No One Knows

Five months after Rex died, a friend asked how I was really doing. She assumed I must have some good days and some hard ones. My answer came automatically. I had given it before: I didn’t have good days and bad days. Every day held both. From the outside, some days may have looked almost normal. But no day felt easy. Every day was a battle to find a pocket of peace. 

After we hung up, I sat alone and reflected on the real question: 

How am I doing this?

There was no automatic answer. I was stunned to admit that I truly did not know. And then another realization landed with unexpected force. 

No one knows what I've been through.

Not because they didn't care. Not because they weren't paying attention. They simply weren't there. They knew Rex had died. Some knew a few more details. But most people knew only fragments of the story—bits and pieces gathered from different conversations. No one held the full picture of what had happened or what I had been carrying since.

It struck me then: they knew the outcome. They did not know the experience.

They didn't know that the 911 dispatcher heard Rex take his last breath — literally — and urgently directed me to get him to the floor and start CPR. I couldn't do that alone. James got his arms under his dad's shoulders and lowered him to the floor. 

They didn't know I had knelt over Rex and done CPR. There was no time to sit with any of it — the 911 dispatcher was in my ear, loud and clear, telling me exactly what to do next. They didn't know what I had watched the paramedics do, or what had been burned into my mind that night.

I have made sounds in grief that I never knew I was capable of making - loud, guttural, coming from somewhere I couldn't name. More than once, I was grateful to be alone. Though I wanted support, some grief is too raw for an audience. It needs a closed door and no one watching.

I didn't know grief had a sound like that. 

No one asked what it was like to be the one in the room. What it was like to carry those images. What happened in my body and mind afterward, when something from that night would surface without warning.

They asked how I was doing. And I would stand there quietly calculating — do they mean since he died, or today, or in general — does saying I'm okay make it sound like it's easy — does saying it's hard discount that I was laughing an hour ago — are they asking to be kind or do they actually want to know —

That's a lot of weight to carry inside a two-second pause before answering.

I had a friend who started every call by asking, “How has today been?”  That simple change in wording caused instant relief. It let me just think about the emotions of the day, rather than the impossible weight of the whole loss. It didn't require any mental gymnastics. No — just today, on its own.

It's a little silly, looking back, that I felt the need to express the whole range to everyone who dared to ask how I was doing. It really is a minefield for friends trying to know what to say — or not say— about grief. Every grieving person has a different barometer. All I can say is: this question made all the difference.

If you are walking alongside a widow, try asking, “How has today been?” And if you are the one grieving, the people who love you may know your loved one died. They may not know what you saw, what you did, what you've carried since. 

That doesn’t mean you’re as alone as it feels. 

I know what it is to be surrounded by people who love you while still carrying something they can’t see.

It has taken me years to understand why grief can feel so lonely. I didn’t understand grief until I lived it. Now I’m trying to give it language.