Chapter 23 #2
“Very,” she said softly. “We don’t know how to love people who aren’t our families or partners.
Or, well, we do, but we don’t know how to express it or to grieve it.
And it’s not just how we love and grieve people.
I have a lot of clients who sit right where you are, sobbing their eyes out and feeling like failures or like there’s something wrong with them because they’re grieving a pet.
Our society unironically calls dogs ‘man’s best friend,’ but then they wonder why someone is an emotional mess after their dog passes away.
” She folded her hands on top of her notepad.
“We’re much the same with our human friends.
We form very, very close bonds with our friends.
We love them far more deeply than we say out loud.
It’s not at all uncommon for people to refer to their friends as being like siblings. ”
I swallowed. “Like me and Leif.”
“Exactly. That isn’t just something people say—there are people with stronger bonds with their friends than with their siblings.
But we expect them to grieve a lost sibling far more than we allow them to grieve that close friend.
” She paused, pursing her lips. “I worked with a veteran several years ago who struggled because he’d been granted permission to take leave from a deployment to attend his brother’s funeral.
He wasn’t overly close to his brother, but they had a good relationship.
Then he deployed again, this time into a warzone.
When his best friend was killed right in front of him, he didn’t even have the chance to watch the casket get loaded onto a plane, never mind attend the service or take some leave to deal with his grief. ”
“Holy shit,” I whispered. “He just had to… keep on fighting after that?”
Shannon nodded. “Obviously there was a lot of trauma there relating to being in a combat zone, but the absence of time and space to properly grieve his friend played an enormous role in his struggles. And I think, in a way, you’re having that same difficulty.”
I shifted uncomfortably and avoided her gaze. “Except I’ve had time and space. My team, everyone around me—they’ve been supportive.”
“Mmhmm. They have. But how much time and space have you allowed yourself?”
I jumped like she’d kicked me. “What?”
“You lost your best friend, Avery,” she said softly. “Suddenly and tragically. But you’ve been berating yourself for grieving too much. You’re surrounded by love and support, but have—”
“I saw how it affected my team when I fell apart though,” I said shakily. “That night in the locker room—our home opener—I’m supposed to be their captain. I can’t—I can’t just fall apart on them.”
“Could that mean you weren’t ready for that kind of pressure?” Her voice was full of nothing but kindness. No judgment or condescension. “That maybe you still needed time to sit with your feelings and let yourself grieve your friend?”
It took a lot of work to swallow. “They needed me.”
“And I think you needed them too,” she said. “You told me they supported you that night, didn’t they?”
Wincing, I nodded. “They shouldn’t have had to.”
“But they did.”
“So which is it—was I not ready to be there? Or was it okay because I had my team’s support?” My shoulders dropped. “God, it doesn’t even matter. I shouldn’t have put that on them.”
“It could mean both,” she said evenly. “They’re not mutually exclusive.
Maybe you needed more time, but maybe you also needed their support.
But I think more than anything, you needed to be gentle with yourself.
Give yourself the extra time if you needed it.
Let yourself lean on the people who care about you.
You can only knuckle through the grief for so long before it’s going to drag you back down and make you face it. ”
I closed my eyes and exhaled. This was the most brittle and raw I’d been in one of our sessions. I hated it, even if I knew it was—somehow, probably—what I needed.
“I have a question for you,” Shannon said. “And you don’t have to answer me out loud. I just want you to think about it.”
I met her gaze warily. “Okay…?”
She looked me right in the eyes. “My question, Avery, is what do you think would happen if you let yourself grieve your friend as fiercely as you loved him?”
And just like that… we scraped bone.
From somewhere deep inside came a surge of renewed pain that was almost as intense as it had been at the hospital and at Leif’s funeral. As if there’d been this reserve of grief simmering just out of my reach, and now it bubbled to the surface in a single scalding deluge of loss.
Crying had become such an irritating, frustrating thing—something I was so sick of doing because it felt about as useful as tripping over my own skates.
This time, it was different. Even as it all came down on me harder than it had in a long time, even as it seemed to tear apart all the walls I’d been trying so hard to rebuild, it was…
cathartic? Cleansing? I couldn’t find the word because I couldn’t find any of them.
There wasn’t much I could do in that moment except let the loss of my best friend shake me apart all the way down to my core.
Feeling all of this fucking sucked, but it was also like I’d been trying to stop an avalanche with my bare hands, and now I wasn’t fighting it anymore.
Now I could just… let go. Breathe. Sob. Hurt.
And it turned out that surrendering to the avalanche was a lot less painful than trying so hard to hold it back.
I was grateful that Shannon just pushed the tissue box closer.
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t try to tell me this was good and it was healthy.
She didn’t try to get me to man up (not that she would have, but none of my thoughts made sense right then, so whatever).
She just let it all crash over and through me.
I wadded up some tissues to wipe my eyes and my face.
It didn’t do much good, but it was something to do with my shaking hands.
Falling apart like this, it hurt like hell.
I wanted to be angry she’d ignited this, but I also wanted to drop to my knees and tell her how grateful I was that she’d given me permission to break like I hadn’t realized I needed to.
Little by little, I composed myself again. I was still shaking all over, my eyes still burning from tears, but I could finally catch my breath.
I half-expected Shannon to ask me how I felt, or to say… I don’t know. Something. But she just watched me silently, her expression gentle and without any judgment or surprise.
When I finally managed to speak, I almost choked on my words: “Does it ever get better than this?”
“It does,” she said. “I won’t tell you that it’ll ever go away. You’ll never be who you were before you lost Leif.” She shook her head. “When you lose someone you loved that much, there will always be a piece missing.”
My eyes stung again, but I didn’t fall apart. I took a moment to make sure I was going to stay together, then cleared my throat. “So it’s just… It’ll always hurt.”
“To some degree, yes. You’ll always miss him, Avery, and you’ll always grieve for him.
Our society has this idea that grief is a process, and once it’s over, it’s behind us, but that’s not how it works.
It is a process, but it isn’t one that ends.
Not entirely.” Her smile was faint and reassuring.
“Over time, though, you’ll be able to remember him and be happy that you had him in your life even while you’re sad that he’s gone. ”
My chest tightened. I missed being able to reminisce about him almost as much as I missed him.
“It’ll always hurt,” Shannon said softly. “But it’ll hurt less.”
Closing my eyes, I nodded as I pushed out a long breath.
Not very long ago, the thought of carrying all this grief for even a moment longer had made me want to lie down and give up.
Today, though, as my hands still trembled and my eyes still stung, the thought of missing Leif forever wasn’t as excruciating anymore.
It would be a long, long time before thoughts of my best friend turned bittersweet, but I could finally believe that time would come.
I hurt a lot more now than when I’d walked into Shannon’s office today, but there was hope around the edges.
Opening up that wound I’d been ignoring, grieving him in the way I’d desperately needed to but didn’t know how—it hurt like hell, but there was relief there too.
That sense that there was no shame in having this pain and in needing to feel it this hard.
“I’m so glad I had him in my life,” I said shakily. “I really am. It just… I miss being able to think about him without…” I gestured at the tear that had slipped down my cheek, then wiped it away. “I guess that’s the price of having someone that amazing.”
“It is,” she said, her voice still gentle and soothing. “And as a society, we’re not supposed to feel this way over losing a friend. Men especially aren’t supposed to. But we do—including men—and sometimes the best thing we can do is give ourselves permission to really love and grieve our friends.”
I nodded slowly, swallowing against the ache in my throat.
This was hard. It hurt.
But for the first time since August, even as I hurt worse than I had in months, I could finally believe there was life after this.
After that therapy session, I went home and slept for three blissfully dreamless hours. I did that a lot after my sessions; they were cathartic and draining, and sometimes I just needed to faceplant for a while. I didn’t usually sleep quite this hard afterward, but I’d been utterly drained.