The first time I saw him after his diagnosis was when I was on the door at church welcoming people to the Sunday morning meeting. He and his wife arrived and I said the standard things and then, feeling I had to say something, I started talking. 'Do you watch West Wing?'
They shook their heads.
'Well, the President in that has MS and he does fine; he manages to run the country.' I could feel my sentence shrivelling up as it came out of my mouth.They smiled weakly at me and moved on into the main hall.
The next people who arrived found me, statue-like, staring at the wall, muttering to myself, 'I didn't really say that, did I? I couldn't have; I couldn't be that stupid. Oh, I did, ohmigosh ...'
P.S. I apologised to them afterwards, and I've spoken to them lots of times since and we're fine.
xx
4 comments:
surely better that then ignoring it completely, pretending everything is fine, and saying something really insensitive?
I would no doubt have said the same thing, felt awful, wanted to remove my foot from my mouth etc, but I still think its better than saying nothing...
You probably felt much worse about it than they did. I imagine you'd have felt even worse if you'd said nothing at all. Don't give it another thought. We all have our moments.
I'm sure I've read this before so you must have emailed me but I thought it was on FLH.
Ah well, you are not alone in saying 'strange' things and Clare is quite right, plus I know you well, the man with MS probably thought afterwards, 'no doubt Liz meant to say something kind and I will take it that she did indeed'. For that will have been your only motive, I know.
Having said all that, in my own early days of knowing I had MS, I was super-sensitive to lots of people and what they said or didn't say, did or didn't do. If I had that time back, they'd see my back now has the look of a duck's with water rolling nicely down it.
I wish I hadn't used a water-based analogy - see, I say the wrong thing too.
I agree with Clare and Elsie - at least you said something. I remember how I resented people who said nothing, or even avoided me, after bereavement so I'm sure no offence was taken here.
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