Supporting someone dealing with grief.

Hello Blog,

This blog post is an ode to a series of tweets I read and related to the most closely.

One of the Twitter users said that we focus so much on "competition" and getting ahead in the game of life that we forget how to deal with grief. No one teaches you that, and once you experience it with a close friend or relative, you feel constantly detached. I never related to something so true and real.

I get calls from close and very dear friends, talking to me about their lives. While I listen to them with utmost patience, I help them objectively in whatever capacity.

But I can't help thinking, Am I being sympathetic enough? or Are my solutions childish, or is it really going to help this person? In some situations, it almost feels like guilt because I think my help is not and never going to be enough.

It could be the phone or the distance that is preventing me from saying what I want to say and really mean to these people. The real answer could lie somewhere in the air between us.

The only comforting thing is that, although we can't fix a lot of things for the people we love, sitting and listening to them, letting them know that we are there whenever they are going through their turmoils—is a small gesture, but it will be enough. Hopefully, it will withstand the guilt we go through.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s what the Twitter thread was really about. Not about grief alone, but about the quiet, imperfect ways in which we show up for each other—ways that don’t fit into the structure of competition, but into something much softer, much more human.

Huzzah!