Definition: em•pa•thy (ěm'pə-thē) n.
1. Identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives.
So not many people understand it…EMPATHY. I don’t think less of a person that doesn’t quite have the empathetic capacity to understand what we went through. I honestly believe that you need to go through it in order to understand, but there are circumstances in which people have shared our grief – even for a brief moment and their feelings were genuine.
Our therapist being one of them.
I recall our first meeting with Dr. C – we were zombies, to put it mildly. We walked through life in this fuzz that I call shock. Dr. C asked if we can explain what happened to Amelie – so he knows our history, learns our thought process about the situation. After much talking – not much of what I can remember – apart from one thing P.aul said that will reside with me forever. P.aul said with much sorrow, “I feel like I am less of a man because I couldn’t protect my daughter from dying. What kind of man would let his child die?” I looked up and the therapist was in utter tears. I then realized – he felt sad that P.aul bared this heavy weight on himself. Dr. C felt sorry for P.aul – genuinely sorry.
The days after the loss of Amelie – there were tons of friends and family that flocked to our side. We are so appreciative of that. We are so grateful to have people like that in our lives that care so much and would drop everything to be there for us. But like any human being – people move on with their lives and some of our closest friends and family didn’t quite have the empathy to deal with our extremely sensitive state. We were so fragile those early days – analyzing, scrutinizing, over hypothesizing and persecuting anything and everything anyone said. We were protecting her – protecting her innocence. And we were angry – oh boy, were we.
But I don’t apologize for that. It is what it is…it was our pain. Our erratic feelings eventually subsided and we forgave all who have might have used poor judgment during our sensitive times. We knew that no family/friend who was there for us by our side, would ever want to hurt us deliberately. We realize that no empathy in the world can have you understand what we went through. And honestly, I would never wish that you understood what we went through. It’s horrible.
As I’ve written in prior posts before, I am grateful for everyone in our lives. You helped our broken hearts be functional again. You consoled us and maintained communication with us when we didn’t want to speak to anyone. To all our friends and family – we love you – more than words can express.
