Point of View

When we face adversity in life we are often told, that to manage our situation we need to remember that there are others out there who are worse off than us. We can manage our pain, because look, we only have a broken leg, but others have lost a leg. We have only lost a leg, but look others have to live in a wheelchair. We are taught that there is always something worse out there.

In the end it doesn't help. Because we can only see how difficult it is to have a broken leg. We are not living with the loss of a leg. For a second when we think of others worse than us, it may make us feel better able to cope. Then we go back to managing our own pain, our own daily struggles. It is our point of view, which is most relevant to us.

If we are always looking to compare ourselves to someone worse off what happens when you reach the top? When there is no one worse off than you? What then? And who is to say what that even means. Who gets to decide what is the worst? We can only see from our prospective, at a point in time. We can be told that there are worse things, but that's not our point of view at that moment.

When I lost my brother, it was one of the most devastating times in my life. He was only 57. We had to watch him lose his painful battle with cancer. At that point in time, the grief at losing a brother was like nothing I had ever experienced. From my point of view that was the worst pain I had ever felt.

Then I lost my mother and my point of view changed. The lose of my mother left me untethered for a long time. I missed her every day. At that time I didn't understand the levels of grief. I only knew that at times I felt the sadness as sharp as the first day without understanding why. From this point of view, this became for me the worst I had ever felt.

Now, here I am. At what many would consider one of the pinnacles of pain, if not the worst. At least from my point of view it is. I don't even have the luxury if you want to call it that, to look at others and say they are worse off than me. From my vantage point, there doesn't seem to be any greater pain. And I have the history of loss to compare to.

As a bereaved parent, we are constantly struggling to make others see that we are and always will be grieving. Our grief is as big and long lasting as the love we felt for our child. And in that struggle we too loose the ability to see that others have a different point of view. What they are experiencing is for them, at that moment, the worst for them. We struggle to understand their point of view as they struggle to understand ours.

Maybe the answer lies in this simple idea - be gentle to each other. Be kind to each other. Listen to each other and give each other room to grieve no matter what that grief may be.