#14: Things will be great again.
Giving each other permission to believe in the future while honoring the pain of the present.
Last week one of my favorite Substackers —
author — started a thread with the question:"What words or acts did you find especially comforting or helpful when you were grieving?"
Katie was flipping the script on the “how were people awful” narrative, which gets the most attention in our train-wreck/outrage-obsessed media cycle. Instead, Katie was asking how people got it right.
My answer immediately came to mind.
“Things will be great again.”
Hard but true words.
I numbly nodded along when I first received this sentence — perhaps made more palatable by the South African accent in which it was delivered.
Not four months before had we visited Wayne (a study-abroad buddy of Mike’s turned lifelong family friend) during Mike’s 50th birthday blowout trip to Cape Town. We had all — mom, dad, kids, aunt, uncle, Wayne — climbed Lion’s Head, strolled through vineyards in the Cape winelands, and had our hair blown sideways at the southernmost tip of Africa.
The conversation we were having now, the day after Mike’s funeral, felt like it was happening in a different universe.
I don’t remember much from those early days (blessedly). But this conversation stuck. I even remember watching the shadows move across the living room as Wayne and I spoke... that useless room in so many American homes where very little living actually occurs. Ironically, it ended up being my go-to spot for death conversations.
I let Wayne know how the funeral went, who spoke, the mutual friends that came. He shared that he'd spent the funeral hour on the beach at a spot where he and Mike had had many conversations. He had prayed for us and for Mike. It was a sweet conversation; it included all the “console better” basics.
But then he said something that no one else had dared to say.
“You know, Sue, this may be hard to hear, but I am going to say it anyway." He took a breath and continued. "Things will be great again.”
“It is hard to see how right now. But things will be great again,” he reiterated with conviction. I nodded mutely on the other end of the line, staring blankly into the shadow next to the empty armchair across the room.
It was a bold statement.
So bold that even now, as a seasoned widow, I’d think long and hard before saying it to anyone.
So why, as a brand-new, so-raw-I-was-still-bleeding widow, was I able to receive it? In fact, why was it exactly what I needed to hear at that moment? Why, all these years later, does it still comfort me? And why has no one else come even close to saying it?
I’ve been fumbling through this analysis for a week now. But I think I’m getting close to understanding...
And simultaneously catching a glimpse of how multidimensional, nonlinear, and completely disinterested in ‘if-then’ logic the human spirit really is.
Hope & permission.
First, Wayne did NOT tell me how I should/would/could feel, nor that the Mike-shaped hole in my heart would ever stop throbbing.
He also didn’t tell me what to do. Stay busy! Focus on the positives! Keep your head up! None of that crap.
He simply made space for the possibility that, in this alternate universe we found ourselves in, life would once again flourish. In a different way from before… but in a great way nonetheless.
In Kathryn Schulz’ grief memoir Lost & Found, she shares the consolation phrase that resonates most for her is “life will go on.”
“I have always liked that expression, hackneyed though it may be, for its refusal of easy consolation, for everything that it declines to say.
“It does not promise an end to pain, like ‘time heals all wounds’ and ‘this too shall pass.’ It does not have the clean-slate undertones of ‘tomorrow is another day.’ It says only that things — good things, bad things, thing-things; it does not specify — will not stop happening.”
Life will go on… The tide will flow in once again. The moon will wax to fullness. The snow will melt. The days will become longer and warmer.
There will be suffering but also joy around the corner, disappointment playing hide-and-seek with wonder, loneliness tangoing alongside connection. Hello paradox.
It’s funny how what we call “paradox” life calls “business as usual.”
Because life goes on, things will be great again. Things will be great again because life goes on. No promises about when or for how long. But definitely a little bit, eventually, sometime.
Looking back, what I heard (and needed to hear) from Wayne was that — without needing to do anything besides crawl into a hole and curl myself around my children — this season would change. And as the proverbial “things” got warmer and warmer, sunnier and sunnier, greater and greater — I could decide then, in the moment, what I wanted to do with them. I could still spend days in my dark den, cradling my broken heart. But I could also go swimming and roll in the soft grass and eat endless berries (apparently I am a bear in this metaphor). And live.
Because life itself includes greatness.
(Like how all good electronic purchases include a charging cable or, at the very least, a battery.)
Furthermore, as the days turned into weeks turned into months, Wayne’s words transformed from a promise to a permission slip. Because people have no idea how to act around those wading through hardship. They end up saying some pretty dumb stuff…
The neighbor who, upon seeing me at the grocery store looking normal (the nerve), blurted out, “You look….great?”
The senior executive at a job interview, after doing the math for how long it had been since Mike died, assessed I was not ready to take a new job because… “Isn’t this too soon?”
Acquaintances, inquiring about me to my closest friends saying “How is Sue?” with a tone implying “poor thing.” (This still happens SIX YEARS LATER. Sheesh.)
Those precious words from Wayne gave me permission to let life go on when so much of society assumed that my life would be permanently less-than, diminished, small.
Permission to let my family’s future unfold in exciting ways alongside the sad ways.
Permission to let my heart feel joy again while still being broken.
Permission to let this tragedy transform my life in not all good ways, but definitely some good ways.
I don’t know if I’d be here today, writing this, if Wayne hadn’t said what he said.
Permission slips for all!
I know a lot of people who are “going through it” — stuck in a job or relationship that isn’t fulfilling, struggling to raise a child with grace, wrestling with health issues that don’t seem to get any better…
I wonder if they have someone holding the space of hope open for them, like Wayne did for me. Even when they themselves can’t, is someone believing in a better future for them?
And if no one else is, can I?
I imagine how this would change my daily interactions with them:
Greeting them with excitement rather than exclusively concern. Asking about their hopes and dreams along with their aches and pains. Replacing my pity with compassion and curiosity for their entire human experience — the good things, the bad things, and the thing-things. Not assuming that their misfortune defines their entire lives and futures. Believing — really believing — that they have something to look forward to.
The human brain loves duality — black and white, day and night, bitter and sweet, rough and soft. It makes things easy to categorize and thus recognize. But the human condition is way too multifaceted for that. We are never just doing well or doing poorly; we’re not just disappointed or excited; we don’t just need empathy or a pep talk.
What we need is space to be complex, incongruous, even contradictory.
Especially when we are losing our minds during times of loss, grief, and transition.
As a business woman, I don’t love this conclusion. I wish it was more straight-forward, included three actionable steps, and delivered a measurable ROI.
Instead, I’m feeling like I’m trying to rub my belly and pat my head at the same time: honoring that those moments absolutely suck AND there is a very good chance that the future will include something amazing.
Yikes, this is a scary way to live! Letting our hearts feel the full depth of pain while holding out hope for good things to come…
It would be way easier to run from any and all pain (former pro run-away-er talking here), or go full Nietzsche and let pessimism make us impervious to ever having our hopes dashed.
But — in spite of myself — Wayne’s words have convinced me that the best way is the middle way. Neither preparing ourselves for heartbreak nor guarding ourselves against it. Because, according to my quick calculations, almost every human in every generation has suffered from heartbreak and — somehow — continued.
Thanks to Wayne’s belief in me, I’ve had lots of middle-way practice. Practice with possibility, practice with permission, and practice with things becoming great again… as life goes on.
This week, consider what planting a seed of belief might do for someone in your orbit. Including yourself.
I’ll start.
I believe in you.
Sue
