(Names Changed)
We want people to behave toward us in a certain way. When they don’t, we get angry. Without saying why, we may act out our anger by being cold or withdrawn. If we have enough anger or the right opportunity we may even let the person, now the adversary, know why we are angry and how their behaviour had hurt us. After that, when nothing changes, we may take our anger, turn it into a grudge and hang it in gold frames in the living room of our mind. There, it stays forever and we look at it every day. It is not healthy for us to do this. It only serves to perpetuate our bad feelings and make us feel hurt every time our mind’s eye roams and glances at the gilded memory. Yet we do it anyway. There is however a cure. There is one thing that can make it all go away. There is one thing that can take the grudge out of its frame, the memories out of your mind and restore peace to your heart. And that is a simple apology.
It had been becoming more and more difficult for Beth to cope with the hospitalization of her husband. He had been chronically ill for years, but the last few years had forced him to have repeated long term hospital stays. Beth watched as he deteriorated mentally and physically. The doctors told her that as physiotherapy would help the body, mental stimulation would help the mind. The hospital provided the first, the second was up to family and friends. Over time, despite Beth’s request, life got in the way, and people’s visits to her husband became less and less. He no longer had the strength to lift a book and began to spend all day looking at the television. As depression due to the deterioration of his body took its toll, her husband stopped listening to tapes and music as well. Visitors provided the only stimulation for his mind and the only break in the monotony of the day. But people have lives and forget and, as time went on, Beth’s husband’s visitors became fewer and far between. And finally, Beth’s husband was gone.
Beth was moving ahead with her life and so, was taken aback, when someone who had ignored their needs and requests for visits over the last several years approached her and without even a greeting just said, “I went at night.”
At first, Beth had no idea what he was saying. “What?” was all she could ask. “I did visit,” he said. “I went late at night.” Beth couldn’t understand why she was being approached in the first place. Further, she wondered, why would someone deliberately visit a person in the hospital when they thought they would be sleeping? Especially someone who desperately needed conversation and stimulation.
Beth became angry. Her mind began to unpack those grudges in the gilded frames she had worked so hard on herself to take down and rehang them in her mind. She told me, “A simple apology would have helped so much. Just to simply say, ‘I’m sorry I never visited your husband’ would have been the best for me. But to come to me with this….this… I didn’t know what it was; a rationalization or perhaps a need for absolution or just a way to make him feel better with his own conscience, just made me angry and caused me to relive the pain of my husband’s loneliness. Silence or, better yet, an apology would have been appropriate, even nice.” She said. “But, this was hurtful and selfish.”
Beth told me that in contrast, in response to her earlier request for visitors for her husband, an old friend approached her. He apologized and explained that he could not visit her husband. His mother had recently died in that hospital and it was too difficult for him to go there. He offered to help out in other ways. Beth accepted the apology and felt fine with it. He had been honest and open and had in essence responded to her request, even if it wasn’t the response she hoped for. She had wished others had done the same.
Life often gets in the way of what we know is right. We procrastinate and put off things, especially if we find them unpleasant (for some of us hospital visits,). And suddenly, it is too late and we cannot make amends. At that point we simply need to face facts. We have done wrong and an apology is in order. To rationalize, to make excuses, to lie, to defend ourselves instead of facing our weakness may make us feel better about ourselves in any situation. To hoist this on someone else, in this case – a well spouse, is simply cruel.
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