Group

I can hardly believe it, but I’m thinking of joining another bereavement group. I like being around people who know what I’m in, and another round seems the simplest way to go.

At our last meeting we all exchanged contact information and agreed we ought to get together again. That was weeks ago, and so far not a peep from anybody. I’ve thought often of making the first move, but one of the things we laughed about was how people would want us to respond to them and do things we didn’t want to do, which is almost everything.

I especially didn’t want to come over all pushy because at the first meeting we had to promise not to hit on anyone in the group until it was over. No funny business, and definitely no hanky-panky. A friend of mine had even told me about a widower friend of his who became involved intimately with a member of his grief group. I’m not surprised, with all those tender hearts in the same room. The other man in our group didn’t come to the last few meetings, and without him it’d be me and three unstable women. I didn’t want what little testosterone I’ve got left to confuse things—a hopeful fear—so I hemmed and hawed and didn’t call anybody.

I still wanted another widower around, so I called to sign up for another bereavement group. It turned out that I just missed the beginning of the group after mine, and the next one wouldn’t start for seven weeks. In seven weeks I could be greeting each day with a glad cry and sailing effortlessly from success to triumph, loved and joyful every moment with no need or desire for a bereavement group. I signed up anyway.

I joined the first group because I was determined not to react habitually to life and to avoid my knee-jerk aversion to touchy-feely groups in general. My initial goal was simply to go to all of the meetings and participate as much as I could manage. I ended not wanting an end at all, and the first couple of groupless weeks seemed to be missing something, namely my group.

I had gotten used to that weekly space when everybody in the room had some idea of the gut-wrenching changes that were going on with me and all the others, and yet had no compulsion to ask me how I was doing, a perfectly understandable question with no meaningful answer. Seven weeks is forever, though, so I’m gonna call the old group and see what happens.