Pain is Pain

Pain is Pain

 

 

I was in a group session a while ago with some patients and one patient had finished sharing something somewhat heavy about his past.  Another patient started to speak but prefaced his comment with something like, “I know this doesn’t compare to what you went through…” to the other patient.  The first patient wisely said, “Hey man, pain is pain.”

I was thinking about that as I was driving on this last leg of my vacation road trip as both kids were asleep in the back of the car.  You get a lot of thinking done when the kids are asleep in the back of the car!  Frank and I learned about honoring someone else’s pain and meeting it where they are from Dermot.

After Liam died and while Frank was re-gaining his strength from cancer treatments, we got two Australian Shepard rescue puppies.  Two brothers from the same litter that we named King Henry and King Arthur.  They gave us something to love at a time when we had a lot left over and desperately needed somewhere to direct it.  They were great dogs that Dermot knew from birth.  We, unfortunately, had to put Arthur down when he was still rather young but Henry was with us for many years.

Henry was good with our kids but not as patient with other children.  But with and Wren and Dermot, he was protective and tolerant.  He and Dermot particularly had a bond.  To Dermot, Henry was his best friend.  There were times we would wake up in the middle of the night and find Dermot had brought his blanket into our room and curled up next Henry on his dog bed and was fast asleep.  When Dermot was having a bad day and getting into lots of trouble, sometimes snuggling with Henry was the only answer.  Dermot found it easier to read if he could read out loud to Henry and Henry would start his nightly rounds by sleeping on Dermot’s bed until Dermot fell asleep.

So when Frank and I had to put Henry down a couple of years ago, both kids were devastated, but Dermot took it particularly hard.  For weeks after he would burst into tears at the mere thought or mention of Henry and would be hard to console.  Frank and I were supportive but we would often follow up our consoling with some phrase like, “Yes, this is sad, Dermot, but this isn’t like losing a person.”  I don’t even think we realized we were doing it.

One day I think one of us said this to Dermot again after he had become upset about Henry and some memory and he stood at the top of the stairs in tears and said, “I hate it when you guys say that!  I’ve never lost a person so to me this feels like everything!”

We had been comparing our loss of a son to his loss of his best friend, the dog.  We had automatically compared and judged his pain less.  I was horrified by what I had been saying to him and glad he had said something.  How could he possibly know how we had felt?  He is a child, he has no children and I hope he never knows the loss of a child.  He lost his best friend and in his world that was everything and I had been giving him the message that his pain wasn’t justifiable.

Now, thanks to Dermot, I know not to compare pains, losses, trials and despairs.  People feel what they feel and their pain should be honored for what it is and where they are.

Pain is pain.