"Those are lovely, thoughtful words, Peter"

A.J. Daulerio, in The Place Where the One You Lost Resides (via Search Engine), writes about going to a meeting:

On Friday, I’d decided that I’d head back to the room and re-elevate the place with a share about the growth I’d experienced in the year since my father died. There is nothing wrong with a little performance, especially with some real-deal extra heavy dead dad shit which always played so well there.

I had rehearsed my share on the ride over. In the end, I’d hit everyone with this beauty: “I was in the hospice, sitting right next to my dying father, and while I was next to him, listening to his dying breaths, I realized that had I not been sober, I wouldn’t be there.” Can you imagine all the satisfying “Mmmmmmmms” I’d get back from the people in that room? It would sound like a knocked-over beehive.

And then I imagined how good it would feel when all the teary-eyed men would come over to shake my hand afterward. “Thank you for that, A.J.,” they’d say. “You’ve changed me.” I wanted that ego boost. I thought I deserved it—I thought the lifeless room deserved it. It was the one-year anniversary of my father’s death so it was my day to be a Higher Power.

But no one called on me. I raised my hand from the top of the hour until the newcomer break, but no one called on me even when I was glaring right at people–practically through them–to convey that I had an urgent need to share and that I was the most important person in the room. Did they not know who I was? That I was one of the longest-tenured, most scintillating members—“a giant in this program,” is how one fellow described me.

I was not, of course. I never am. I did not get what I wanted—all the attention and praise and service highs to help me process my grief. Instead, I got nothing.

I didn’t say a word but still got exactly what I needed. Funny how it works.

Progress, not perfection, et cetera.

I recognize myself in those words.

In December I went to a meeting of the Hospice PEI grief support group. I hadn’t been to a meeting in more than a year, but the Zoom invitations kept coming, and, with the 4th anniversary of Catherine’s death coming up soon, I imagined that I could use a top-up, so I joined.

It wasn’t helpful. I didn’t get what I needed. I felt icky when it was over.

I went into the meeting with the performative-wise-elder attitude that Daulerio describes, dispensing tactical homilies in service of my own grief processing. I thought this was “okay” because I was being honest and open about my feelings (I was) and because I was listening deeply to others (I was).

The final stanza of “Our Promise,” which is read at the beginning of each meeting, is:

Support means I will walk with you.
I will not try to change you or how you feel.
I will simply be here beside you.

In my spinning my grief tales into valuable life lessons for others, I wasn’t walking with them, I was seeking affirmation, a dose of “those are lovely, thoughtful words, Peter.”

In trying to use my experiences, my openness, for the good and benefit of others, I realize how that I was trying to change them, and how they felt, by way of proving, to myself, that my stories had transformed me. Like Daulerio, I was looking for “praise and attention and service highs.”

Unlike Daulerio, I didn’t have the luck of saying nothing and realizing that’s actually what I needed.