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When People Say, "I am sorry for your loss." and other well meaning platitudes How Do You Deal With Loss


One of the many lessons of loss is that you the sufferer, become responsible for helping those around you not feel bad as they interact with you. Standing in your pain, you are often in situations where you need to lift the burden of your sorrow off those who feel awkward about dealing with the messiness of grieving and loss.

So, for example, when someone tries to comfort you with the comment, “I am sorry for your loss." This may seem to you to be a rote statement, you are left with the choice of giving a pat automated response or going deeper. It’s always your choice.

As a body language expert, I give programs on dealing with abuse, grief loss and trauma with professionals who deal with the grieving. (funeral directors, social workers, therapists, school counselors, law enforcement, ministers and rabbis, and others.) I share with them tools they can share in turn with those suffering losses.
I suggest that you listen to the voice and watch the body language of the person who makes the “Sorry for your loss” statement to see and hear if they may be willing to go deep with you for a moment. If they are staying pulled back and reticent and speaking with a flat automatic tone, just give them a warm, “Thank You.” And let them go. They say the pain is too much for them, but they are kind enough to reach out as far as they can go to comfort you.

If they are really making eye contact, leaning in, fully present and have the paralanguage of truth as they say, “I am sorry for your loss.” it you can give them your truth. The funny thing is when you are laid bare in grief, you can read nonverbal cues acutely. You know. If they are open and willing, you can share your truth.

You can share how the loss is affecting you, “I have lost my partner and my best friend, and it hurts so much.”

You can thank them deeply, “Thank you for reaching out to me and standing in my grief with me for a moment.” “My pain is so big, thank you for being in sorrow with me.”

You can share memories of the person you lost that the person who said sorry also shares so you can grieve at the moment together, “I remember how you and Roy loved to sing in the car together when we went to the beach. I will miss hearing his voice joining with yours.” 

 When I was 29, the year I watched my best friend die and suffered the loss of nine other friends dying I learned a lot about grief and the responsibility of dealing with people who had no experience with it being incredibly uncomfortable and awkward about it. I already had my speaking and consulting business as a body language expert so it placed me in a unique position of seeing into the hearts of people as my heart broke. 

 

Patti Wood’s Bio

Called the “Gold Standard” of Body Language by The Washington Post and credited in the New York Times for bringing the topic to national attention Patti Wood, is a true expert. She is the author of nine books and she speaks and consults to Fortune 500 companies and associations. You see her on National TV shows like Good Morning America, CNN and FOX News, The History Channel and the Today Show. She is quoted every week in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today, Bloomberg Business Week, Fortune, Good Housekeeping, and USA Today.

 


The Story of Roy and Learning to Love and Be Loved My Journey to Speak on Greif Loss and Trauma Patti Wood


The Story of Roy and Learning to Love and Be Loved
My Journey to Speak on Greif Loss and Trauma
Patti Wood 

We met at freshman orientation at Florida State University in Tallahassee. I looked across the room and saw this tall, handsome Nordic blonde guy with a soft smile sitting on the floor next to a grand piano.. I said to myself: ‘There is my life’s best friend.” I found out later he looked across the room, saw me and thought I would be his life's best friend. We became like brother and sister, closer even, we were twin souls. 
For years, we did everything together. We giggled and laughed and danced through our college years. We were housemates along with our friend Lisa our senior year; we fixed hundreds of awesome dinners together; we shopped and traveled together, and we shared our innermost feelings and experiences. In fact, sharing something with Roy was often the best part of a new event in my life, and hearing something wonderful that Roy experienced made me as happy as it made him.

Roy was warm and funny, goofy and silly in a Dudley Doo Right kind of way. He was a six-foot-two, kind and loving and generous, and had a deep full laugh that was contagious. He had deep scars all the way down his back where his father had whipped him with a belt. I believe each long scar showed where he had chosen to turn his pain to empathy and compassion for others.

 As friends, we accepted each other down to the core. Someone loving me that much made me feel loved absolutely.  Roy and I loved each other absolutely. Roy taught me that people showed their love in different ways even saying “Patti when I fix your broken necklace, I am showing I love you.” “When I reach something from a high shelf for you I am showing that I love you and I know when you have my favorite big BLT fixed for me at lunch you are loving me and when you let me sing off-key through a long car ride you’re showing that you love me.”
We were tender and affectionate with one another. Holding hands, sitting leaning up against each other like twins, brother, and sister. We weren't attracted to each other. We were a bonded pair. We completed each other.

When we were roommates in college he was a social work major, a crises team counselor, head of gay peer counselor, and went on to work as a social worker in a mental institution and lived in Atlanta.  I went to Auburn University to pursue a master’s degree, and then returned to Tallahassee to begin a Ph.D. program.  Roy and I were as close as ever. We talked for hours on our weekly phone calls and visited each other every few months we were still so very very close. 
I lived in a small town where I couldn’t go shopping without running into someone I knew.  Roy and I were so close that when my friends in Tallahassee who hadn’t even met Roy, did know that he was my “Twin Soul” so when they would see me they would always ask, “How are you?”, “How is Roy?” 

Years passed. I had a four-bedroom house with a big fenced-in yard, a steady boyfriend a group of friends that were like a second family, wonderful housemates, and a great dog. I took Thai Chi classes, and. I’d eat grape nuts for breakfast and joked with my housemate Pat about our crazy dream from the night before. I’d start my day singing in the shower and then get in my car singing along with the songs on my radio on my way to work.

I had my own consulting company and taught communication at Florida State; my class in nonverbal communication had 150 students enrolled each semester. I was living a happily-ever-after existence, and Roy, was always a part of me and I was always a part of him.

When Roy and I were 29 I went to visit him in Atlanta.  He took me on a walk in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park. His big 6’2 frame towered above my petite five feet two inches and he held my hand as we walked. It was a beautiful spring day and as we circled the lake and I was blissfully breathing the fragrant flowered air so happy to be Roy. As we rounded a curve, Roy stopped, brushed back his blonde hair, turned toward me and said, “Patti, I’m dying.” 

I heard a loud gut-wrenching scream crying “No!” echo across the lake. It took me a moment to realize the scream was mine.

How could the world turn without sweet Roy? At that moment, everything in my life began to change. I knew with certainty I had to move to Atlanta to be with Roy. I didn’t ask him if he wanted me to come, I just decided. People thought I was crazy. But it was really selfish – I just had to be with him. 

Within a few days, my boyfriend had broken up with me - he was afraid of being infected from my innocent friendship with Roy - and I began getting rid of my belongings. I sold almost everything in the house down to the bare walls. I took the cash and left my house, my friends, and my speaking business.  I moved to an apartment that Roy could share with me and I took a job as a temp receptionist in to make ends meet, exchanging a $1,000-a-program speaking life for a $7.50-an-hour wage. Instead of being treated with respect and admiration, I was treated like a servant. I didn't really care. I smiled and hid my pain. 

I took a small apartment and fitfully slept on a borrowed mattress on the floor of my closet. I was alone in a city filled with strangers.  I would visit Roy every day he was in the hospital and sit on the edge of his bed, holding his hand. And though Roy and I would laugh as we always did, our jokes were about the glove-wearing hospital staff that tried to avoid touching him, his new free hospital gown wardrobe with built-in” ties in back” air-conditioning and about his new easy diet plan, we called “Wendy’s drive-through” a drip from plastic bag on a stand on wheels that he was hooked to when he could no longer eat.   

All of our friendship we had incredible rapport with one another. We
would dress in a similar way — same dark blue jeans, same leather jacket.
Both of us even had red shoes, mine pumps, and his oxfords. We would sit in
a similar way next to each other on the couch. When we got on the phone,
we talked in a similar tone and rhythm. When we were sitting across the
table from each other eating, we would both pick up and put down our
knives at the same time. Our sameness made us feel comfortable around one
another. Being with each other was like being home. My roommate in graduate
school wrote her master’s thesis novel based loosely on our lives as roommates.
Her professors said that my eerie matching with Roy did not make
sense. So in the novel, she made us twins! Now I felt that we were sharing our parallel lives with each other, I was dying along with Roy and he was getting to live along with me. 

Over the one year I watched Roy decline, he went from a being a strapping six-foot 2-inch man to an emaciated 90-pounds that I could carry in my arms. I would return home each night, take a shower and weep uncontrollably. My sleep was filled with concentration camp filled nightmares. Over that year I had nine other friends die. I saw Roy lose his ability to first walk, then to eat, then to remember, to speak and finally his ability to breathe.

Roy died of Pneumonia in July before his 30th birthday. I could not believe that the world would keep spinning without that sweet “Roy boy.” But, it did. I could not believe that I didn’t die too. I was so surprised that I could actually go on breathing without him. His family insisted I have his ashes. He told me before he died, he wanted me to have his ashes so someday he could come to my wedding. His big heart and tall frame fit into such a small box.  I have a photo of us hugging and laughing in the hallways that I look at each day. I am grateful to have known such a good man. 

I envision a reunion with him. It would start out with just for the two of us. We would walk around his beloved Piedmont Park in Atlanta. As we walked, we’d catch up on each other’s news. We’d laugh about him never getting older than 29 and the fact that I am much older but still a tiny blonde.

We would cry over having missed so many dinners and trips with each other. I’d tell him about the speaking practice I rebuilt after he died. I’d express regret that I haven’t yet married, so don’t yet have a son I can name Roy. I’d tell him how sorry I am that his sickness prevented him from marrying the man he loved, who later also died of AIDS. 

Then we’d go for dinner at one of his favorite restaurants. He loved great food, and we would share a dessert. We’d meet up with friends afterward and go dancing together until the wee hours.

And then we would curl up together and I’d thank him for being the best friend in the world to me, for making my life so much richer through the gift of his unconditional love, truly teaching me what is to love and be loved.

We love, we grieve and we are grateful to have known such good souls. 

--Patti Wood, Atlanta, GA, motivational speaker, and consultant on body language and human behavior. 




Patti Wood, MA - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com.