I didn't know why I was supposed to make an appointment, and she started to talk about being a caregiver. So I said that, yes, I had been a caregiver for a number of years, but my wife had recently died. "Oh, good!" she said, "You can be a resource!"
Which makes a bit of a change from, "My condolences." What "my condolences" really means is "I don't want to talk about it!!!" In our society, you can talk about sex, drugs, rock and roll, perversions, anything you like. But you cannot talk about death, or pain, or grief.
I wasn't aware that there was such a rather thin line between recognizing grief and putting on a positive spin of "oh good [your wife is dead], you can be a resource". That's a lot of emotion that was dismissed.
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