A friendship falters as forgiveness fades
She may say, "Hey, I've apologized already. You need to get over it." This is the knee-jerk reaction of someone who is at fault and wants to throttle past their wrongdoing. And that's when you should try to be brave and vulnerable to say, "Well, I'm still struggling."
Dear Amy: I'm in a bind.
A year ago, my wife died. At the time, I told only our close friends. It was hard enough telling them, much less anyone else.
It's still difficult for me to talk about.
Now I'm getting announcements about life events from the friends that I didn't tell, about their new grandchildren, or of their daughters or sons getting married.
I don't know what to tell them. I want to congratulate them, but I also feel that they deserve to be told about my wife.
It doesn't seem right to reply to their wonderful news with my tragic news. I don't know what to do. Can you help?
-- Wondering Widower
Dear Wondering: Yes, you should start to tell people about your wife's death. If you can't bring yourself to do this under any circumstances, I wonder if you can appoint a surrogate to handle this. If you have an intimate friend who you think might be particularly good at this, I think anyone who knows you and loves you would be happy to take on this task in order to help you through it.
Otherwise, write out a little script for yourself. Work on it until it sounds the way you want it to sound.
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