Competing While Grieving
Is There Really A Winner?
I was at a friend’s dinner party recently. I met a woman there who had just lost her mother a few days earlier. She was clearly upset, in the thick of those early days of grief. I offered her my condolences saying, “I’m so sorry for your loss. I understand.” She looked at me through her tears, “You’ve lost a parent, too?”
“Well, no,” I said. “My husband died last year.” She gave me a look — a look I’m becoming all too familiar with. She was shocked. I saw her mind racing. We were around the same age. She took in my long, dark hair, my mostly wrinkle-free face, my flow-y summer dress… It’s not that I look so young, but I don’t “look like” a widow. She covered her heart with her hands, I saw her struggle to come up with the “right thing” to say. “Yours is worse!” she uttered.
If grief is a contest, I guess I win.
A part of me believes that to be true. That my grief is worse than anyone else’s because you’re not supposed to lose your husband when you’re in your 40s. And have a daughter who is only 13 years old. At a time when you’re not done sharing your life with the person you love. It’s surreal. Overwhelming. Impossible to comprehend.
Maybe because there’s supposed to be a natural order of things: our grandparents die when we are young, our parents die when…
