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Perfectly Imperfect Lee Woodruff, Random House (page 8 of 8) Page 8 of 8

Also, don’t approach the family or patient with tears in your eyes or what I call the “sympathy face” (the hangdog look that says “You poor thing, bless your little heart”). This makes the person feel as if they have to use precious energy to buck you up. If you can’t keep your tears or overpowering empathy to yourself, come back when you can or write a note.

After we’d gotten Bob home from the hospital, I made my first foray out of the house to the local YMCA for a swim. I was afraid to face the well-meaning sympathy and curiosity in people’s eyes, and I didn’t want everyone to ask me how Bob was, because I didn’t have a definitive answer beyond “He is healing.”

I was fragile and timid. I hunched my shoulders over so far I was basically hugging myself as I walked into the locker room. All of a sudden, sailing into my personal space with a giant blond mane and more energy than a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, was a woman who, to this day, I do not know.

“HOW IS YOUR HUUUUUSBAND?” she screamed, eyes bulging with concern. All heads swiveled toward me. I felt ambushed. My heart started beating wildly, and I simply grunted, doe- eyed, and fled out the locker room door. I understood that the woman thought she was being helpful or thoughtful, but I needed to be approached gently and wanted desperately to be treated like a “normal” person, the person I used to be.

9. UNDERSTAND WHERE FAITH BELONGS

In our own journey, faith, family, and friends played a pivotal role in helping all of us to heal. But faith, especially, means different things to different people. And in the midst of a crisis, people often experience a wide range of emotions.

In the absence of just the right thing to say, there are pat phrases others fall back on that can sound downright irritating, especially if a test result or diagnosis hasn’t gone the right way or an individual’s emotional strength is ebbing. Try not to say, “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle,” “Things happen for a reason,” “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” “There but for the grace of God go all of us,” “He or she is in a better place now,” or “There’s a special place in heaven for you.” In fact, scrub these phrases entirely from your vocabulary. The person or caregiver doesn’t want to feel like Job, wonder why God chose them for this particular rough assignment, or envision a handicapped-parking sign in the hereafter. Be sure not to say things that make a person feel isolated from the greater community, or different from everyone else. Also, keep in mind that while spiritual comfort can be helpful to some, it may come off as irritating or overly personal for others. Make sure you know where people stand on the issue of faith before raising it.

When my friend Gretchen asked me to write some tips for her webpage, to help people cope with approaching her after her son’s cancer diagnosis, I gave her this list. She read it, then asked me to take out number 9. She thought it was a bit insensitive to circumscribe people’s good wishes and best intentions. “Just wait,” I said.

Two weeks into her hospital odyssey, she called and timidly asked me to put this tip back in the blog. We had a good chuckle and she vented for a while. Clearly, she was fed up with trying to catalog the reasons why God would ever give a small child a life-threatening disease.

10. BE THERE FOR THE LONG HAUL

In the first days and weeks of a crisis, people come out of the woodwork, flooding you with offers to help, with food and flowers and kind encouragement. This is wonderful, but it can also be overwhelming. The real work begins when all the neighbors have gone back to their own lives, and the patient and family still need occasional support.

Flowers, for instance, are very cheerful in a hospital room. But their effect can be even greater if you wait a few weeks, or even a month or two, and send them to the home. At that time the patient and the family can focus more fully on the beauty of the gift. It is also often a time when they feel as if many people have retreated; there is no one gathered in the kitchen anymore or answering the phone. This simple gesture will make a big difference after the crush of the crisis and will let them know you are still thinking of them. (Those of you reading this who for years have sent flowers to homes and hospital rooms in the immediate wake of an accident or injury, take heart — there are no truly wrong acts of kindness.)

In the midst of our family’s crisis, a wise friend told me to subscribe to the “chit system.” Immediately after a diagnosis or incident, everyone will rush in to ask what he or she can do. “Tell them they have one chit,” my friend Tom said. “And that you will use it. It may be the next day or even two months from now, but at some point in time you will call in that chit.”

It could be as simple as bringing over a pizza or driving a kid somewhere — or as complicated as dropping everything and being by someone’s side, no matter what. Once, I asked a friend’s husband to come over and check our water heater. That used up his chit.

What was great about this concept was that when all the cars had left the driveway and most people had gotten back to their regular lives, I didn’t end up feeling abandoned or clingy. And, hopefully, no one person felt overburdened in the long run.

Plus, it made friends feel that they were needed and gave them a task, even if it was two months from the time they’d offered.

And it made me feel like I wasn’t a beggar, constantly asking the community for various favors. But all of the people who wanted to help eventually had their chance. To be needed in that way is perhaps the greatest honor of being a true friend.

Three years after Bob’s injury, we have all come out the other side, each member of my family. We are all unexpected experts at surviving. We’re no different than so many American families: we’ve acquired scars, opened our eyes, we’ve grown and stretched, we’ve ached and rejoiced. We’ve felt loss keenly, and we’ve counted our many blessings. None of us will ever underestimate the power of love, family, and the resilience of the human spirit. Through it all, we’ve been grateful to have kept our sense of humor and our general optimism intact. We may be messy at the edges some days, but we are a family firmly united at our core. In the end, we are proud to be wonderfully, perfectly imperfect.

Excerpted from Perfectly Imperfect by Lee Woodruff Copyright © 2009 by Lee Woodruff. Excerpted by permission of Random House Group, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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