Guest Post: Jason Dagel on the grief of losing a sister-in-law

 

Joslin with Jason & Jess at their wedding

Joslin's senior picture(as she wanted to be remembered)

Preface from Jess: Twenty-two years ago, Jason and I married quickly(in 6 days) so that Joslin could be part of our wedding, which I have never regretted. I have included a picture of us from our wedding, but you all should know that she hated how she looked in this stage of her life. Steroids had puffed her up and she hated her hair. I am including one of her senior pictures as well so you can see how she looked before in the hopes that she doesn't haunt my dreams over posting the wedding picture.

When Jess first floated the idea of me writing about my perspective on grief as a brother-in-law to her sister who died of cancer far too young, I needed time to think about it.  For those of you who know me, this is probably shocking, as I am not one to need a lot of time before sharing my thoughts.  But my first thought was that I didn’t think I would have that much to offer, my second thought was that this post might unintentionally cause pain or hurt feelings (and I’ve said many prayers since that it won’t), and my third thought was that maybe, just maybe, me putting words down might help someone (a major part of Jess’s motivation in doing this blog), so it’s worth a shot.  

Let me start with the second thought; I write this post with a bit of trepidation.  I have an awesome second family in Jess’s family, and I do not want to hurt any of them with anything I say here.  They are loving, caring, kind, wonderful people; their model of acceptance of me into their family would put Hollywood out of business in regard to in-law tropes if everyone were like them.  And so it is with prayers that my words will find their mark with my intended meaning and not harm people whom I love a lot that I write.  

Being the (relatively new) in-law in a family when grief happens means that, as the new person to the family, I journeyed two grief paths simultaneously, neither of which I fully understood starting out (and probably still don’t today – grief is a growth journey).  I’ll get to the second path in the next paragraph, but the first journey I found myself on was a journey of accompaniment – I journeyed supportively with people who knew Joslin more intimately than I did because of my status as a new family member.  Often, when stories are recalled, I’m not remembering – I’m imagining.  When photos are shared, I am only able to ask who the people are in them and what’s happening.  I am, in my role in the family as Jess’s husband and a son- and brother-in-law who cares deeply about my in-laws, a supporter.  I may have some vicarious sympathy with the pain, but I find that I am not able to fully empathize with it.  I know this is true because I can experience a grief conversation with them that I think is complete, but it resumes later as they’ve had more time to process; I often have the luxury of walking away from that initial conversation and thinking it was done.  I don’t think this inability to fully empathize is unique to me in Jess’s family’s journey, though; I have had the perspective to watch them all experience grief triggered by different things at different moments, so I know they don’t monolithically experience grief about Joslin’s loss in the exact same way either.  I would imagine they sometimes also experience more of a vicarious sympathy than true empathy in some of these moments.  I often find myself in a mode of asking questions when Joslin is discussed in Jess’s family.  I often wonder if asking for details to be filled in adds to the grief burden of others or whether it helps move the journey along to remember those details.  I am a product of two families who generally handle emotions very differently; my mom’s family generally feel all the emotions (the Care Bears have nothing on us), and on my dad’s side – well, let’s just say that the Build-a-Bear Workshop has nothing on us, either, with it’s ability to stuff.  But I learned early on as Jess’s family experienced grief openly, differently, and sometimes conflictingly, that ignoring their grief was not going to be an option.  I was going to accompany them and needed to figure out how to do it supportively, even when that grief caused conflict between them.  I made some mistakes in this; sometimes, I’m sure it felt like I was rushing the grief – trying to push them toward a resolution that doesn’t exist because I wasn’t comfortable living in that moment.  Sometimes, I’m guessing it felt that I was flippant about Joslin and her memory and had lost patience with the meandering nature of their grief journeys.  I hope they never felt these things, but I’m sure they did because, over time, I have grown in my understanding of grief, especially of grief due to such an unnatural loss.  Parents aren’t supposed to outlive their children, and siblings lose one another late in life – those are the natural rules, or at least they were in my experience to the point of Joslin’s death.  I learned to listen to the family, to really hear them and what they were saying: little things like the way people phrase support (“God has a purpose in this,” or “God must have needed an angel,” or my least favorite “This, too, shall pass”) have great potential to wound; euphemism does not make things better with grief because passing away isn’t anything different than dying; grief is about the loss people feel because of the death; sometimes the best thing to do is stay silent and listen.  Yes, there were, and still are, grief lessons that I learn from walking the journey with them supportively, but one thing hasn’t changed on this part of the grief journey – I cannot empathize with them in some of the same ways they can with one another.  That’s not a bad thing; it just is.  And I’ve learned that centering my grief to try to help them through theirs is not a strategy; listening, learning, hugging, affirming, crying, and thanking are all much more effective strategies with helping a grieving person when you didn’t know the person whose loss is being felt in the same way.  I am thankful to the Winkowitsch family for teaching me these lessons, and I continue to learn as I interact with them as we all journey through grief together.    

I had the awesome fortune of knowing Joslin for a number of years through youth group, work on the yearbook together, and finally a short college stint and a summer spent interacting with her after she relapsed and Jess and I had just married.  I had some memories of her and some impressions of who she was as a person, sister, friend, daughter, and leader.  She was, at her core, a kind, caring person and lover of animals who I can only wish had also lived long enough to have interacted with my daughter; there’s comfort in knowing that interaction will happen soon.  And this is the second grief path I found myself on when Joslin died; it is a parallel journey to one I have seen Jess and my in-laws experience, but it is one that takes primacy in the two journeys for me when I’m grieving alone.  It is grieving the loss of the potential of relationship with Joslin – for me, for my wife, for my daughter, and for the rest of the family.  Having known Joslin, it is hard not to believe that she would have spoiled the crap out of my daughter and her cousins.  It’s weird sometimes to think about the fact that she may have even chosen to live somewhere near us and may have been a regular physical presence in our lives – she seemed to be someone who would have preferred the activity of a city over rural life, but who knows what may have developed.  And that’s the thing – this journey through grief is all about missing the “what might’ve been.”  This is the grief that I feel most viscerally – that hurts the worst.  There is loss of the Joslin I knew, for sure, but for me, there is more loss of the Joslin that was yet to be.  Often, when we are on vacations or even doing things on a weekend night, I wonder if she would have been there with us.  I’m pretty sure with some of our shared interests that we would have had fun, robust conversations and probably would have grown close as a brother- and sister-in-law.  I wonder what her spouse might have been like…and whether there would have been more children from their family to interact with Andrew, Levi, and Annika.  And I think about how she may have drawn our family to other interests, other opportunities, about which we know nothing.  I think about the size of the table at my mother- and father-in-law’s house that has served the family well over the years by allowing us to all sit together, and I wish that Joslin’s family was there, too, to blow that all to pieces by making way too many of us to fit around it.  I wonder how many more games of RISK we would have played (linked to one of my favorite memories of her).  I wonder if we would have ever stopped laughing about burnt macaroni and cheese if she’d survived the cancer.  And I know that Jess’s family grieves these same things, just maybe a little differently.

So as I wrap up, I would share a reminder that grief is different for each person.  I share my journey in hopes that it supports Jess’s vision of using her grief to help other people.  And I am thankful for the grace and acceptance I find in Jess and her family through all of their grief; they have taught me that the best way to know how to support someone is to listen to them.  I can only imagine Joslin would be proud of Jess and her family for the work they are doing to help other people through grief as well, and I take great hope that I will know that for sure when we are reunited again.