Empathy Grown in the Darkness of Grief

A reckoning on the day I had lived longer without my twin than with her

December 18, 2017, was an important day.

It was a threshold. A point of reflection.

Angel, my twin sister, got 7,018 days to live. July 15, 1979 to October 1, 1998. December 18, 2017 was the last day I could say I hadn’t lived more of my life with her than without her. It was the day her life was, chronologically speaking, half the life mine was.

I write about kindness and how to find a moral path in a chaotic world. Ethics forged from my path recovering from a childhood of abuse at the hands of my father, Leo, and the grief from the Angel’s death.

Here is my personal reckoning in the shadow of fresh grief, and how it evolved.

Reckoning

“Philosophy is a walk on the slippery rocks.” — What I Am by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians

October 2, 1998. Leo, my father, my abuser, had been dead for twenty months.

October 2, 1998. Angel, my twin, my protector, my foundation, had been dead for twenty hours.

Survival. Defining identity by external elements. Making sense of the absurd through personal story crafting. Whether it is instinct, intuition, or habit born of reflexive repetition, these are the foundations on which whatever “it” is that I am rests.

But what do you do when the house of your foe has fallen?

Leo is dead. His harms relegated to the past, never again to create fresh wounds. I’d not only survived, but I’d done so by holding the moral high ground. I was not an abuser. A manipulator. The relief I felt at his passing… momentary weakness… the exhale of a frightened child safe at last.

I do not make the choices he would, right?

The spirit of his malice does not live within me.

Is that a statement?

The spirit of his malice does not live within me?

That is a question.

Leo’s shadow lingers, its pall cast over every transactional understanding of a relationship, its chill felt in every word uttered to make others feel small.

What happens to the fear, the anger, the righteous violence of revenge never delivered, after the fall of a tyrant? Am I free?

Who are you when the person you defined yourself in contrast with and comparison to is gone?

Angel’s absence is now a black hole where once there was the brightest star. And where once I was warmed by her energy and defined in her reflection, now I could only stare into the abyss. Could I escape its gravity, or would it pull me in, crushing me within its depths?

What lessons do you learn when the Universe doesn’t follow a neat narrative?

Angel was resilient, strong, a beacon of hope. She carried me, weak and frightened, through the time of Leo and his reign of terror. We stood at the end of that journey, villain vanquished, battered, bruised, traumatized, but turning to a future of healing, wholeness, and love.

Angel earned her happiness through sheer force of will and personality. She withstood the man who fomented her anguish and that of her mother and twin. She watched him crumble and fall, his power sapped from him as he was beset by failure and indignity of his own invention. In that the narrative made sense.

But she would be betrayed, her efforts, her care, her love dismissed and taken for granted by the one person who should have known better, who should have understood. It is the sin I discovered one day too late to atone for.

Is the Universe cruel?

Or random?

Do we need to know?

Does it matter if we do?

What does it all mean?

These are the questions.

To find the answers, I will take a walk on the slippery rocks.

It’s dire and dark now. But I promise, if you walk with me, I will show you how I found my footing.

December 18, 2017, was an important day.

I took the day off. I drove from Jacksonville to Folkston. I had a playlist queued; the Billboard Top 40 for the week ending October 3, 1998. As good a way as any to capture what was in the air at the time. I made one stop, in Hilliard, at the same Winn-Dixie Angel and I both worked at, to buy a dozen roses. The only person there from our time was Phyllis, the customer service manager. Never go changing Phyllis. She still remembered Angel.

It was another twenty minutes to get to Homeland Cemetery, just north of Folkston proper on US-1. It was empty, always was when I made my annual birthday pilgrimage there. I drove down the dirt path, next to the cedar tree, and backed in next to Angel.

Turning off the car and climbing out, it was a beautiful cloudless day. A light breeze rustled arrangements on other graves but otherwise it was silent and still, and a little warm in the sun.

I got to work. I’d brought a broom and gloves and pulled the weeds from Angel’s marble slab, sweeping off the dirt and debris. Satisfied the grave was cleared, I opened the bouquets, and carefully laid a dozen roses, one at a time.

Finally, with no more chores to occupy my time, I put everything away, back in the car. I stood now at the end of Angel’s grave and faced her.

“I still don’t think it’s fair… all these days I got, all the days you didn’t. I want to say I did my best with them. But I didn’t. I screwed them up a lot, so many people could tell you just how much I screwed up in the years after you were gone.”

I wiped away a tear. I appreciated that it was there. For so long it was so hard to just… cry. Something I’d learned to bottle up lest I attract the attention of Leo, I couldn’t access it when I needed it as an adult.

“I think you deserve to be here, more than I do. But the world doesn’t work that way. And it sure as hell isn’t fair.”

The tears were coming freely now.

“I can’t change what I’ve already done. But I can be better tomorrow. And if I’m not, I can be better the day after. What I can always do is try to do better. And stop being so hard on myself.”

I put my hands in my pockets and stood there.

I wasn’t waiting for an answer.

I knew I wasn’t going to get one.

The wind kicked up; sand swirled around me.

Time to go.

I took a deep breath, got back in my car. I composed myself, and silently drove back to Jacksonville, lost in thought. Quiet reflection.

The next day I began life in a new world, one no one around me would be able to perceive. A new world, but only new for me. A world where I now lived longer without Angel than with her. Every day since has increased that time.

Who am I now, in this new world?

I can only hope my assessment is as close to the truth as personal bias will allow.

I’ve learned to let go of resentments. Resentment of those people who got what I didn’t. Happy homes, good childhoods, resources for education, opportunities to build a comfortable life.

I can’t change what they had, and what I didn’t.

They didn’t do that to me. No one did.

What I can do is help.

Help people who were disadvantaged like me. Resenting people who had more, that does nothing. After all, so many people with more shared so much with me.

There is a system that freezes these inequities in place, that locks out people with potential who lack the means to navigate the unfamiliar mazes of class and station. After all, it’s hard to navigate college admissions with parents who never finished high school.

Harder still to improve your position when you need to work to help the family while your peers devote the same time to study, extracurriculars, and “networking”, and hardest yet when boil down to money; what will the education cost, how can I pay for that cost? Rather than what am I good at, and where do my interests lie?

I do not have resentment for the people who can more easily navigate that system, but I can work to change that system itself. I may have climbed from the bottom to the middle, but it wasn’t easy, and I had a lot of help and good fortune along the way. Most of those who were with me at the bottom remain there, as do their kids.

We can make a better world, or at least we can make the one we pretend already exists.

Have I learned to let go of my resentment of Leo? To forgive him. Having faced many of the same challenges, with more resources and support than he had, I’ve gained understanding. Gained empathy. But that doesn’t excuse what he did.

Nor does forgiveness. It doesn’t absolve him of the harms he committed. But forgiveness isn’t for Leo. It’s for me. And in learning to forgive even his worst acts, I can let their lingering toxicity begin to leave my body. I don’t need to weigh myself against him on some scale of morality outside of time. I don’t need to atone for his sins. They are his own, and I chose to be free of them.

The empathy I gained?

It doesn’t just go for Leo. It goes for everyone.

We all have some horror in our past.

Everyone carries a burden. Most are well hidden; you’ll never see them. It is amazing how much lighter the world can be when we all choose to just lift one another, even just a little.

I can’t possibly do for others what they have done for me. Likewise, so many can’t know what an impact their kindness has had, not only in helping me forge a life, but also in helping others.

The charity of every person who donated to give me and Angel that amazing Christmas when we were eight years old is amplified with every Christmas family I adopt through work or my wife’s book club, every wish I fulfill for a stranger online.

The stranger who sent me $1,000 the night before my tuition was due is rewarded when I pay off student loan debt or cover the fee for a friend to get a professional license.

I have plenty more examples of kindness given, and kindness received.

Kindness given: Paying for someone’s groceries when their card is declined to spare them some dignity.

Kindness received: Being bought clothes or furniture for one of the many new starts I needed.

Where we are able, we always have a choice to increase net good in the world.

We can choose to make things a little better, or a little worse. We can’t make choices for anyone else, but we can set examples and light the way.

I’m not perfect, I’m no saint. I’ve made the wrong choice so many times.

The lesson I needed to learn the most was letting go of resentment for myself.

The ledger doesn't balance when your abuser dies. The debts remain. Leo’s to me, mine to Angel, mine to myself. But perhaps the work isn't about collecting or forgiving those debts. It's about ensuring we don't pass them on.

I can’t change all the mistakes I’ve made. I’ll try to avoid new ones, but I’ll make those too. I’ll never know why Rhonda found it important to tell me the day after Angel died that, “She said that she was worried you didn’t love her.” But over twenty-five years hence, I’m not upset that she did. I needed to wrestle with the consequences of my actions.

Did the words hurt?

Yes, absolutely.

Do they still?

Sometimes.

Healing and forgiveness are neither a permanent state nor a final destination. They are goals I try to attain every day.

Most days I get there.

Some days I fall short.

Tomorrow I’ll do better.

This kind of vulnerable exploration of grief, growth, and meaning making is what I share every week with subscribers to Radical Kindness: Empathy as Rebellion. If you're on your own journey of healing and ethical living, I'd love to have you join our community.