Why do friends and family abandon people who suffer?
Some can’t handle the intense environment – they don’t want to be around pain and suffering. It’s too uncomfortable. For others, they have little sympathy and hear everything as whining or victimhood.
Cry for your pain, anyway! Wear your suffering on your sleeve until you no longer need to show it. Don’t stop because others tell you to. There is no one healing moment. It really is a lifelong and messy process.
I searched for years to find proof of the murder I had witnessed. My mother told me that the day it most likely occurred my father ended up in the hospital for several days. She said, “If you find the date he went into the hospital you’ll have the date of the murder.” That conversation took place some time in 2003. The hospital record would have been 35 years earlier in 1968.
My parents probably felt safe to assume I wouldn’t find anything, but I did! This is the actual hospital record admitting my father to the hospital:
It took a year to get my dad to sign a release for the hospital records. When he finally relented, I sent the release to the hospital. Some time later I received a call they had found some records. When I walked into the record’s office of the hospital and told them my name, a woman walked out with a white envelope. Before she handed it to me she said, “I don’t know what you’re looking for but I found these records in a box that was labeled “to be destroyed” with a date for next week. You’re really lucky. I hope it helps you.”
The date of my dad’s admission was June 9, 1968. He was admitted at midnight making the date of the murder June 8, 1968. There is only one women missing in June of 1968.
Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told.
Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites for healing.
email from my daugther, brit white
I won’t be giving up my voice. As a good friend said, “It’s not baggage, it’s my story.” If you don’t want to hear it, you’re welcome to leave.
Very well said 🙂
Thank you!