Sharing without Hearing

I was talking with a co-worker earlier today and the subject came up. It started with talk of songs. She had a particular song that always made her sad because it reminded her of someone she knew who had died. I understood. So many songs remind me of my cousin. It's often hard to escape. I told her as much.

She asked me if my cousin and I were close, and I answered honestly. No, we were not. I started to explain that my family all cared very much about each other, but that we are a large family and it's difficult to be close to everyone. I wanted to explain that it hadn't mattered that I wasn't close to my cousin, that it still struck me harder than I would have expected, that I still grieved and continue to grieve. I wanted her to know that death is impacting, and that I had been impacted.

But she walked away. As though the death meant little if I hadn't been close to the person who had died. As though, "No, we weren't close," was all there was to that story.

It's always been a concern of mine, how deeply I've felt the loss of my cousin. In many ways, I don't feel entitled to it. So many times I feel as though my grief is detracting from the people who are truly in pain, from the people who have felt the loss of someone who made their lives, who warmed them and loved them and was a part of them. I often feel that the extent of my grief is unjustified, which is why I don't really like to talk about it.

I've kept these writings a secret from anyone who knows me. I refuse to create a situation where someone who's hurting worse than I am feels that I'm attempting to gain something here. I don't want any of my family or any of her friends thinking that I only want attention or that I'm being overly dramatic about this trauma for my own purposes. I don't want to open up about how badly I've been hurt by this chain of events only to have someone else confirm that I'm only trying to steal the spotlight.

Which is sort of how I felt when my co-worker walked away from me. "Oh, you weren't close? Okay, I'll move on to a more important conversation then ... "