You’re Disappointed and That’s OK
By: Meagan Heber
Tags: Covid 19, Mental Health, Relationships, Personal Development, Grief And Loss

The minute my mom clicked on the phone, I could tell something was wrong.

“How are you?” I asked. She sounded muffled, like she had just woken up from a long nap, even though it was 3 pm in the afternoon.

“I’m…I’m a sad mom today.”

“What happened?” My stomach dropped, hearing the heaviness in her voice, like she was holding back a river and trying to not let the dam break inside her.

“One of my clients…” she said, then sniffed to try to pull herself together. A second longer and the tears came pouring through the phone.

My mom is a personal trainer for a gym, and most of her clients are over 50. With her degree in kinesiology, she has worked with men and women weathered by time, stooped over and dragging their feet, or people who struggle to stay mobile for their children and grandchildren. She strengthens their muscles, increases their flexibility, and in time, they re-gain their independence again. She gives them hope for living the last decades of their lives well, and in return, they have become some of her dearest friends and biggest cheerleaders.

And now, with a worldwide epidemic that is wreaking havoc on the oldest generations of our society, her work and her friends are under attack.

My mom is not a crier. Sometimes she tears up at a poignant Super Bowl commercial, and every once in a while I could catch her in the kitchen reminiscing on some old photos with a box of tissues. But when it comes to the big things, the heart-wrenching or thorny things, she deals with her pain privately, stowing it away like you would a jar of something precious, on a top shelf and out of reach.

She was usually the one being strong for me while I blubbered and ached, dipping my head into her neck while she held me tight. This time, I was the one clutching the phone, listening intently, trying to comfort her as she grappled with the loss of a friend, with the fear of losing more, and with the cold slap of shock that meets all of us on the news every day.

He was such a sweet soul.

It’s not fair, and I..I just hate this.

Why him? I just don’t understand.

“I’m so sorry, Mom.” I whispered. Despite wanting to soothe her sadness, to lift her spirits, or to somehow claim something good from this loss, there was nothing I had to offer. I didn’t have anything else to say.

Pain Tolerance

We’ve all lost something since the start of 2020. A few weeks back, one of my friends told me that a big vacation she had planned had been cancelled, and while she was extremely disappointed, she quickly followed the news with:

“But I can’t really complain, because so many other people are sick or in desperate situations”.

On a family video chat, my husband told siblings and parents that other than some cancelled plans, we were doing fine. We hadn’t been hit too hard by the chaos of the outside world and were thankful to have jobs and our health. He was right, and I agreed, but I couldn’t help but feel the burn of those words in my chest as he said them —

we’re doing fine.

Except for graduation, I thought. Days away from completing the most grueling, stressful, and mind-expanding four semesters of my life, I don’t feel anything. Where I thought I would be overjoyed to be done, excited to be celebrating with my classmates and family a freshly-minted Master’s degree and the end of a two hour daily commute, instead I can only contemplate final deadlines and moving on with my life.

If I’m honest, I’m really sad that I don’t get to wear a cap and gown, walk across a stage, and post a picture about how hard I have worked to get here. If I’m also honest, I don’t feel like I deserve to be sad or disappointed. I feel selfish for wanting recognition when so many are fighting for survival.

Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash

And yet, despite how many times I have talked down my own disappointment, tried to fix my attitude about being cooped up indoors and forced down my need for a good ending, a celebration, a job well done, the cloud over my head hasn’t gone away.

“It’s okay to be disappointed. You worked hard to save up for your trip, and now it isn’t happening, and you should feel sad.” I told my friend. I’m starting to tell myself the same thing.

Some pain is deeper than others. I think about my mom, for the high school seniors who missed their prom, for the families who never got to say goodbye. I think about the doctors who haven’t seen their kids in weeks, the restaurants who are shuttering their doors. But discounting my own disappointment because someone is also hurting will not make their pain any more real to me.

In actuality, realizing that I’m broken and others are shattered wakes me from the numb world we’ve been living in. Realizing I’m hurting makes me also hurt for others. As I read on Instagram recently, “Unless we find concrete ways to weep over the brokenness, we will use the brokenness to break others. And ourselves.”

For Those Who Mourn

Grief is a hard thing to figure for the optimist in me. I want to see the silver lining, the bright spot, and the way forward — the good in every situation. Grief is also a hard thing to navigate when it is this far-reaching, this expansive, and this complicated.

For many Americans, grief is something private. Just like my mom, we learn to sift our groaning cries into bottles and only partake in solitude or with a few members of our closest circle. External and communal heartache makes us uncomfortable, especially if it is loud, or weepy, or unbridled. I don’t know if that is because emotion itself is uncomfortable and something we think should be tucked away, or if it is because when someone expresses their loss, we don’t know what to say or how to fix the problem.

That is what mourning is — admitting that something is wrong and coping with the fact that we can’t go back and change anything. David Kessler, an expert on grief, says:

“What everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn’t mean needing someone to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining.”

I think this is true for our communities, our friends and family, and even ourselves. There is a time for grief, a time for weeping, and time for sadness. There is a time to pause for yourself and feel the weight of what you have lost — whether it was a concert you were looking forward to, the wedding you were planning, or the life of someone you loved dearly — and remember it. There is a time to hold another’s hand and listen and nod and do nothing else but ache with them.

Carried to Shore

Ever since I was old enough to plow through chapter books and ride a bike, I’ve been writing. I don’t know exactly why a blank sheet of paper holds the power for me that it does, but with any wave of the ugly, dark, or perplexing churns within me, that is how I deal with it.

It’s important to mourn, but it is also important to process. Hand in hand, we face the waves and we learn to swim in them, feeling the temperature of the water until it carries us slowly back to shore.

My mom has been writing, too. I told her she should write about her friend, to remember him and hold him close, if only in memory.

Everyone grieves differently, but everyone has to wrestle with it. For me, it’s writing, or taking a long jog through my neighborhood, or buying a floppy rose bush for my backyard and spending my afternoons nurturing it. But what does it look like for you?

Photo by adrian on Unsplash

Go for a walk, as slowly as you want.

Write it all down, sketch it all out, paint or sing or play.

Curl up next to someone you love and ask them to listen for a minute or two.

Cook, or bake, or do some pull-ups until your biceps start to shake.

Maybe even cry, cry hard, if it reminds you of what you lost.

And then, when the bread is baked, when the words are on the page, when the walls are painted and the lawn is mowed or you’ve stared at the ceiling and sighed long and loud, then remember this, too.

You also have a lot to hold on to.