There is normal life, and then there are the terrible things that make normal life seem flimsy and trivial. This month, my own existence was turned upside down by a shocking tragedy. The story of what happened is not mine to tell. But I have been unable to think of anything else, and I want to share with you what it has revealed to me about people.
The first revelation concerns my friend. The person most affected by this tragedy is a close friend who is more like a sibling. I have always known that this person is exceptional in their courage, their strength of character, their kindness, their ability to see the good in the world. I had always known that they would face whatever life throws at them with a quiet strength. But never in my worst nightmares would I have imagined that the universe would deal them a heartbreak as shattering and shocking as this. Never could I have foreseen that I would have to watch this person, with whom I have shared secrets and adventures and cocktails, be tested by among the most difficult and harrowing challenges that human experience has to offer.
I suspect that the heartbreak of seeing someone you love being tested in this way never leaves you. There are phone calls that are etched indelibly on your heart. I will forever now be screaming at the world in desperate rage: how could you do this to my wonderful friend? And yet, it is with awe—nothing short of awe—that I watch as my friend survives. I watch as they find resources within themselves that I did not know they had, as they summon a strength in the face of the unimaginable, a strength derived from their deep love for the person they have lost. It is humbling to witness.
The second revelation is about strangers. Well, a specific category of strangers: people I have interviewed for a project I am working on about mental illness. Many of this group have also suffered unimaginable loss, as their family members have died by suicide. Many of them have been to hell and back in the process of finding a way to carry on with this grief in their hearts.
My conversations with this group lingered with me long after we had finished talking. Because there was something about the way they made me feel. They made me feel like I mattered, not because I was interviewing them for a project, nor because I was occupying the role of a writer, nor because I was giving them the opportunity to share their stories. But because I am a person, and thus precious and valuable in my own right. “Take care of yourself,” many of them said as we ended our Zoom calls. And I could feel that they meant it.
The words of one of these interviewees, let’s call him John, have been particularly present in my mind over the last week. “Dealing with grief,” he said, “you’ve got to let it out in bits and pieces. You don’t open the tap all of a sudden so that it bursts out. You’ve got to let it out a little bit at a time.”John has a wisdom gained only by circumstances that no person should have to face. But in the coming weeks, and for all the griefs that are to come in my life, big and small, I will carry John’s advice with me. I will feel the compassion that quietly flowed from these people, even in interviews that are supposed to be focused on them. I know they are holding my hand in the weeks ahead. And I will hold my friend’s hand. And this is how humans endure.
