Private Grief in a Public Place

My father  had been quite ill and in the hospital for several days.

I  had a few hours of sleep and was getting ready to head back to the hospital. I was very tired, but my hair was a mess and I wanted to wash it before I went back.

Just as I got it washed, I heard someone pull up in front of our house. At that time, if someone was on our road, they were either lost, trying to find a private place to park for who knows what, or they were really coming to our house.

It was a cousin, who parked frantically and ran to our front door. He said I needed to get to the hospital right away, Daddy had taken a turn for the worse - much worse.

The cousin had tried to call, but they were working on the lower road and had accidentally cut the phone lines.

So with soaking wet hair, he took me to the hospital. Husband followed closely behind, as soon as he could lock up the house.

When we got there, I saw three people simultaneously.

The first was one of my mental health patients. She had bi-polar disorder with psychotic features, and I knew if she was hanging around the emergency room door, things weren't going well with her. She was staring at me as I got out of the car. I guess she'd never seen me in an old t-shirt and dripping wet hair.

The other two people I saw were my twin brothers. They had an identical look on their face, and they didn't have to say a word.

I knew my daddy was gone as soon as I saw them. The one standing nearest me (I can't remember which one)  opened his arms and I flew into them, sobbing. My other brother stood, patting me on the back, as we three cried for our daddy.

There was a separate part of me very aware that I had an unstable patient watching me fall completely apart. And somewhere in my brain I felt concern for her, hoping this would not make her go off the deep end.

Grieving like this, hearing something like this, in a very  public place is a terrible thing. There is nothing you can do to control what you do because you can't control what you hear and know.

The next day (or maybe that evening) I talked with someone from work and told them what the patient had witnessed, telling them to check on her.

But you know what? She had already called my office and warned them about me and the terrible state I was in.  She told them they needed to check on me and pray for me because my daddy had died.

Well, what do you know. She had been listening. She had learned how to behave appropriately in a sad situation. She had learned to set her own woes aside for the moment and think of someone else.

What she saw was a growing experience for her. It actually helped her.

What I came away with from that story is people are a lot stronger than we give them credit for. Our children are stronger, our elderly parents are stronger. Heck, even our mentally ill folks are stronger.

There's hope in this world, isn't there?

Because we know how to pull together when we need to the most.

So let folks know what is going on. Don't keep them in the dark to "protect" them from bad or sad news.

Give them the chance to grow.

Give them a chance to show you they can be strong too.

Which one are you?

Anytime you hear my Mother utter the question, "Now, which one are you?" generally means trouble.

I'll give you this, sometimes it simply means which doctor/nurse/aide or you, or which daughter are you of so and so.

But almost never. Generally, and almost always, it is in regards to that delightful double digit delivery called twins.

While still in the ER, a young woman came in, looking at me, mouth open, about to say something to me.

I was thinking, "She looks familiar...", when my mother took over, having recognized the woman's great-grandfather.

I kid you not.

She asked which one she was, because she is a twin. She told my mother "I'm Zoe." (I've changed their  names to protect privacy and also because I can only remember one of their names....)

After ascertaining whether she was the one who had married the Jones boy (she was not, that was her twin), she informed Zoe that her great-grandfather on her father's side was a brother to my mother's grandmother on her mother's side.

AND:

They had siblings who were twins!

Zoe allowed she knew there were other twins in the family a few generations back, and seemed pleased to find out we were all related.

Then she turned to me (finally) and said she used to go to our church and that her mother brought her children to our Wednesday night program sometimes. When she said that, it clicked and I remembered her children.

They are twins.

Mother then told her that she herself had twin boys (the boys are pushing fifty) and that the boy sitting next to me was one of the twins' son.

And that, in fact, her husband's (my daddy) father had siblings that were twins, and so did my father's mother's family!

She also mentioned another set of twins who never made it to life, but were miscarriages.

This twin, aka Zoe, left and in a few moments, you guessed it, the other twin "Cloe" showed up.

She's the one married to the Jones boy.

We went through all this again, except by now my niece was sitting where my nephew had been, but that's okay because her daddy is the other twin.

And if you understood any of that, you need to see somebody!