I guess you're unlucky because I just happened to glance at the comments on this post a year and a half after posting it. And your comment was near the top. So, graciously,
Telling someone that the way they reacted to empty platitudes the day their father died is 'kind of being a dick' is more than being rude, it's being cruel.
The whole post was about how, for one day, I decided to not entertain someone else's fantasy. For one day, I did not smile, placate, kept silent. That day was not about them, it was about me, my siblings, my step mother. That day, no one else's feelings mattered to me. I gave myself the right to be unpleasant while my father was dying down the hall.
It's incredibly hard to find something to say to someone when they're grieving. I've been on that side too. You can appreciate the thoughts and prayers, but nothing forces you to play along.
So I told my aunts that they could stop telling me about heaven, about how I would see him again someday, because I didn't believe that. I told that other family friend she could stop trying to give me her crystals because I didn't believe in that either.
The post I wrote a year and a half ago is about how they reacted badly to me rejecting their words. It was never about me, I don't regret what I said. It was about their reaction.
And here you call me a dick, for refusing to placate them on the worst day of my life.
I'm replying to this message not for you, but for the same reason I wrote the original post in the first place. Not knowing it would resonate with so many people, I just wanted to share my experience because I'd never heard anyone else speak of it. Maybe it could help someone, or make them feel less alone in this horrible feeling. I am lucky, it seemed to have helped several people.
If you are grieving, or when you will grieve, because we're all doomed to know grief, here are the things I learned, from that worst day of my life, and the 879 days since:
there is no good or bad way to live this pain. there is no correct way. you do whatever you can, however you want, to deal with this.
there is nothing good about this situation. don't look for the silver lining. accept that it's horrible. don't try to change this feeling into something it isn't because you feel like there should be a good side to this. there isn't. you loved them, and they're gone. it hurts.
it will get better, slowly, very slowly. you just need to make it through. but it will always hurt, at the strangest moments. the tears, years later, will be as true as the tears from the first day. this will be a relief.
and this is the whole point of the original post: if and when you lose someone close to you, you need to focus on your own pain, and not placate the other people, the ones who don't hurt as much as you do. it's not about them, it's about you. when the funeral comes, don't spend your energy in niceties, in small talk. don't make it a show for other people. take that time to get your closure. protect jealously your grief. it's your time, it's not a presentation.
The day of the funeral, a cousin talked to me about ancient Egypt, trying to cheer me up with a subject he knows I love. He started telling me about how the pyramids were built by ancient aliens, he'd seen something on youtube about it. I stopped him, told him I didn't believe in that. He was disappointed, but his disappointed was not my problem.
Tell me, should I have changed myself and nodded at his ludicrous conspiracy theory? Should I have accepted my aunt's crystal beads because they were supposed to give me strength? Then why should I have accepted something that, for me, is as completely false as ancient aliens and crystal beads?
Every other day, you need to meet people halfway. The day your father died, then his funeral? fuck that. their feelings are not your problem. don't let them make their feelings your problem.
grief fucking sucks, and this is me giving you permission to not make yourself smaller for other people when your loved ones die.
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