DMV & Grief
I think the DMV gets a bad wrap. Just like attorneys often get a bad reputation. Not every DMV employee is a horrible person. Not every attorney is a horrible person. Because of my love, I worked with attorneys that often had compassion fatigue from giving so much to help their clients. I have also met attorneys that give the whole profession a bad name.
Today I did a task I have put off for 3 years and I had to do this task at the DMV. It started where I thought “see not every person who works at the DMV is horrible.” I had one of those employees that was so kind and compassionate from the start. I stated this task involved my dead spouse. They seemed to understand it was going to be difficult no matter what because of my grief so slowly and with such kindness helped me go through my paperwork.
We got through the initial review of the documents and realized I was short one piece of paper. That document could be retrieved easily just across the street at my bank. I left, went to my bank, got the document, and felt my anxiety go down because it felt like all would go easily now that I had the last piece of paperwork.
It was a false sense of security because I needed to go back to the DMV and I unfortunately had a person who is one of those reasons the DMV gets their bad reputation.
This time I got someone who wasn’t understanding at all. I am sure she is this way with everyone not just a grieving widow. As she didn’t seem to care I lost my spouse. She didn’t seem care that doing all the things that come with having someone close to you die is overwhelming. She didn’t seem care if just doing this kind of thing is hard on a regular day, but with grief it makes difficult tasks even more difficult.
The first statement from this employee to me was “why didn’t you do this before they died? Or at least sooner, it would have been better if you did.” It was said with a patronizing tone and disdain towards me. She later repeated the line, “you should have done this sooner.” I did reply that grief doesn’t have a timeline or a date on the calendar when things feel better.
You might think saying that might have made her pause and be a little more kind or compassionate, but nothing changed. The whole time she seemed to go out of the way to make things hard for me like when I verified what lines I needed to fill out she said sternly, “Didn’t I just tell you!” The form had several lines for a piece of info and I asked if I could use all those lines as I needed to put name and dates of two people on it and she said, “no just one line.” So I did that and then when I gave her the form back I was told that I didn’t listen and should have used all the lines.
Now I am a sensitive person normally. I cry easily, but with grief I pretty much will cry in places I normally wouldn’t have ever done before. I have cried and left a whole cart of food (apologized and told a clerk before walking away,) at a car wash, at the bank multiple times, and just every place I never did until grieving.
From her first remarks I had tears coming down my face, but each and every remark after that just made them keep flowing. She said she would get me through this, but she didn’t realize she was part of the issue. That it just wasn’t my grief making me emotional - it was HER adding to my grief as I wouldn’t have EVER had to do this if my love was still with me here.
I don’t feel most people know how to handle grief. Even my physician at times handles my grief and pain from it - horribly. I have just come expect most people to handle grief poorly even when you think they should have had some training. I do hope and expect people to have just a little empathy and compassion - even enough to fill the tip of my pinky would help. Unfortunately so far, that hasn’t been my experience.
This task is done. I wish more training was given to people that serve the community. My 2 hours of doing this task did send me to bed with a migraine after - which I don’t think is surprising unfortunately.
