Day 24

Occurred on March 2, 2009

Today's favor was about time. I received a request asking me to help a friend come to terms with the notion of taking time to grieve for the recent death of her father. Her father was her world and with him being taken from her life a void was instantly apparent. Convention dictates we must move on when those close to us leave us in some fashion, be it death, abandonment, a break-up, divorce or separation. We are supposed to pick up the pieces, and tell everyone around us all will be fine and that we are OK. However, what I gathered from this request was that this individual was not OK and did not feel like moving on, she felt like stopping. She was seeking permission to stop and to think and to reflect. For some reason she felt guilt over this time being taken and at the same time, she saw no other option than to cease her life as she knew it.

Once I realized the complexities facing this woman and her conflict over doing what she was "supposed to" versus what she felt, I felt perplexed as how to accomplish this favor request. How could I offer her grace while also helping to facilitate her process of reconciling the loss of her father? Did I even know what helping her looked like? I decided to meet with her at a local wine bar and to have no other agenda for our meeting other than having her be heard. Maybe the true purpose of our meeting was not to convince her of anything but rather to have her discover her own truth and wisdom at her own pace and on her own time.

Even though we were surrounded by numerous people in a dimly lit room, the pain she carried spoke volumes to me. On the surface she appeared in complete control but her eyes betrayed the actual feelings she harbored. Her eyes were dull and it almost seemed as though she was wincing as she spoke about her father and about the memories, which although they remained unspoken to me, clearly filed her mind with vivid images. I asked how she was doing and then I just shut-up and listened. At the end of our evening, I felt extraordinarily privileged to have the opportunity to offer her the outlet to express herself without fear of judgment. Never once did I suggest she "should" do anything, I just listened. She came to her own conclusion: she would continue to take time to grieve until she felt it was time to do something else. The simplicity of her decision was the paragon of grace and I applaud her composure and clarity and courage to sit with her thoughts rather than rush to fill her life and time with extraneous things. The essence of this favor was self-full love; she realized in order to deal with the emptiness left by the passing of her father, she needed to fill her own tank with grace and compassion.