I felt a fair bit of sadness over the last few days. I have been confronted by sadness at four different times all within 48 hours. Sadness has been a central ingredient in my understanding how things work, how the world works, and how people work. So it wasn’t with despair or despondency that I felt sad. It was because I love. This is what sadness is about: something loved, but also something lost.
The sadness I felt yesterday actually started a day or two earlier when I wondered why many flags were at half-staff. I first wondered if it had to do with another tragic terrorist bombing, some emotionally troubled person shooting people in a school, or just some important person. Actually, it didn’t matter whether it was a massive tragedy of bombing, some loner dealing his or her loneliness, or just one well-known person who had died. The flag at half-staff represented mourning that was collective. I felt this collective sadness even without knowing who I felt sad with. But I felt sad with someone, or some people, or some country, or some tribe. I have become accustomed to feeling sad, which then immediately reminds me that I am capable of loving, which sadness should always do.
Yesterday I felt two other times of sadness, both of which seemed to blend together with the half-staff sadness. My early Sunday morning is usually pleasantly spent reading the newspaper while lying in bed. Sunday mornings are the only time I “lie in bed,” something that otherwise doesn’t ever appeal to me. Getting past the first page of the Wisconsin State Journal I read an article of a terrible truck-bus accident in Saskatchewan, Canada. Evidently, a truck t-boned a busload of youth hockey players. Having lived in Canada for four years, I know how important hockey is in the country. I was bemused when I first got to St. John’s, Newfoundland, to find the “sports page” was really a hockey page: NHL, AHL, CFL, and many youth groups. Additionally, instead of kids playing basketball on the hard court outside of school, they were playing “street hockey,” replete with hockey sticks and pucks, usually sans pads. As we know, Canada is a hockey country. Canada has “hockey Moms” much more than “soccer Moms.”
This “youth” hockey group bus that was hit was with 16-20 year olds, many of which certainly aspired to the NHL, AHL, or some other “L” in Canada, or anywhere they could play. So when I saw this hockey bus hit, my instantaneous thought was of the triple tragedy of the loss of some 15 people, hockey players, and coaches. I felt the tragedy immediately and deeply with this mix of my quazi-Canadian heritage, understanding of the hockey culture in Canada, and most of all the loss of these 15 people. I even thought about my own brief days of playing hockey in high school, and an hour or two pushing the puck around on our frozen lake up north. Mostly, I just felt sad, as did Deb when she read it a few minutes later.
Then I was off to church, quickly showering and getting my suit on (the only guy in church, by the way who wears a coat and tie). I sat with my good friends, I’ll call them Jan and Bob, who have been struggling with their son’s cancer off and on for several years. It has been a labor of love and we hear Facebook reports of their progress often daily, but never of the danger. Bob asked me how I was, and I responded with a statement that has become regular for me, “couldn’t be better.” He was glad for that, he said but then said that the same wasn’t exactly true for him. He had been in Minneapolis over the weekend and had heard that his son, having gone through tortuous chemo and radiological treatments, had now heard that the cancer had metastasized into his spine. Bob was moved, although he is not a person to openly show such “movement.” I was moved. I told him that was awful. Then I added an adverb to the adjective “awful” and said it with the power that such adverbs seem to give emotional statements. He thanked me. That was it. I put my arm around Jan and said little. Little needed to be said. I did say something like, “this just isn’t right” (meaning that children shouldn’t be dying before parents do). She nodded her head. It was all she could do without coming completely apart. I left it at that. But the sadness has stayed with me.
My work with people, as it is with most therapists, is replete with various losses, hurts, and times of sadness. The next day at work was no different, but the day ended with a session with…, let’s call him Ben. I have known Ben now for nearly two years as he is trying to migrate through his middle age years with the complications of work, children, marriage, and ultimately having a life of meaning. He told me that he had just been fired. Well, I’ve been fired two or three times in my professional career, and it is no fun. But hearing this tragic event in Ben’s life at the same time that he is trying to figure out all the rest of life, seemed…awful. I told him so. He wanted to think about it, thinker that he is, and maybe analyze the causes of the firing, analyst that he is, and do something about it, the doer that he is. But I tried my best to keep him to feeling the awful. Just the awful. Just the feeling. It was tough. But the only way through awful is to feel it, feel it, and feel it…until you finish it. Then you can think, analyze and take action. I was glad that I could be with him at this awful time, and it was to be with Bob, as it was to be “with” the hockey players and families, as it was to be with those unknown people who felt compelled to place the flag at half-staff. It felt good because I could be with these people in their times of awful without feeling awful. I loved all these people. And I am better for it.
Sadness is such a central theme in life. Never easy. Never wanted. Never sought. Always present. This is why Deb and I felt compelled to write our book. We wanted the title to be simple: Good Grief, but the publisher re-titled it The Positive Power of Sadness. Sadness is, indeed, powerful. The power is love.
Further Reading
Johnson, R. and Brock, D. (2017). The positive power of sadness: how good grief cures and prevents anxiety, depression, and anger. Los Angeles: Praeger
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