As I was talking to a friend about my mother’s recent death, she suddenly asked what usually cheers me up.
The concept seemed foreign to me. Cheer me up? Why? My mom’s dead, I yelled internally. It’s no time to be cheerful.
I know she meant the best and I deeply appreciate her care and concern. But I wish I had told her not to try to cheer me up.
Why? Having your spirits lifted by something funny or joyful can feel really good, and our friends are always there to help us be happier. But in the face of death and loss, trying to cheer up someone who is grieving can have unintended consequences.
1. An encouragement to “cheer up” tells me that my sadness is not OK.
If I’m asking you to do something funny, then, by all means, make me laugh, but otherwise the insistence on happiness and distracting tells me that my brokenness is somehow wrong. That it’s something we should get rid of, distract from, and push away as much as possible.
But my brokenness is mine. And right now I’m OK with it. I’m not trying to run away from the loneliness and soul-crushing sadness that comes with the death of a loved one. I don’t want to be distracted from what is all too real.
There’s no distraction that can take away the pain forever. This pain is my grief. It’s a part of the process and it’s a part of what it means to be a human who has loved and has been loved.
There’s no way to sugarcoat death. Our world will always suffer loss and destruction, and we can’t escape it. And sometimes we feel totally crushed by it. And that’s OK. That’s a part of our humanity.
When I first returned to campus after my mom’s death, a close mentor and I were discussing how not OK everything feels right now. We share an equally dark sense of humor and an unabashed embrace of the darkness of life. “It’s OK not to be OK,” she reminded me. “You’re not going to be OK for a long time.” I agreed. And I’m at peace with being not-OK for now.
2. It tells me that you’re uncomfortable with my pain and my way of being.
No one likes to see other people in pain, physically or mentally. Watching others suffer without at least trying to alleviate their discomfort makes us feel helpless and uncomfortable.
But, sometimes, there really is not a whole lot we can do to fix things.
None of my friends are going to bring my mom back. That’s a fact of life. None of them will ever be able to fill the hole in me where she used to be.
I’m continuing to try to make the most meaningful reality I can while embracing my not-OKness. I want my friends to be a part of that. Friendship hinges on knowing and being known by others. The most helpful thing to me right now is to know that someone wants to know. I want to know that someone is willing to be there even though it’s uncomfortable and painful and messy.
3. It makes the success of our social interaction dependent on my emotions.
All interactions are mutual, so it doesn’t just matter how I feel about a conversation or offer of support; it matters how my friend feels too. Supporting your friends should feel good and I want that for my friends.
But if we’re setting out with the goal of cheering me up, the likelihood that we’re going to reach that goal is not very high. In fact, it may not even be possible to cheer me up. Instead, as the grieving person, I feel I have to pretend to feel better, so that at least one of us can feel like the interaction has reached its goal.
In the same way, setting cheerfulness as the goal of an interaction turns my sadness into your failure. My sadness is not your fault, and it will never be. And I don’t want you to feel that it is.
So what’s a more helpful goal? Maybe getting to know each other better. Or developing empathy. Or providing comfort or safety.
What to do instead
Instead of trying to cheer up a grieving friend, try just listening or offering a peaceful, quiet presence. Let them know that it’s OK if they don’t feel better after hanging out and that you’re there for them regardless. Let them know that you aren’t afraid of their pain. Let them know that you’ll be standing by them in their darkest moments. Let them know that you will respect their darkness and won’t try to take it away from them.
Because you can’t take it away from them, in the end. You can’t fix grief or any other of the whole host of bumps in the road we all experience. But you can still be there, and that’s enough. That’s more than enough.
