An Empty Room

I had come into the store to look for a new high-back chair. It was a warehouse affair featuring new and used office furniture, and the showroom was mammoth. I wasn’t long in the labyrinth before a salesman, Gene, was at my side. With his help, I found what I wanted and wheeled the chair to the lobby. This wasn’t a cash register situation for purchases. It was a get-together in the salesman’s office. Gene sat down at his desk while I waited in the side chair.

As Gene prepared the invoice on his computer, I surveyed the pictures and knickknacks surrounding him. I noticed a picture of two young men. Something prompted me to ask if the two men were his sons. They were, so I inquired about their lives. Gene responded that the one on the left had graduated from such and such and was now employed at so forth and so on. The one on the right was dead.

Since I wasn’t expecting to hear that news, I felt uncomfortable for having asked about the boys in the first place. I told him I was sorry but cautiously advanced the question What happened?

Gene said one wintry night, his son traveled from his university dorm to visit his girlfriend in another city about half an hour away. It was late when he headed home, but he never made it back. His car left the highway and careened into an adjacent drainage ditch, landing upside down in the frigid water. His son may not have been alive at that point, but if he were, then he would have died from drowning. He didn’t know why his car went off the road. It could have been icy, or he could have fallen asleep.

I shook my head in a combination of sadness and astonishment. Life takes turns we can never anticipate, I told him. Gene didn’t agree or disagree with my clichéd observation but instead volunteered one thought after another about his son – what he was like when he was younger, what he had studied in college, what he wanted to do with his life. The longer Gene talked, the more emotional he became. It was clear his heart was heavy with grief even though his son had been dead for over fifteen years. I wondered how I could help ease the pain.

I told him there was comfort in knowing his son was in a better place where he would join him someday. I said this without understanding anything about their spiritual lives. His son could have been far from God and was, at that very moment, existing in tormentable darkness. Perhaps Gene was so angry with God that his eternal destiny was also in jeopardy. None of this context mattered. Gene needed encouragement, and the we’ll all be in heaven someday approach was the first thing that came to mind. Gene ignored my appeal to the hereafter, choosing to venture deeper into his son’s life and the wonder of what could have been if it hadn’t been cut short so suddenly and tragically. His voice was breaking now, and his eyes were watering up.

I asked him if he knew about Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief. [Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.] I didn’t wait for a reply. I didn’t even take the time to read his face. I knew right where he was after a decade and a half – trapped in depression, unable to find his way to acceptance. He shrugged his shoulders and seemed to signal I might be right. Rather than engage in a discussion of a possible pathway to healing, he diverged back to reminiscing about his son, suppressing more choking and tears as he strained to talk.

By now, I’d been talking with Gene for almost thirty minutes. I felt empathy for him, but I also wanted to offer something to help him channel his life so he could live without the crushing burden of intense sorrow. I took out my Ace card and told him I knew exactly how he felt because I had experienced nearly the same thing. I told him about Matt’s injury and how I had struggled. Matt wasn’t dead, but, in a sense, he was lost to me, just like Gene’s son was lost to him. I went on this track for quite some time. Gene listened politely and carefully. I thought I was making some real progress.

About this time, Gene knew he needed to get back to work. I thanked him for sharing so candidly with me, and he thanked me for giving him several things to ponder. I paid the bill, and as he walked me to the door, I told him I’d be praying for him. With that, I was gone. I never saw Gene again.

I’ve seen this phenomenon many times. Men and women in the throes of long-term grief can’t get to the final acceptance stage and move on with life. Even Donald Trump understands the importance of taking that last step. Just one day after the school shooting in Perry, Iowa, that left two people dead and five wounded, including the high school principal (who died ten days later), Trump said at an Iowa rally I want to send our support and our deepest sympathies to the victims and families touched by the terrible school shooting yesterday in Perry, Iowa. It’s just horrible; so surprising to see it here. But we have to get over it. We have to move forward.

You might think his comment was heartless, uttered twenty-four hours after the shooting. Yet, for many people, it rings true. People struck with grief are told to move on. If they stay in their grief, it will devour them. The grief-stricken should fill their days with new hobbies, excursions, friends, experiences - new everything! All this newness will drown out the sorrow so much that they will forget they were ever in pain. The new normal creates the expectation that tomorrow will be better than yesterday. It will be a rebirth. Of course, it will take time, but eventually, a whole new life will emerge from the ashes of the former.

Oh my god, really? All that insight from sidewalk therapists and a former president nauseates me. Is life this easy? Is grief so commonplace that it can be alleviated with chicken noodle soup? Are you so depressed that you can’t navigate anymore? Maybe you should put a jigsaw puzzle together, dive into a new recipe, take up rock climbing, visit all the Burger Kings within a hundred miles, learn a foreign language, start a journal, join a pickleball league, tour a museum, or even write a book about overcoming grief in five simple steps. Here’s the title: How to Move On When You Can’t Move.

I’m twenty years into a journey I never dreamed I’d have to take. Along the way, I’ve stepped into and out of each of Kübler-Ross’ stages of grief. Without a doubt, the acceptance stage has been the hardest. It was obvious it was hard for Gene, too. One close friend of mine couldn’t conceive how any of the grief stages could be difficult, especially the last one. Not even three months after Matt’s brain injury in July 2004, this friend bluntly told me it was clear to him that God had answered the prayers of many with the word No. There would be no healing, no miracle, no divine intervention. It was time to move on, Dad! Get over it by accepting it. So simple.

It’s challenging to be honest with someone asking about how you’re doing when this mindset of moving on is ever-present.  If I’ve moved on, then the world is a happy place. If I haven’t moved on, then the inquirer doesn’t listen to what I say. He thinks to himself Oh crap, David can’t move on. And I don’t have time to listen to him talk about it.

Recently my wife and I entertained old friends we hadn’t seen in twenty years. I was irritated with her for extending the invitation because I didn’t want to be forced to listen to them go on and on about their ministry or feign interest in the minutia in the lives of each of their dozens of grandchildren. However, when we began the dinner, I was cordial and gracious. Sure, tell us all about your ministry, and we can’t wait to learn as much as possible about what your children and grandchildren are doing. Do you have enough grandchildren to constitute a battalion? Polite laughter. Would you like more potatoes?

With most of the topics on the surface level of life out of the way, a brief lull descended upon our conversation pit. Then the man asked How are you guys doing? I thought, Open the corral and let the stampede begin! I didn’t hold back. For the next forty-five minutes to an hour, I told them what gripped my heart – the denial, the anger, the bargaining with God, the depression, and the utter failure to accept the inevitable. I was emotional, animated, and forceful. I was honest when I told them I hated this life, and they weren’t bothered by the admission. I said the hard part of the journey was that few around us wanted to listen to our truth. Most only wanted to know we had moved on, as though moving on would make us joyful.

I cried, and our friends did, too. In these tears and this silence, there was profound empathy. Our friends had no answers or counsel, no path forward to recommend. All they ever wanted to do was listen. And in their listening, there was the agreement that we were right where we needed to be. There was no callous judgment about picking up our lives to live beyond our sorrow. There was no ridiculous superficiality. No glib gibberish. In their attentive quietness, they sought only to understand what we had lived and where we were headed. They could not have known their embrace of our pain and despair without even a whisper of commentary was extraordinarily rare. Without saying a word, they breathed life into my soul.

The world says it’s imperative to accept grief and get over it. Not even Kübler-Ross believed in her model. Two years before she died in 2004, after numerous debilitating strokes and infections beginning in 1987, she told a reporter she was ready for death. She called God a damned procrastinator for not taking her sooner. She couldn’t accept her station in life, and she wanted out.

I lied earlier in this post. That conversation with Gene was a total fabrication. I never told him his son was in a better place. I never told him about Kübler-Ross. I never mentioned Matt’s injury or my journey with grief. All I did was listen. I listened to him describe how much he loved his son and how much he missed him. He poured out the most intimate feelings in his heart to a stranger who did nothing but sit in silent reverence.

I didn’t do those other things I mentioned above because Gene didn’t need me to make his pain go away or to give him recommendations on how to transform his world into a better place, a place where he could thrive by leaving his son in the distant past. I didn’t do those things because, at that precious moment, they would have been hogwash. Gene didn’t want information or guidance. He wanted someone to know that, after fifteen years, he still walked into his son’s bedroom a couple of times a month to feel something of what he had lost. The room was exactly as it had been years before when his son last slept there. It was as though his son could walk through the door at any minute and crawl into bed. The room was full of his son, but it was still empty. Full of the past but void of life.

It was at this point that Gene cried the most deeply. His admission that he still sat in his son’s empty room after all these years was an embarrassment to him. Yet, he couldn’t get beyond it. He couldn’t let go of his son. He wasn’t sure if he ever could.

Gene’s son, Matthew, died in 1997. He was 22. I’m OK with Gene sitting in an empty room as he treasures his love for Matt and remembers as much of his life as he’s able. No need to rush in and out. No need to pack everything up. No need to suggest it’s some emotional paralysis. No need to pretend he can close the door and never look back. The truth was that Gene needed that empty room because Matt’s goodbye was taking much longer than he ever imagined. The long goodbye is not part of the academic grief model, but it should be. For Gene and me, our goodbyes to Matthew will last a lifetime.