Photo: Getty Images I’d dragged myself to hell and after a few hours of urgent yet aimless shopping, I stopped at a pie place to refuel. The bell on the door had already jangled shut behind me when I heard my name. There was no way to elegantly extract myself from the otherwise-empty café and so I offered a lukewarm “hey” to a college classmate I hadn’t seen in a year or two. He engaged me in friendly chatter, but instead of answering honestly, I was vague. Home for the holidays, I said.
People just don’t know what to do with death, I’ve often heard in the year and change since my brother died. And yet how people ought to handle death or devastating news among their friends or family members is way less discussed. Their goal is to get readers past paralysis, uncertainty, and awkwardness to effective compassion. The book offers the you-can-do-it assurance of a self-help title — but with real examples, illustrated breakdowns, and a little bit of etiquette advice, you get the sense that you actually can do it.
The illustrated guide “What Kind of Non-Listener Are You?” is a real jolt to all of us who pride ourselves on our listening skills. For example, the Epidemiologist non-listener “asks a lot of clarifying, fact-based questions before learning how someone is feeling” while the Sage “gives wise perspective and advice…when it wasn’t asked for” and the Optimist “always offers a bright-sided perspective.
What’s worse than friends who mess up is those who just disappear. A few weeks may not seem like a long time in the real world, but in grief-land every day felt endless, every hour a mix of sadness, rage, confusion, and pain. Now I know who is on my A-team, whom I can text about celebrity gossip when I need a break, whom I can call sobbing in the middle of the night, and who will surprise me by hanging up my brother’s list of favorite movies in her first apartment.
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