Recently, my dad passed away. August 3, 2023 at 3:32. I knew it was coming… He had been battling COPD for several years and in the last few months his hospital visits had increased significantly. It was a throw back or return to nine years ago when my mom was diagnosed with Stage Four Lung Cancer and within five months passed away. It’s those five months that I remember seeing her struggle with oxygen, how to get it, the amount of liters being pumped in and how over a small amount of time, there just wasn’t enough. The same ended up happening with my dad, just not with cancer, a more lengthier disease, but just as progressive.
Needless to say, they both were smokers for years, 30 + for sure, but they also both quit in the 90s, 1994 for my mom and 1995 for my dad, but evidently, the damaged was already done. I am beginning this entry with two very personal stories because I had a very close and good friend tell me that he couldn’t empathize with what I was experiencing — he’d never lost a parent, thankfully — but he wanted to be there for me and so he asked questions, listened, and based on my responses gave me modicums of wisdom, pointing me in the directions of heathy ways of grieving, including seeking therapy. I greatly appreciated his effort, his time, his words, his caring heart, and his mindfulness. That’s my boy! And we’re family forever, no doubt. But something he said, really stuck out to me and made me think — the idea of empathy and how much do we, as human beings, actually empathize with one another when we can?
I’ve experience a lot, the death of both parents in the span of nine years. But more than that, a cousin who was a companion growing up and best friend, a critical member of a friends group that dates back to elementary school, an uncle in the early 80s that was beloved by my mom and her side of the family, several pets… But even beyond death, life has its own moments, good and bad, and some not near to the devastation that comes with the untimely demise of a family member or friend, but still tantamount to a potential paradigm shift in one’s thinking and, subsequently, how life is approached…
Empathy… Feelings… How we process some of the most critical and poignant events in our lives matters, and even more than that, the relationships that we’ve built and/or constructed over time, how those people factor into relations with you during those times. I would love to say that everyone that I know — family or friend or both — has been there to meet a need that maybe I didn’t even know I needed, or the ones that I did that they were aware of enough, selfless enough, to meet me at that place, but that hasn’t been the case. Some people cannot empathize, some people cannot sympathize, some people avoid, or some are caught up in their own life and events and feelings that the need of others is secondary or below. I try not to fault them because I am sure at some point, I’ve been that person too… But the words of my friend, openly saying that he can’t empathize, “BUT",” stands out to me, a denotation, a shift, a highlight that made me aware of something that I had not been aware of before: The strive to be there for another person despite your own personal experience. Can you empathize?
Sometimes you cannot. Sometimes you can. But it is the effort that the individual who is in the relationship with the other person — be it family or friend — that matters. Meeting people where they are is an act of compassion, self-awareness, and love, and what I’ve come to realize is that it is an act that I cannot take lightly or view indifferently as if it doesn’t matter. It does… Because we cannot live this life alone, no matter what we may tell ourselves.
Thanks, once again, for being a part of this community and for reading/interacting with these thoughts and ideas and missives found within CHARACTER + OBSTACLE = STORY. I hope that they connect, I hope that they reach, and I hope that they spark further conversation, if not through comments, then in your own personal lives. Anytime, I would love to hear back from any of you on any of these things.
Talk soon,
B
My deepest condolences on your loss. Words feel inadequate, and like your friend I cannot empathize, but I do sympathize. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings, this was very moving. Take care.
I think we can empathize more than your friend thinks, or maybe this is just the limitations of language and he does in fact think this, but a better way to say this is that we can't always empathize *perfectly* with another person's experiences when they fall outside the realm of our own. We might not know precisely what the situation is like, or how best to cope, but we have correlations/similar situations that allow us to empathize imperfectly, up to a point. I do agree that sometimes our own lives are so full of stressors that we decide not to have the time or bandwidth to fully empathize. And there are extreme cases like sociopaths. But generally speaking, I think it's about allowing empathy to be the range or sliding scale that it is, rather than a binary we can/we can't.
Oh, and condolences for all the loss. I haven't yet lost either parent, but the day is unquestionably approaching, sooner rather than later. And I know I not ready.