Listening is a skill, that many of us don’t really think about, we just kind of do it. Four years ago, I learned how to actually listen. I was in the process of being trained to work as a facilitator at a grief center. On the first day of training we met the other facilitators. After a brief introduction, we discovered that most of us had survived a loss and therefore, wanted to help others. Our group leader assigned partners. Breaking into pairs, we sat in folding metal chairs facing each other, close enough to feel the other person’s breath on our cheek and to mirror their facial movements. It felt similar to an acting exercise I had endured many moons ago as a theatre major in college. I did not like it then and I did not like it now. Considerably older, I felt more self conscious, like my space was being invaded and my partner could see every wrinkle on my face. It sounds superficial but this was going through my mind. In addition, I worried which story I would tell when I was up. As we settled into our roles, the group leader set the clock and our partner was given five minutes to tell us his/her story. Our job was to listen. Head nodding was okay but we could not use our hands or give verbal cues. Somehow we needed to let the person know that we were listening without judgment, without having to give advice and without saying "uha" or needing to say, "Oh let me tell you how your story relates to my story". As my partner described the car accident that took her husband’s life, I felt compelled to comfort her, to reach out and pat her on the hand, give her a tissue, reassure her and tell her it would be okay however, I had to stick to the rules. Plus who was I to tell her that everything would be okay? I was busting at the seams, I just wanted to show some compassion. I wanted to validate her feelings but how? I was squirming in my seat or at least I felt like I was? As the clock ticked on, the noise in my head eventually dissolved and I forgot about my own needs. I allowed my partner to unload her story…I heard about how her well meaning sister and her mother in law, had arrived at her house the day after her husband’s funeral and with the help of a cleaning crew erased any trace of her dead husband. They cleaned it like it was a crime scene. They thought this would help her “move on”. But instead, it did the opposite and she described racing around her house like a maniac looking for signs that her husband had existed. Like a blood- hound she sniffed out his scent but the cleaning crew had been so efficient, they even removed his pillowcases. Her ten years of marriage had been laundered and bleached and most of his clothes had been packed and sent to the Good Will. She felt violated. Suddenly, she remembered the Knicks baseball cap he liked to wear on the weekends and she was able to fish it out from underneath her own jumble of laundry in a shared closet. She savored the faint smell of sun tan lotion that remained on the brim of the cap and she even recovered a few strands of her husband’s hair which she now wore in a silver heart shaped locket around her neck. When her five minutes ended, I could see a physical transformation had taken place. A burden had been lifted off her shoulders. When it was my turn, my partner sat patiently as I described to her what happened in my kitchen, the morning of 9/11 and how my husband phoned me from Tower Two about fifteen minutes before his building collapsed. I had told this story so many times in the passed nine years however this was the first time I was telling it to someone who was listening. Whenever I tried to talk about my husband, my friends and family would change the subject immediately. I was constantly thinking about him but fighting the urge to say anything for fear of upsetting everyone. No one wanted to be around me anymore , I made them uncomfortable. I kept the memories to myself and it made me sick. Those who knew me best thought I was being stubborn or that I didn’t want to “move on” or get better. After years of volunteering at a grief center and living with my own grief, I have learned that there is no wrong or right way to grieve. It is important to tell your stories and it is also valuable to listen.
