What Do You Say?

4 October, 2019

I got the news yesterday that a second cousin, Christian, had died as a result of injuries sustained while fighting a forest fire.  I don't recall ever meeting the man, also an Iraq war combat veteran, but I have met his parents and sister.  They all live in the Pacific northwest so family visits don't really happen.  Still, it's family.  My family, despite being spread out, is pretty tight.  If some distant relative contacts someone from out of the blue the response is "Come on over, we'll put you up for a few days."  I think that's really cool.

Facebook, love it or hate it, has provided me with a way of keeping in touch with my more distant family.  I love it, but FB still has the stink of disconnection.  Before the internet as we know it, the phone and address lists kept by my parents and grandparents were epic sagas.  Just as I was leaving on a solo motorcycle trip to my Dad's home town this summer, Mom handed me a slip of paper with the last known phone number of one of her friends.  Just in case.  I've gone off on a tangent.

With the news of Christian's death, my immediate reaction was to go forth and support the family.  Christian's sister and father had posts on FB (which is how I found out about his death), but I didn't know how to respond.  I never know how to respond to that kind of news.

I've written about the death of my father, brother and one of my best friends (Audra) before so I won't rehash those stories.  The relevant points are this.  When Dad died I heard "I'm sorry for your loss", and minor variations, so much that I swore I would never say that.  "I'm sorry..." equates to an apology.  Why are you apologizing for my Father's death?  You didn't kill him.  "Thoughts and prayers..."  Well, after my Grandfather's death (a Methodist minister for four decades) and then my Father...  That was, almost, the final nail in the coffin of the belief in God for me.  Prayer meant nothing to me.  Toss in my Brother and then Audra...   There are a lot of mental scars that just can't absorb well-wishes anymore.

Maybe it was the trauma of losing my Father that short-circuited my brain into analyzing how people responded as a way of not thinking about what had actually happened.  The kind people who propped up myself, and my family, at that time (repeated when my Brother died) were great.  They were also struggling with "What do I say?"  Just the fact that people gave a damn, in any shape or form, did wonders.  At my Father's funeral the assistant manager, Dave, from the grocery store showed up.  He had flowers from the store and a card signed by all of my coworkers.  I still get a little teary-eyed thinking about that kind gesture.  My best friend (his future wife and his three siblings by default) and a good chunk of his family (all of them had adopted me as family) were also there.  All of it was a show of friendship and support.  I will never forget any of them.  What I learned was that actions mean more than words.  My whole world was chaos.  I didn't know up from down, left from right... It's like I was in the middle of the Atlantic and just trying to keep my head above water and then "There's Dave, there's Adam and his family..."  Just those people being there gave me something to focus on and it was like they had thrown me a rope and were pulling me to safety. 

When Best Friends' (meaning all of them) Father died, I was there.  I had no clue what do do, but I was there.  Best friend's wife died, I was there.  I was a pall bearer and let me tell you, carrying one of my best friends to her final resting place, that hurt.  A lot.  Best friends' Aunts died, I was there. Still had no idea what to say but at least I could "be there".  Not my family, but kinda my family...  My default position in any of those situations is to just hang out in the background and be ready should someone need something.  Ran out of TP in the bathroom?  "I'm on it!"  I could say.  Physical presence.  They helped me when I needed it so I wanted reciprocate.

But with Christian I can't do that.  I'm thousands of miles away from them.  I can't be there to hang out in the background.  I can't give them hugs.  I can't make supply runs to the store when the TP runs out.  I don't know what to do and I can't find any words that won't sound like something on a cheap wall hanging from Target.  My response thus far has been a "sad face" on FB.  I had to do something.  I can't even write a letter because I don't have an address to send it to. 

What do you say, what do you do, in a moment like this?