Auntie SparkNotes: You Can Grieve Your Own Way

Dear Auntie,

I recently lost my stepfather to colon cancer. It was about a month ago, and my mother, sisters, and I are all starting to really heal. So my problem isn't that I'm all upset and can hardly function because I'm devastated by my loss. My problem is that everyone expects me to be like that.

My stepfather was diagnosed with his cancer one year ago, so it wasn't a sudden death. I had a lot of time to reconcile any problems I had with him (there weren't any, really, we got along really well) and I got to say goodbye. His death didn't hit me as hard as I thought it would, and I haven't cried over his passing since the memorial, but everyone expects me to just start sobbing. It's driving me nuts. I'm not an emotional person, but a lot of my friends are, and they just don't seem to understand that I don't need a good cry to get out my emotions. If I get upset, I go to the bowling alley where my stepfather trained me to bowl with a curve, how to approach properly, and I will bowl and remember what he taught me. I don't show my grief like others, but no one really seems to understand that. How do I get people to understand that I'm handling this in my own way?

Oof, Sparkler, I'm sorry. Not just about the loss of your stepdad, but also that you now have to deal with the crappy truth about tragedies: namely, that the only thing worse than the death of someone you love is the boneheaded things people say afterward in their attempts to be sympathetic.

Because death makes people uncomfortable. And when people are uncomfortable, they try to deal with their discomfort by organizing, categorizing, and generally setting scripts for how to handle it. And if you deviate from the script, people get freaked out—not because there's anything wrong with the way you're grieving, but because they don't know what to say.

At which point many people get flummoxed, get flustered, and eventually blurt out the stupidest, awkwardest, most insensitive comments possible.

Humans: social boneheads since 200,000 B.C.!

But here's the good news: the only thing more powerful than our capacity to say the wrong thing is our desire to do the right one. And while your friends may not know what you need, they still desperately want to give it to you. Which makes this one of those rare moments in which you're not just entitled, but invited, to instruct other people in how to behave; it's as easy as just saying "I need this." So, the next time you find yourself running up against somebody's preset expectations for your grieving process, just say your version of the following:

"I know you're concerned, and I appreciate that. And if I ever need a shoulder to cry on, I know I can come to you, but having you guys treat me like I might start bawling at any second is only making this harder. So if you want to be supportive, then please just trust that I'm handling this, and let me grieve in my own way."

Does this mean that, per your goal, people will understand how you're feeling? Honestly, no; some of them will only semi-understand, some of them won't get it at all, and some of them may even privately think that your method of grief is crappy and inadequate and completely weird. But y'know what? Let them. It doesn't matter. Because you don't actually need people to understand your grieving process; you just need them to get out of the way while you go through it. And when that's all you need, asking is all you need to do.

Do you deal with tragedy in a way that people don't understand? Share your stories in the comments. And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.

Related post: Auntie SparkNotes: A Dad by Any Other Name