Behind the Puddle

There are situations where I know exactly what to do. Someone needs information, and I can find it. Something needs to be organized, so give me the pieces. There’s a problem with a possible solution, so let’s figure it out. Doing something feels good because it gives us somewhere to put our concern.

The harder situations are the ones where there isn’t anything to do. Someone we love is grieving. A diagnosis cannot be changed, a relationship has ended, or someone is waiting for an answer. A person is lonely. Something happened that cannot be undone.

There is no useful advice. There is no perfect resource. There is no sentence that will make the situation better. Those moments can make us terribly uncomfortable.

So we start reaching for things. Everything happens for a reason. At least… You have to stay positive. It’ll get better. Have you tried…?

Usually, we aren’t trying to dismiss someone. We’re trying desperately to give them something. Hope, comfort, an answer, anything. Because standing beside pain with empty hands can feel like we’re doing nothing.

I’m beginning to think we underestimate nothing, or at least what looks like nothing. Sitting down. Listening. Staying. Making coffee.

It can look like letting someone tell the same story again. It can be refusing to change the subject when they mention the person who died. It can mean allowing tears without immediately trying to stop them or sitting beside someone who doesn’t feel like talking. Sometimes, it is sending the message that says, “I was thinking about you,” and not requiring a response.

There is no solution in any of those things. But there is presence. And presence says something advice cannot: You don’t have to carry this particular moment alone.

I’ve spent years around conversations about death, dying, grief, and planning for things most of us would rather not think about. One thing becomes clearer the longer I do it. People don’t always need someone who knows what to say. Sometimes they need someone who isn’t afraid of what they might say.

They need someone who doesn’t need to make the sadness smaller. Someone who can hear, “I’m scared. I’m angry. I miss them. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want this.”

They need someone who can resist the urge to immediately make the sentence more comfortable. Sometimes there isn’t a better sentence. Sometimes, “I don’t want this” is simply true. Maybe presence is being willing to stay there anyway.

Behind the puddle, I’ve learned a quieter version of that lesson. Most days, nothing here needs me. The puddle doesn’t need advice. The trees aren’t asking me to improve their situation. The birds certainly haven’t requested my emotional support.

I sit. They do whatever they’re doing. Somehow, simply being there long enough has changed my relationship with the place. I notice more because I stay. Maybe people work that way too.

Not that we should sit silently staring at them for several hours like I do with the puddle. That might create entirely different concerns. But perhaps we discover more about one another when we stop arriving with an agenda.

Perhaps we discover more when the goal isn’t fixing, teaching, correcting, encouraging, or cheering someone up. When we aren’t simply waiting for our turn to talk. When we are just being with.

I think about the people who have done that for me. I don’t necessarily remember what they said. Sometimes, I can’t remember the conversation at all. I remember that they stayed.

They didn’t become frightened by the difficult part. They didn’t require me to make things easier for them. They let me be exactly where I was.

November is supposed to be about gratitude. Today, I’m grateful for those people. I’m grateful for the ones who understood that presence was enough. And I’m reminded that I can offer the same thing.

I don’t need the perfect words. I don’t need an answer. I don’t need to know how the story ends. Sometimes, the most meaningful thing I can bring into another person’s difficult moment is simply myself.

I don’t have to rescue them from it. I can simply make sure they aren’t standing there alone. Sometimes, presence really is enough.