Check on Your Friends

We deal with a significant, heartbreaking amount of suicide at the funeral home where I work. I have yet to see a pattern.

So check on your friends.

The ones who are single, widowed, or divorced.
The friends who are coupled, even if they tout and shout happiness and fulfillment, but especially if they don't.
The ones who don't worry about finances, and the ones who do.
The ones living with disease, as well as the healthiest of them.
The ones who have asked for help, and the ones who haven't.
The ones who are lonely, and the ones you assume aren't.
The ones you don't see often, and the ones you do.

Check on the military veterans, and the military spouses.
Those who are set in a career path, and the ones finding their way. Professionals to blue collar.
The ones with clear sign of mental illness, and those who present like they have it all together.
Busy friends and idle friends.

The ones who are quiet on social media but loud in life.
The ones who are active on social media and reserved in person.
The friends who laugh a lot.
The friends who cry a lot.
The friends who give a lot.
The friends who have nothing to give.
The angels and the rebels.

Your straight friends. The LGBTQ ones.
The teenagers, young adults, middle aged, and retirees.
The Republicans, Democrats, and who's in between.
The Christians and Atheists, and who's in between.
The intellectuals and morons, and who's in between.
Check on the introverts, and the extroverts.
The confident friends, and not-so.

Check on the parents. All of them.

Any time someone crosses your mind, check on them.

Walking Was My Therapy

Several years back we lived in a small town of about 1800 people. It never felt like home to me, and for a couple of reasons. One was that life for my kids and me had changed drastically, but not so as to allow the fresh start I truly needed. (That would come later, and with good timing.) Two, because I grew up in the Northland of Kansas City on the Missouri side, and I will always be a city girl at core.

But our locale was good for a few things, among them the walks I took often and by myself. For me those walks were about physical fitness, mental awareness, and emotional repair.

I pushed myself pretty far. Down the street, through the neighborhood---traffic and uneven pavement be damned---to the other side of town, outside city limits among the gravel roads and livestock---including two horses who came to recognize me as well as I them---and back again. I minded my heart's pounding, my lungs breathing, my muscles working. I walked myself through.

I pushed myself pretty far. Those footsteps were matched in tempo and quantity by my thoughts. I assessed with naked honesty who I'd been for too long, with little autonomy, and also who I wanted to be. I turned over ugly, painful experiences, and looked at them head-on. I dissected what I'd begun learning about something called narcissistic personality disorder, and how that had ruled my marriage. I considered that, maybe, everything I'd been brainwashed to believe for years may not be true after all. I talked myself through.

During those walks I came to see I am in this moment. I am in this life. I get to choose how it goes now, from here forward.

I pushed myself pretty far, because nature and solitude don't judge. I let the feelings come to surface and lift away. Feelings of hurt, smallness, and regret from the abuse I'd left; feelings of potential, hope, and self-love because I'd gotten out.

The time and attention I gave myself on those walks were healing. It was about forgiving myself as much as grieving, and identifying my aim for the future as much as rehashing---and then letting go the hold on---my past.

I've never gone to formal therapy. Many have told me I should. I have nothing against it, can't pinpoint a reason I didn't seek out help for healing from a professional. I just didn't.

But I did walk. And I wouldn't be where I am right now if I hadn't.

10-Year-Old Me Lives Again

A few weeks ago, I had occasion to visit a client at his house. We'd spent weeks planning his final wishes and it was time to finalize a contract.* So, I'd agreed that since he and his mother, who is also his guardian, had already come to the funeral home where I work for several meetings, I'd visit them in their home.

We handled business first. Priority. Because mom isn't some spring chicken anymore, and son is in a delayed development place which means care for himself may be difficult, so ensuring his future needs are met was really important. It's why we'd been working diligently to find peace of mind about his eventual cremation.

Then, task met and as had been promised, mom showed me around her home filled with antiques---a thing for which we'd previously discovered a mutual love. Some pieces were decades old; many relics from her ancestors. Mom and son both had stories for each special item.

Once we'd looped the main floor, son -- a few years older than me -- was equally excited to show me his bedroom, which was in the basement. Ascending the stairs was like revisiting my own bedroom of adolescence, back in the late '80s and early- to mid-'90s. Imagine the quintessential hodge podge of favored toys, games, posters, music memorabilia, a kick-ass stereo, and random, unorganized personality.

Of all the things that caught my eye, only one truly tugged my attention. New Kids on the Block. From their prime. In a poster on his wall. I gushed. He gushed. Another mutual love discovered.

"How much do you love me, Janna?" son asked.

I hesitated internally. Prior work with those having special needs has taught me that sometimes the line between a professional relationship and a personal one can blur. I'd bonded with these two, this mother and son, but wasn't sure what he felt. So I safely said with a small smile, "I guess it depends on why you're asking."

He'd worked his way to a closet across the room and had his back to me. He opened the door so carefully, intentionally blocking from my view whatever it was he wanted to retrieve.

"I've been waiting a long time for someone to give this to, and now I know who should have it." He stalled a bit to feed my curiosity.

When he turned around, it was to hold aloft another framed NKOTB poster. An exact match to the one on his wall.

At the same time my still-a-kid heart soared, my adult, business brain crackled. "Oh, [son], that's SO sweet, but I can't accept gifts from clients."

That's when his mom, who'd been our company all along, pointed out that HE was my client. Not her. "I'm your friend. I'll give it to you, and that gets us around your rule, doesn't it?"

And she had me. I couldn't say no. 10-year-old me was thrilled. Son, too, was incredibly pleased to have found the right person for his gift...

I don't know what I'll do with this poster. Probably store it, if I'm honest, much the way he did in a closet.

I'll store it as a reminder that sometimes our interactions with people are about more than getting the job done. It's about connecting as humans, humans who have more similarities than differences. It's about seeing someone as more than a contract, or a public servant, or a passing interlude, and remembering that you're more than who you are in this moment---you're still all of your past, too.


*As a state-licensed pre-need agent, I spend a lot of my workdays helping folks with their funeral or cremation prearrangements.