In 2014, my mom had two hip replacements six months apart. For over ten years prior to that, she was in incredible pain. However, you would have never known that she was feeling miserable. Why? Because she's a positive, optimistic person. And she's not a complainer. Other than mentioning to me and my sisters that she was having some pain and going to people like massage therapists and acupuncturists to try to cure it, we had no idea about the level of pain she was in.
Then one day, she saw a doctor who did some x-rays on her hips and discovered that her hips were basically rubbing bone-on-bone. No wonder she was in so much pain for all those years! Another thing you need to know about my mom is that she doesn't like doctors. She likes to take care of things naturally. So when she called me and told me that she was going to have surgery to get a hip replacement, I was shocked that she would go to such "extremes" because it was so out of her character.
It was then that I thought, "Wow, she must really be in a lot of pain if she's going to have surgery."
It might sound silly that I didn't give my mother's hip pain much thought, but she didn't really talk about it much. So I guess I just figured that it wasn't that bad.
I was wrong.
Looking back, I can now see that she was in excruciating pain. And you know how I know this? Because she's "back." What I mean by that is that her personality had slowly faded away. She wasn't as talkative. She didn't engage in deep conversation anymore (which she always loved to do). She didn't laugh as much. She wasn't really herself.
I guess it happened so slowly that it wasn't very noticeable. It's kind of like when your kids grow and get taller. You don't notice it because you see them every day. And also, I saw something similar happen to my Dad as he got older too, but for other health reasons.
After my Mom's experience with pain, I became much more aware - and sensitive - to other people who might also be going through similar pain. For example, a couple of days ago I had lunch with a friend I hadn't seen in years. As we were catching up, she was telling me about how her husband had excruciating back and spine pain. He lived on tons of ibuprofen. Sometimes the pain was so bad that his legs would literally give out from under him and he would scream. Like my mom, they also sought alternative treatment to treat his back problems. But overall, it was a long, difficult road for their family.
And pain is not just limited to physical pain either. I have so many Facebook friends who are going through intense grief over the loss of a loved one. Many of them have lost children, and some have lost spouses or parents. Whenever you lose a loved one, you sometimes live in a prison of grief. Having lost my father, I know how it feels. But I think with parents, the loss is in the natural order of things. Parents are supposed to die first. But when a parent loses a child, that pain never, ever subsides or goes away. I can't even imagine the intense pain some of those people are feeling.
My point here is that many times, we don't know when someone is in pain. Whether they are just simply not complaining about their hip or back pain, or they are putting on a happy face after a loved one dies and pretending everything is okay. People do that all the time.
And then because of the lack of complaining and the fake happy face, we assume they are fine and go along our merry way in life. In fact, I've heard many people who are experiencing grief feel almost angry that everyone else gets to go on with their lives, while they feel like they can't.
What I want you to get out of this is to reach out to someone and try to ask about their pain. You might not even know that they have pain. But if you do, it's important to lend a hand, or an ear, to extend your empathy. There might not even be anything you can actually do for them. But sometimes all people need is to know someone else cares enough to want to share their pain. Or at least unburden them by letting them have a shoulder to lean on.
I encourage all of you to look at the people around you in a different way. We all go through painful times in our lives, and having people to help us makes it just a little bit easier.