Holding Space

The greatest gift you can give a grieving person is to hold space for their grief. Our first instinct is to want to fix the pain that someone is in. But, with death, you can’t fix it because you can’t bring that person back to life or the grief that comes with it. I didn’t understand that until I dealt with my husband’s death. His was not the first death I experienced but the most painful. And though it has been almost eleven years since Mike died, I can still be triggered.

I was doing a book study with a friend recently related to addiction. The section we were reading was about a woman sharing her experience when her husband had alcohol poisoning in a motel in another city, and she had to fly to get to him. She could make all the flight connections to get to his hotel and call someone in AA who helped her get her husband to a local hospital, and they both recovered. There was more to the passage; however, when we read about her husband in the hotel, and everything worked out okay, my blood began to boil. Mike chose to go to a hotel when I gave him the option of going to rehab, the hospital, or a hotel. Unfortunately, his choice proved to be fatal.

The gift my friend gave to me was to let me express my anger and grief with gentleness and compassion. She was still, holding my gaze, so I knew she was present with me. She allowed me to rage and cry at the unfairness of it all. Because her husband didn’t survive the disease of alcoholism, she understood the pain. My friend gently reminded me that we know that people who suffer from addiction don’t always survive the disease.

As I continued to share, the conversation I had with Mike’s doctor the day after his death came up. When I told the doctor what happened, she said in an accusing voice, “Why didn’t you take him to the hospital?” This was the same woman I talked to when I picked him up from her office the day before because she didn’t feel he was safe to drive! She never said to take him to the hospital or get the bloodwork done to see what was in his system. I didn’t know she had given him the order until I found it after he died. Her only concern was that she wasn’t held liable for Mike getting in a car accident on the way home from her office.

My friend asked me if I was still holding on to misplaced guilt. I had forgotten about the conversation until it came up at that moment. She also asked if I felt that I had made the right decision at the time. The truth is when I decided to give Mike the choice of what to do, and I was very much at peace. However, I could not predict the outcome. I carried the guilt with me for a long time, finally releasing it when I could admit the reality that I had no control over his addiction or choices. Being more vulnerable this year due to new grief and chronic illness, I know I’m more susceptible to the old guilt feelings creeping in, as well as a more profound sense of missing Mike.

My friend’s gift of giving me a safe space to release the fury and pain that was in me allowed me to let go again of the grief that lives inside me. I’ve learned to coexist with it, but sometimes it needs to be released. I’ve learned that I can’t predict when it will rear its head, but I’m grateful for the people in my life that will let me express my feelings without judgment or the need to fix me.