It’s always about perspective isn’t?
Especially when grieving. And keeping your perspective through grieving is important.
There’s TV commercial in Jacksonville where the camera is showing a woman and her young daughter walking down the sidewalk. The daughter is walking ahead as they pass a man sitting on a bench. The stocky man is wearing a black beanie and could appear to be a thug. The man suddenly jumps up and grabs the child and it looks as though the woman is chasing the man. The picture freezes and swings around to a different angle. In the new view, the man is actually saving the child from an oncoming car. It’s all about perspective.
It’s the same way when you lose someone. When my brother-in-law, Lauren, died, his girlfriend gave remarks at the funeral about the life they shared together. She talked about his love of football, activities they shared together and how much she’ll miss him. From her perspective, this is what she knew of him.
Seems okay, right? Wrong!
The family was furious because she didn’t talk about his daughter or the rest of the family. The truth of the matter was that it was a new relationship and she really didn’t know the family. Lauren and she had spent time in Florida with my husband, Larry, and I, and that was probably the most time she’d spent with any family member. Her entire perspective of the family was based on that one weekend.
My thinking on this is that no one knows what another person is going through during these times. One perspective may be of deep sadness where a person can’t put one foot in front of the other without thinking it out because they are grieving so deeply. Another perspective may be of sadness, but only giving an occasional thought to the deceased, even to the family.
During my own grieving, I was stunned to see a wreath on the front door of the bank where Larry worked. His office manager was horrified when I’d broke the news to her. From my perspective, I knew the staff would be sad, but I didn’t know the depts of their friendships, thus I couldn’t gauge the depts of their grief. They were an extremely tight office, so close to each other that they were more like family rather than co-workers. I immediately thought that I was completely and totally selfish, not realize that other people are grieving too!
