When Bad Things Happen to Our Friends and Loved Ones

I am searching for the flowers.

Source: Courtesy of Mary Allen

A close friend of mine fell down some stairs in an Airbnb house and got seriously injured. Nothing life-threatening, but bad enough: a concussion, a small brain bleed, a punctured eardrum, a broken bone behind the ear, and many hematomas.

She is the strongest, healthiest person I know, and when I got the message about what happened to her, I was stunned.

The day suddenly changed. It was no longer an ordinary day full of the promise of small pleasures and routine challenges but a day full of threat, danger, and more potential danger when life seemed to teeter on a razor edge of chance.

I sat there in the green chair in my upstairs study, with awful thoughts flooding in: Something bad happened to my friend. Bad things can happen to us anytime, and safety is merely an illusion. My friend was OK, but what if she wasn’t OK? What if something worse happened to her as the day went on? What if that small brain bleed turned into a big brain bleed, and she died?

That was a week ago. Things have improved some since then. My friend still feels pretty awful, and she’s had to cancel everything for now. But the pain is getting better, and she’s been to a top-notch audiologist and learned that she should recover her hearing in about six weeks—right now, she can’t hear anything in her right ear. Most of all, I can see her processing this event, finding ways to handle it, and rising to the challenge inside herself. She is her usual strong, sensible, resilient self.

As for myself, the dire thoughts have died down, and other thoughts have been sinking in. It’s all about thoughts, I can see that—not so much what happened as how I think about it, what I tell myself about it.

As someone for whom optimism is a coping mechanism, I am always deeply motivated to search for the other side of any negative picture. And since that morning a week ago, I’ve been reaching for ways to look at my friend’s fall and injuries in a more optimistic and—yes—realistic way.

And there are plenty: Something bad happened, but most of the time, bad things aren’t happening. Even this is not as bad as it could be, she could have died, she could have broken her back or sustained brain damage. Although I care almost as much about my friend’s well-being as I care about my own, I have to remember that this is not something bad happening to me. I’m fine. Even Anne is basically fine.

It seems like the challenge is all about boundaries, putting little mental boundaries around what is and what isn’t, and trying to hold onto those boundaries. I stay inside the lines of what’s actually happening instead of traversing beyond into what could happen, what could happen to me, and then react as if it is—all of it—happening. It’s hard for me to hold onto those mental boundaries, but even thinking that I want to help, I find it difficult.

The other thing that’s been on my mind since my friend’s accident is how interesting it is to be the friend this time. About five years ago, in February, I slipped on black ice hidden under snow while walking along on a slightly tilted sidewalk with the same friend who had just fallen down the stairs. I crashed really hard onto the ground and broke my shoulder in three places.

I was in terrible pain, and the suffering went on and on. I couldn’t drive or do much of anything. I had to have a shoulder replacement, wear a brace for six weeks, and do physical therapy for a year.

My friend Anne was with me through the whole thing: She took me to my doctor appointments, sat in the waiting room during my surgery, and made a cotton sleeve to put inside the brace's sleeve when I couldn’t stand to have the brace’s horrible synthetic fabric rubbing on my elbow day and night. I keep thinking about that now.

I had no idea at the time that she might be experiencing her own kind of suffering because I was suffering. But I see now that she probably was, in the same way, I’m suffering now on her behalf. Of course, it’s not the same; I haven’t lost my hearing, I’m not in physical pain.

But still, it is hard and painful to see her going through this and not be able to do much, if anything, to help. Once again, I guess, it’s about boundaries and lack thereof—I’m suffering her pain—although this time, the lack of boundaries seems like maybe not such a bad thing because empathy is a good thing.

Personal Perspectives Essential Reads

How to Ask for and Receive Help

Insurance Companies Are Using AI to Process Medical Claims

Still, a lot of my friends seem to be going through something hard right now. Another friend I’m really close to had to have her dog put to sleep yesterday and is deeply and profoundly grieving. Another friend, an alcoholic who has been struggling to find lasting sobriety for years and seemed to be doing quite well until recently, is sinking into a depression, which, it’s easy for me to see, will probably lead to drinking.

How can I help him, Anne, or Heidi with that? How can I help myself feel OK while they are suffering? And for that matter, how can I tolerate all the suffering in the world: starving children, people being brutalized by war?

There isn’t an easy answer. But maybe whatever answer there is lies in some mixture of feeling empathy and enjoying and allowing goodness and not denying the badness, cultivating those little boundaries between what is and what isn’t, between the present and the possible future.