosure for you?" (Yes, because he's been so willing to fly down here to see, encourage, and support me... can I mention I hate Realtors, and they both already knew my 'situation'?)

"Well, statistics show, most men marry within a year of their spouses death." (this is perhaps the worst and most repeated...see February blog on Statistics.)

"Well, you don't want him to be alone, do you?" (Thanks for the guilt-trip, but not working here... I didn't say I wanted him to be alone, but there is more to it than this.)

You don't get it. You're not the one who received a wedding invitation in the mail one day, and a packet from the lawyers the next. You're not dress shopping for a inconsiderate event, while still signing off on rights and waivers.

You don't get it. You're not the one who had family dinners with candles, and now don't hear a word high or low from what was called your family. You're not the one who will walk down the isle alone, decorate your house alone, and raise your child outside the bond of family. (I know, this could change... but hope is evasive nowadays.)

You don't get it. You're not the one who spent the following six weeks after the death with family each night at the dinner table, collectively working it through. The lost them completely somewhere along the way. You're not the one who wrote the obituary, planned the funeral, picked out the songs in the books, coordinated the food for 500+ people, had phone calls back and forth with pastors & planners, and arranged flowers to be distributed.

People don't get it. And because of this, they say and think stupid things. Hurtful things. Colliding things.

People don't get it, because their ignorant. They are not expected to get it. They can't get it. Because they haven't been here... I wouldn't really want them to really be able to get it... but the empathy strung alone could still reach the gap...

You can't equate the death of one, with the death of another. You can't equate the loss of family one way, to the loss of family another.

You can't equate four months of bedside cancer to drowning to roadkill. You can't equate childhood divorce to adult separation, to adoption, to betrayal, to no family at all. So to equate them is to draw conclusions that shouldn't be referenced in a way that does.

You can, gather empathy, listen carefully, and simply come by and say "I'm sorry." Or you can do countless of other things...

But you can't understand what it is like to go from last year, having security in all of it... to this year, walking through that front door on a Friday night.... to arranging a funeral, to hearing it was all a sick & psycho lie, to writing thank-you cards, to spending nights on your dad's couch, to arranging family meals, to boating, to sitting in a hearing, see seeing her face on the nightly news, to corresponding through the phone to lawyers, to seeing your face on the paper, to moving across the country, to developing new friends, to starting a yell-at-you job, to managing life away from anything safe, to receiving the outcomes of sentences, to watching your dad be touched by another woman, to starting another new job, to being yelled at over Christmas, to moving again, to being blamed & called "materialistic", to watching the man who killed your mother be chain-cuffed to jail, to the next day hearing her husband proposed, to hearing that you think you're the only one that's grieving, to having lies show up as broken truth again and again like the housewares and furniture that is now, too, scattered about without you.

You can't get it. You don't get it. But I have two Easter cards and a 1980's-looking wedding invitation and a lawyer packet to prove it.