I got the call that Elizabeth had just died, I was a hospice volunteer and had been seeing her with Izzy for months, I went over to her home to see David, her husband, I knew he would be heartbroken. I stopped outside the door, took a deep breath and remembered my training. I had to leave all of my stuff at the door, the things I missed, the people I lost, the dogs I loved. My job was to engage in Active Listening, I was not there to trade my sorrows with his, or to put my burdens on him. What he needed was to experience his own grief and in his own way and time. My only role was to listen. I could not make it better, not wash his pain away with words or kindness or my selfish tears.
All I could do was say how sorry I was and ask if I could help in any way. Nothing more.
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A dozen or so times in my life, I have not counted precisely, I’ve learned transformational things, lessons that have changed my life and altered the way I look at the world. One of those lessons came six or seven years ago when I became a hospice volunteer, a good man named Keith Mann was the volunteer co-ordinator for hospice, the training was thorough and rigorous. And necessary because, Keith told us, people do not know what to do, they do not know what to say. Death is the unmentionable dread in our culture, our terrible and unspeakable secret.
When have you last seen a thoughtful and helpful piece on the news about death?
One of the first and most important things Keith taught us was the idea of Active Listening. I had never heard the term before, it altered my life. In the world I grew up in, you spoke up loudly or your perished, identity was voice, I knew few good listeners and was only rarely one myself. I was – am a great talker. I am working to be a great listener.
I always told people who were grieving to feel better, it would be all right, they would get past it. Once or twice, I am sorry to say I told people they needed to move on, get on with their lives. I suppose there are times when that is so, it is not for me to decide when.
The people around me when I grew up always expressed opinions and belief, they rarely listened to the opinions and beliefs of others. You either spoke up or were drowned out. In hospice work, when you are spending time with those on the edge of life, Active Listening is important. It is the true way to help, the way to feel. It was a hard lesson, but we volunteers learned that the task of love and friendship was not to alter the brutal reality of life, but to respect it.
Active Listening is essential when dealing with grief and the grieving. And, I think, to a spiritual life. Until then, I never really knew what to do or say. I have learned what to do or say in hospice. And what not to do or say.
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Because death is so rarely discussed or acknowledged openly, few people have heard of the idea of Active Listening, and it requires patience and spiritual practice to understand it. Working with the dying helps. I have worked hard at it, I use it in my hospice and animal therapy work all of the time. It has, ironically, enabled me to help the grieving and communicate with them in ways I never understood and also to come to terms with my own mortality and feelings about dying.
Elizabeth asked me that night if she were close to death, if it would be all right. She was frightened, she said. There was a time when I might have said of course it will be all right, you will be fine in the morning. But I had been volunteering for awhile, death and I were getting acquainted, and I said this: “I don’t know, Elizabeth, I can’t answer that for you.” That was hard, but it was good. She nodded. And I listened, and we talked into the night, until her grip on my hand lessened, and with David at her other side, she slipped away.
Most of us have lost someone or something and we know what when we lose something we love, the people around us reflexively tell us what they have lost or grieved also. It is a mirror reflex, familiar to psychologists, familiar to me. When people sense our loss and pain, they revert almost immediately to theirs. Your loss reminds me of my dog, my cat, this reminds me of my father, my mother. I lost something too, I am the same as you, I hurt too. In my hospice work, I learned – was taught – not to do that. I do not tell people what I have lost. I do not tell people to feel better, to move on, that it will be better. I have no way of knowing if that is true, it will only seem like a lie, it puts pressure on the stricken when they are least able to handle it, it drives them into themselves.
Hospice taught me much, and one of the things it taught me was that my grief is mine, your grief is yours. No two deaths are alike, no losses are alike, no grieving is alike. My loss has nothing to do with your loss, my mother was not your mother, my dog was not your dog, I am not you. Except there is this: we share the experience of loss and pain, grief reminds us of what it is like to love and care and be human. That is the connection, the gift.
Beyond that, every grief is individual and personal, no one else can know it or knows it, for you no one else has shared it or experienced it. It is a very personal thing. No one can say they feel what you feel, can tell you what you feel.
When you listen, the social workers taught me, it’s about them. When you bring your own stuff to their loss, it becomes about you. People don’t need your pain when they are grieving, leave it at the door, put it in your pocket, leave it in the bucket. Say you are sorry. Ask if you can help. Listen.
The person in grief needs to have his or her grief acknowledged, not shared or reflected. The last thing they need is the trouble of other people. I was taught to leave my grief and loss at the door, to let the grieving person feel what they feel and come to terms with their loss. There is really nothing to say, you cannot make it better, it is not your role to do that. You can simply be present, offer yourself as a vessel and accept whatever is given – or not. They do not need your tears, your sadness, your grief. They have enough.
There is much love and understanding in silence, it is often the most powerful communication that there is.
The truth is, I learned quickly, you never know how it feels for someone else, you only know how it feels for you. Grief is like a fingerprint of emotion, no two are ever the same, you can only know it hurts.
Grief is a process, not a choice. People in grief feel anger and disconnection and disorientation, loss and sadness and ups and downs, each one different, each in their own time. What can you say that makes sense? I’m sorry. What can you do to help? Not much really, people must mourn in their own way. Just be there and listen. Or walk the dog and do the dishes, go to the market, vacuum the carpet. And understand this, you cannot make it better, it cannot be made better, death is final and unyielding, it is bigger than our imaginations or hubris. Death humbles us, we can only bow before it. it can only heal in it’s own way and time. That is up to them, not you, leave God’s work to God, do not take it upon yourself, do not make it a reflection of your own ego.
So I was not there in those homes and hospital rooms to speak, but to listen. I was not there to cheer anyone up or come up with a magic formula for healing. I was not there to cry or to alter destiny. Active listening is different from regular listening, it is absolute and intense. It teaches selflessness, not arrogance. You are stripped to your very soul, you bring nothing of yours into the room, you are there only to listen and receive. In this way, the person grieving does not have to bear your sorrows as well as his or hers.
Active Listening helped me to understand my own limits, the importance of boundaries, the selflessness of letting other people have their pain and sorrow, I don’t need to take it inside of me, not if I want to help. The grieving do not need burdens.
What a wonderful lesson for my active mind and active mouth to learn, I have never forgotten it, it was, in fact, transformative, because when you can really listen to someone, really hear them, truly let them own and process their own feelings, they they can begin to heal and move on. And so can you. Through active listening, you can see and you can hear, you can connect with a human being beyond imagination. You can grow. Active Listening is a boundary, it respects the space between you and them. It honors the nature of grief.
Active Listening is precious. I have learned that when I experience a loss, I must steel myself to receive the losses of many others, this is human nature. Good wishes matter. It helps to hear that people care, that they are sorry. It eases the sting and awful loneliness of grief. But there is a wondrous power and beauty in the silence and loneliness, in the private processing and reflection as well. Keith Mann and the social workers in hospice were wise and knowing.
Active Listening is a powerful tool, it offers balm for the soul, and a sense of being known and understood. It gives voice to the bereaved and the helpless. It lightens their load, they only have to feel their pain. I pass this gift of grieving along to you, it has helped me deal with one of life’s great and profound experiences. It may help you.
You may find this valuable in your own life, for you will surely have the chance to practice Active Listening in this world, and it may heal you as well, as it did me.