On Wednesday a colleague of mine received word her eldest son had died of an accidental overdose. Heroin and Fentanyl. Her daughter is a student at the school. Immediately administration took over how the news would be broken to the daughter. And how many days off school she would be told to take. And her counsellor took over instructing her on how to grieve and how to recover.
The whole affair made me sick to my stomach. It has been a long time now since Colleen died of her overdose, but the memory of people trying to tell me how to live with that is powerfully clear. Her counsellor trying to talk to me about enabling. My mother trying to talk to me about how it is okay to feel relief when someone dies. All the opinions of people who did not know our relationship, did not know how I felt, telling me how I felt, how I should feel, and how I should proceed. I came back to work very quickly after her death, sooner than all my helpful advisors wanted, because it seemed worse to be alone at home with it. And one day, after everyone thought I was fine, I went home from work in the middle of the day without asking or telling anyone.
In our team meeting, I asked my administrative and counselling colleagues not to tell our colleague or her daughter what they need right now. I suggested instead to ask them what they need, and then facilitate it without judgment or questions. They all looked at me like I was crazy. K said, I appreciate that Lisa, and then proceeded to carry on with making her plans.
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2 comments:
I remember this. It was like a free class, admin time, and no-one was around so you just slipped out. I also remember you pouring your grief into that instructional manual about where to place a ladder safely.
That's right; you have a good memory. I was also working on a paper for Masters degree about psychopathy and people were telling me to ask the instructor for an extension on the paper but I didn't want one. I just wanted to write the paper and not think about my sister, but somehow the paper and my sister merged into one thing in my head. Now whenever I refer to the PLC-R (Hare's Psychopathy Checklist) I feel my sister in the room with me.
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