comforting others with the sorrows we have known

“I really needed that conversation,” the young woman said as we pushed our chairs back at the end of the meal. None of us had said anything particularly insightful. We had simply shared our experiences and concerns in dealing with family members with a serious brain disorder.
The gathering had not been planned. We just happened to sit down at the same table at a women’s conference – two sets of mothers and daughters with sons/brothers/grandchildren living with the nuances of severe mental illness and a mother of two young daughters, the youngest living in the world of autism. I am afraid that we rudely ignored, talked over and around the other women at the table with us.
The conversation began when someone mentioned that the young mother had stepped back from community activities to deal with her daughter’s perception of and presentation to the world. Having seen her older daughter’s progress 18 months before, the mother suspected her youngest had a problem. She related the heart breaking experience of watching the staff at Arkansas Children’s Hospital verify the everything she suspected. And she spoke of the triumphs of learning to calm her daughter by wrapping her in a specially designed heavy blanket.
I told her about driving home late at night with a grandchild with a brain disorder. Alert, awake and quite energetically the child chatted for an hour.
“No more talking. You have to wait at least 30 minutes before you say anything else,” we said.
She obediently quit talking. But, she did not do fall asleep as expected – she sat in her seat wide awake, watching the clock. At the end of 30 minutes, she started in exactly where she left off and did not slow down until, finally back at the house, she received the long delayed nighttime medication which allowed her to sleep.
“Exactly,” the mother of the autistic child sighed. Her daughter cannot simply switch to whatever is considered normal behavior. She gets ‘stuck.’
Understanding those triggers bewilders us all. The mother of the middle-aged son shook her head helplessly. Her son had taken his medication faithfully for years, yet had recently needed hospitalization. His sister recalled the number of times he said, “Do you know what happens if I don’t take this medication? I go crazy.”
He took his medication, but, something changed – the medications quit working. Sadness hung over the family that the illness had again overwhelmed their family.
The sisters empathized with their ill sibling – and at the same time feared they or their children would succumb to the illness.
We talked openly and at length because we saw ‘the look’ in each others’ faces.
I saw the look the evening I intended to just say a quick hello to another woman before heading home. We quickly became caught up in a discussion of our concerns about our loved ones with brain disorders. A woman sitting beside the mother looked up at me after awhile, “I thought you were going.”
The other mother understood, “it is difficult to leave when you see that little spark that says other person knows what you are talking about.” she said.
It is the brightening of the eyes that comes after they have been washed with many tears. The look comes from having acquired one of the most difficult concepts of Christianity: That difficult times teach us to praise “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” II Corinthians 1:3-4 (NIV)
No one wants these painfully gained insights. Having been drafted into a club we never wanted to join, the support of others in the same situation serves as a balm to our troubled spirits. Time spent with others in the same boat makes the most awful of events a bit more manageable through shared experiences and much needed conversations.


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