grief | Bertram's Blog

The Sad Song of Grief

January 16, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Music I started crying at the grocery store yesterday.

The last time I cried in public was a year and a half ago at that very supermarket, which reminds me of where my deceased life mate/soul mate and I used shop. I don’t often go to this store, but it’s the only place I can get the salad dressing I use. After I picked up the salad dressing bottle, I looked for some other flavors in that same store brand, wondering if I should try something new, and I saw a dressing he liked. It struck me as being unbearably sad, and right there, in the salad dressing aisle, I started to weep.

The tearfulness caught me by surprise, but I should have expected the flare-up because I’ve been struggling with sorrow for the past two weeks. This year was the third New Year since his death, and inexplicably it began with tears. Grief had been leaving me alone, and I hadn’t had a strong upsurge for a long time — I thought I was through with grief, to be honest — but when the calendar rolled over from 2012 to 2013, grief came calling once again.

This new phase of grief is different from all the others. There is no great pain, no bewilderment, no shattered heart, but sorrow is always with me like a sad song playing in the background of my life. I don’t notice it all the time or pay much attention to it, but still, it’s there.

Last night I watched A League of Their Own (the version he taped, where he cut out the bickering between the two sisters to make it more of a baseball movie) and it affected me more than I thought it would. When one girl got a telegram about her husband dying in the war, I realized that never again would I have to deal with the horrendous shock and sorrow of seeing my mate die, and when Bill Pullman came back from the war, I realized never again in this life would I have such a reunion with my mate. And Madonna’s “Playground” at the end about tore me up.

This used to be our playground (used to be)
This used to be our childhood dream
This used to be the place we ran to
I wish you were standing here with me

It dawned on me then that this latest version of grief feels like sorrow for the end of childhood. I am a long way past childhood, but there was an innocence to our relationship, a belief that no matter how bad things got, we would survive because we had each other. As I discovered though, my love for him couldn’t make him well, couldn’t take away a moment of his pain, couldn’t keep him from dying. The innocent belief that love conquers all, the belief in “us,” is destroyed forever, and I will never get it back, not until I’m dead, too.

It’s ironic — so much was destroyed by his death, but the one thing I thought would be destroyed (me) is still going strong. Sad, but strong.

I got through everything else grief has thrown at me, and I’ll get through this sad song, too. Just, apparently, not yet.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: A League of Their Own, end of childhood, end of innocence, grief and New Years, love conquers all, Madonna, Playground. 6 Comments »

30 Second Book Trailer For GRIEF: THE GREAT YEARNING

January 10, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Grief: The Great Yearning is a finalist in the memoir category for the Sharp Writ Book Awards, and they asked me for a 30 second introduction to the book for their “awards ceremony” video. A couple of days ago I posted a draft of this video and here’s the finished video blurb.

After I put this video together, I realized an interesting coincidence: All the photos were taken in August, around the 15th.

The first photo might look like the desert, but it’s a photo of him in Colorado at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a few months before he died. I didn’t even know I had the photo, but I found it in a computer file after he was gone, and it shattered what was left of my heart. It looked as if he’d already been moving away from me toward eternity. Oddly, though I didn’t plan it, the three photos I used in the video were all taken within a few minutes of each other on that excursion. The gnarled tree with the stormy clouds, the profound depth of the canyon, the photo of him looking to eternity all now seem to be signs of my unconscious grief.

The photo on the cover of the book is taken in the very same place, exactly a year earlier. The photo of the two of us together (the only photo ever taken of the two of us together) was taken exactly thirteen years earlier than the three photos. And we met exactly thirty-two years before that last trip to the Black Canyon. I had no idea August was such a significant month for me.

***

Posted in books, grief, relationships, writing. Tags: August, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Grief: The Great Yearning, Sharp Writ Book Awards, significant month. 15 Comments »

Grief and the Empty Timeline of Death

January 9, 2013 — Pat Bertram

My life mate/soul mate died 33 months ago. He was 63 at the time, a few months shy of his 64th birthday. Today, his mother called and during the conversation she mentioned that he would now be 66. This revelation stopped me in my mental tracks. 66?

During all these months, not once have I ever stopped to calculate what his age would have been had he lived. It felt as if time stopped when he died — not all time, just his time. And yet, his time continues. The timeline that began with his birth is still going on. When she mentioned his age, I got the mental image of a shadow of his ghost continuing to ride that timeline. Not him, not his spirit (because if he does still exist somewhere, he is outside of time) but simply the shadow of what might have been.

Normally such a thought would have swept me back into grief, but this image (at least for now) has me befuddled.

I’ve been thinking of him as 63 years old. As such, he is still older than I am, but I’ve been wondering how I will feel when I get to the age he was when he died, or later, when I grow older than he ever did. Will I feel foolish as a raddled 86-year-old, still yearning for such youthful-looking man? (The only photo I have of him was taken when he was not yet 50. And as my memories fade, that will be the only image I remember him by.)

And yet, there is his continuing timeline. What is growing older? Well, me, of course. I am aware that I will continue to age, but he will be forever a relatively young 63. Yet something — some shadow of him or his life — continues to grow older.

Or is his just an empty timeline now?

I spent most of last night learning how to use Microsoft Movie Maker and putting together a video blurb of Grief: The Great Yearning. The music piece was supposed to be thirty seconds, and it was, but there were also seven blank seconds on the end of the music clip, so that when the video finished playing, the timeline continued blankly for another seven seconds.

Perhaps it’s the coincidence of the two blank timelines that unsettles me, but I truly do not know how to grasp the concept of his empty timeline. He can’t continue to age, and yet his birthdays will come, year after year.

The emptiness of it all makes me want to weep; yet strangely, I am dry-eyed.

***

Posted in culture, grief, relationships. Tags: aging after death, empty timeline, Grief: The Great Yearning, growing older, Microsoft Movie Maker, the dead don't grow older. 8 Comments »

Is Grief a Medical Disorder or a Part of Life?

January 7, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Every once in a while I write a post that really strikes a chord with people, and such a post was The Half-Life of Grief. It’s garnered over 126 shares on Facebook alone, so apparently it’s an important message: grief is not simply emotional, but it’s physical, too. And if it’s physical, then no amount of sublimating our emotions will get rid of the grief. It’s in our very cells.

This is a message that the American Psychiatric Association doesn’t get. According to the updated Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to be released by the American Psychiatric Association, grief is considered a medical disorder, and should be treated as major depression. There used to be a bereavement exclusion in the description of major depression, but they have taken that away, and now more than a few days of pain after the loss of a loved one is considered a crisis. There can be “a few days of acute upset and then a much longer period of the longing, the tearfulness. But typically sleep, appetite, energy, concentration come back to normal more quickly than that.”

As I said in 2010 when I first posted the information about the APA getting rid of the bereavement exclusion: In whose world is grieving a medical condition that needs to be treated? Not my world. In my world, grief is one of the bookends of a relationship. Love. Grief. If grief is a medical condition, then watch out. One day love is going to be considered a treatable disease.

During the past couple of years, there has been a concerted effort by grief counselors, therapists, and other health professionals to rectify this gross misrepresentation of grief, but the American Psychiatric Association is sticking to their decision that grief is a medical disorder.

A medical disorder? For cripes sake, it doesn’t take a fistful of degrees to understand that for the majority of people who have lost someone important in their lives, grief is a completely sane and healthy reaction. So what if grief is hard? Someone we loved dearly is gone from our lives and will never return. What do they expect us to do, just blithely continue with our lives as if nothing important happened? As if the dead had never even existed? As if we’re happy about the situation? And even if we wanted to be joyful despite it all, there is the simple matter that our bodies also grieve, and we’d have physical reactions even if we were drugged into placidity.

I realize that in certain cases people do entertain thoughts of suicide, but those thoughts are part of the grief process. It’s only when people start stockpiling pills or buying guns or starving themselves on purpose that grief might become a medical concern.

Admittedly, some people do manage to continue after a major loss as if nothing happened, and to be honest, I thought I would be one of those people, but death and loss have a way of making themselves felt even in the strong and stoic.

It might seem from these grief posts that I dwell on grief, but I don’t. I dwell on life. And grief is part of life. I understand that. And so should the American Psychiatric Association.

***

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: American Psychiatric Association, bereavement, death, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, grief as a medical disorder. 6 Comments »

The Half-Life of Grief

January 5, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Recently I’ve been coming across a lot of articles and books touting the idea that people don’t need to grieve — it’s detrimental to their happiness and it doesn’t really gain them anything. These writers believe that when sad thoughts enter your mind, you should simply observe them and let them go. They are only thoughts, nothing real, nothing that can hurt you. The same goes for feelings of sadness. Examine them and let them go. In themselves, the feelings have no power. The only power is what you give them.

Sounds good, right? And to a certain extent this method works. But . . .

First of all, thoughts are real. When you study particle/wave physics and even quantum physics, it’s hard not to believe that at rock bottom, we are all just thoughts. Together, we think our current world into existence. Maybe we even think ourselves into existence. Or perhaps we are thoughts of the eternal Thinker. Who knows, certainly not me. But the point is, thoughts may not be something that can be touched with your fingers, but they are still tangible.

Second of all, grief is important. It’s a way of honoring those who have died, a way of pulling our world around us to accommodate the void they left behind, a way of learning to live with their absence and without their presence, a way of developing into our own person and renewing our reasons for living. Of course, we can develop and renew without grief, but being so familiar with death brings an urgency to the process.

Third of all, not all grief is emotional and mental. Sometimes grief is visceral. Physical. If you have lost a child or a soul mate, you literally lose a part of your physical self. Your child is connected to you by shared genes, and in the case of mothers, a shared body. With soul mates, you are connected by your very being. A lifetime of living together also connects you physically by the air you breathe, the foods you eat, the cellular materials that are exchanged via viruses and microbes, the energy fields that overlap.

One of the reasons such grievous losses as that of a child or a mate are so devastating is that not only do we grieve, so does our body. There were many times I could keep from feeling the loss emotionally or mentally, but I could still feel it in the marrow of my bones, in my cells.

People tell me that it takes three to five years to get past the worst of such a loss. Most people I know woke on their fourth anniversary to find a sense of renewal, and it makes sense that four years would be the half-life of grief. Our cells are continuously dying and being renewed. If it takes seven years for all the cells in one’s body to be renewed, then at my current stage of grief — 2 and 2/3 years — most of my cells still bear his imprint. By four years, less than half my cells will bear his imprint. And so gradually, the physical grief fades.

From the beginning, I was determined to get through my grief as quickly as possible so that I wouldn’t dishonor him (and me) by mourning his death for the rest of my life. I thought I was so strong and emotionally stable that I’d whiz through the process, but that did not happen, partly because I never took physical grief into consideration. I never even knew such grief existed, and neither, apparently, do writers who say that all you have to do to be happy is to let the feelings of sadness pass without feeding them.

***

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: being happy, grief and happiness, half-life of grief, loss of a child, physical grief, the reality of thoughts, thoughts. 33 Comments »

All Right With Death?

January 2, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Mystical desert A friend who lost her husband sent me an email today, relating something a woman told her. The woman said, “I’m not trying to put anything bad on my husband, but I think that if he died I would be all right with that.”

The statement shocked my friend, not just because of the tactlessness, but because of the lack of feeling.

People have said the same thing to me, and to be honest, it’s the way I felt when my life mate/soul mate was dying. I truly thought I would be okay. He’d been sick for so long and in such pain, I thought I’d be relieved when he died. And I was. For about an hour. Those last years of his life, I did many things to prepare myself for going on alone, and I thought I was prepared. That’s why my grief shocked me so much — it came from somewhere so deep inside, I had no idea such a place existed. My grief was beyond rationality, beyond emotion. It was visceral, as if part of my body and half my soul had died.

Some women truly don’t feel much after their husbands die. Sometimes the husband had been sick for so long they did their grieving before he died. Sometimes their relationship was so bad they were glad when it was over. And sometimes people are unable to feel anything. After all, about 5% of all humans are sociopaths — not killers, simply people without human emotions.

But the woman who made the remark could also be in denial, or not know the power of grief. If you know how you would feel if your spouse died, it would put an unbearable burden on you, especially if you think you are an independent woman. I mean, grief to such an extent as I felt seems anachronistic in this liberated day when we are all supposed to be strong and self-reliant. When people found out about my loss, they often gave me strange looks, as if I were an alien species they could not understand. Sometimes after such a look, people would said they could not imagine how they would feel if they lost their spouse. I always told them not to imagine it. They couldn’t. Until you have been there, you do not know the depths of such grief. You cannot know.

To be honest, I wish I didn’t know. Such grief changes your whole perception of yourself and your relationship to life. It makes you rethink who you are, where you came from, and where you are going, and there are no easy answers. The truth is, I was strong and self-reliant. Sure, my mate and I did everything together, but I was perfectly capable of doing things on my own. Still, 2 and 2/3 years after his death, I am struggling with feelings of pointlessness and meaninglessness, as if our shared life was the only thing that mattered. And maybe it was — then. For thirty-four years he was the focus of my life, and to a certain extent he still is. I feel his absence the way I once felt his presence.

For me, the strangest part of the woman’s sentence is her implication that not only would she be all right after he died, but she’d be okay with his death. In my case, I am mostly doing okay dealing with my mate’s absence. I can even accept the idea that he is dead — I have to so I can go on with my life. But as long as I am alive, I will never be all right with his death.

***

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: being all right with death, death of a spouse, dying, giref after two years, grief and independence, power of grief. 7 Comments »

A Child of Grief

December 27, 2012 — Pat Bertram

My life mate/soul mate died thirty-three months ago today, and I found myself hesitating before writing this post. I worried it might seem as if I am trying to keep myself in the center of a drama, a drama that has long since lost its power and poignancy. But the truth is, even though I am not actively mourning — at least not often, and not much — grief still shades every moment of my life.

When people fall in love, when they are giddy with hormones, when they get caught up in the emotion of their love and the dream of a wonderful new life together, their friends and family never tell them, “Okay. Enough. It’s time to get over your love and move on.” The whole world celebrates their love (or so it seems to the new couple), and everything they say and do for the rest of their lives is shaded by this focus on each other.

Grief reflects this process, though through a dark mirror. The newly bereft are buffeted by hormones, caught up in the emotion and pain of their loss, tormented by a future that no longer has any meaning, focused on someone who is no longer there. The loved one might be dead, but the love doesn’t die. (What do you do with love when it is no longer needed? I never have figured that one out.) And the bereft are told, “Okay. Enough. It’s time to get over your grief and move on.”

Other people get tired of our drama, but for us, it is always there — a blankness in our lives. An absence.

I am doing well, trying new things, preparing myself for a future alone. I have hermit tendencies, so to make sure that I don’t stagnate, I am planning adventures — simple excursions and experiences for today and complicated journeys for another time. From the beginning, I embraced my grief, wanting to process the guilts and regrets, the anger and fears as quickly as possible so I could charge into whatever the future held for me. I am now more determined than ever to celebrate life, and yet . . .and yet . . .

I am aware that if it weren’t for his death, I wouldn’t need to worry about my hermit tendencies. We were hermits together, friends in our solitude. Until those last years when he could barely drag himself out of bed, we did everything together, so there was no reason to plan solitary experiences or excursions. Every day with him brought the possibility of something exciting, even if only a long rambling conversation through history, science, philosophy and back to history, so there was no need to find a way to keep from stagnating. But now there is.

Grief has shaped my life in other ways. I am here in the desert because he is dead. I am taking care of my father because I am not needed elsewhere now that my life mate/soul mate is gone. I made new friends through my attendance at a grief support group, and those friendships have long outlasted the group. I am taking yoga classes, learning to find a new way to open to the universe because he is no longer here keeping me connected to the world.

His absence is still a very real presence in my life. I don’t feel his total goneness as much as I did at the beginning, but I am aware of his absence. My yearning to see him once more doesn’t claw at me the way it once did, but I am aware that I will never again hear his voice or be warmed by his smile. I am far beyond the days where I curled up, cradling my new pain and sorrow as if it were some sort of new born creature, but what those days did to me — stealing away the last of my naiveté, lightheartedness, and innocence — will remain with me forever.

I am a child of grief. No matter how adventurous or fulfilling my life might end up being, no matter who or what I grow to be, something deep inside of me will always be aware of the death that made these changes necessary, the absence that made them possible.

***

Posted in being me, culture, grief, life. Tags: death of a soul mate, grief and loss, living with grief, mourning, moving on, thirty-three months of grief. 12 Comments »

One Thousand and One Days of Grief

December 21, 2012 — Pat Bertram

Although yesterday’s post 1000 Days of Grief — and this one — might make it seem as if I am still counting the days of grief, I actually stopped counting after the first year. Once when I could not imagine ever being able to get through another hour, I counted to the 1000th day and marked it on the calendar. It seemed like a significant number — a guidepost — and I thought I should know the date. It is astonishing to me that I have managed to survive so many days since the death of my life mate/soul mate, but in truth, I am doing more than simply surviving. I am living.

Of the articles I have recently written, posts about celebrating various aspects of life outnumber my posts about grief, which puzzles me since I am not feeling at all festive. When you lose the person who connects you to the world, you have to find new ways of reconnecting to life, and apparently those celebratory posts are indicative of the changes in me, of how on a visceral level, my focus is turning away from death to life.

For so long, I didn’t feel right about embracing life when he was dead. I knew he wouldn’t want me to be sad, but frankly, he had no say in the matter, and for the most part, neither did I. Grief is a force, like a whirlwind, and all I could do was endure as best as I could until it lost its power. Even when the power of grief began waning, I still didn’t feel right about embracing life. It’s not so much that I had survivor’s guilt (especially since I wasn’t sure I still wanted to be here), but that it didn’t seem fair. If life is a gift, why was it taken from him?

Maybe he got the worst end of the deal by having to die so young. Maybe I got the worst end of the deal by having to live. This conundrum of who got the worst of the deal tormented me for a long time, but now I see that it doesn’t matter. It can’t matter. He died. I didn’t. That’s the way things are.

I’m starting to see myself as just me now, not as a shattered, left-behind half of a couple; starting to feel that whatever our life together meant, whatever our connection, this is my life. Not his. Not ours. Mine.

On a larger scale, perhaps, there is no such thing as “my life” and “his life” and “your life.” Maybe we are all somehow connected, like books on a library shelf, our stories interlocking and making a whole. But I cannot think of that larger scale right now. I need to be me, or rather, to find a new way of being, and oddly, this seems to be a typical leg in grief’s journey. I am taking a yoga class (therapy yoga, a gentler form of yoga that allows for one’s imitations) as part of my effort to open myself to new possibilities, and I recently discovered that, coincidentally, all the women in the class have lost their husbands. Our losses vary from one to ten years, but we are all striving for a new way of being, a new focus. We are also all trying to learn how to take care of ourselves in our old age since we won’t be growing old with anyone.

Whether I count the days or not, time is still passing, and at an increasingly rapid rate. On September 16, 2015, it will be 2000 days since his death. (No, I didn’t count those days, I used a decimal birthday counter.) What will I be like in another 1000 days? What will my life be like? If the changes come as rapidly as in the previous 1000 days, I doubt I will recognize me. Whatever happens, though, the number of days since I was born into this new life that his death forced on me, has little significance except as another guidepost. Each day stands alone. Each day finds its own meaning. Each day is mine to survive, or to celebrate, as best as I can.

***

Posted in being me, grief, life. Tags: 1000 days of grief, 2000 days of grief, death of a spouse, grief's journey, my life, yoga therapy. Leave a Comment »

1000 Days of Grief

December 20, 2012 — Pat Bertram

1000 days have passed since the death of my life mate/soul mate.

1000 days. An incomprehensible number. At the beginning, I could not imagine living one more hour let alone one more day in such pain. And yet now 1000 of those days have passed and I don’t know where they went or how I survived them.

Even more incomprehensible, while I remember being in absolute agony those early months, beset by panic attacks, gut spasms, loss of breath, inability to grip things and hundreds of other physical and emotional affects, there is an element of blank to the memories, as if it were someone else in such distress. I remember screaming to the winds, though I can’t exactly recall what it felt like to be so stressed that only screaming could relieve the pain. I remember feeling as if I would die if I did not hear his voice, see his smile, feel his arms around me one more time. I remember the horrible feeling of goneness I was left with, as if half my soul had been wrenched from my body leaving an immeasurable void, but now I am bewildered by it all. Was that really me — staid, stoic me — lost in such an emotional maelstrom?

Most incomprehensible of all, as recently as a month or two ago, I was still subject to occasional flashes of raw agony, but even those seem far removed now. I still have times of tears, and probably always will have. How could I not? Someone whose very breath meant more to me than my own is gone — gone where, I do not know. But I no longer feel as if half of me has been amputated. I am just me now, not a shattered, left-behind half of a couple. Or maybe I have simply become used to this new state, as if this is the way my life has always been.

I still hate that he’s dead, but I’m also aware that his death has set me free. I spent many years watching him waste away, numbing myself to his pain, waking every morning to the possibility that he hadn’t lasted the night, dreading the end, worrying if I were up to the task of fulfilling his final wishes. All that is gone now, though the feelings of dread and worry and doubt inexplicably lasted way into this third year of grief. I used to think that grief was his final gift to me — despite the angst and agony, I embraced grief like a friend. I knew instinctively it would take me where I needed to go.

But now I know freedom was his final gift, though it was as unwanted and as unasked for as the grief. I haven’t learned yet what to do with this freedom. Perhaps if I embrace it as I did my grief, it will also take me where I need to go.

I’m still so very sad, though I am more at peace than I have been for a long time. In fact, the same photo of him that was too painful for me even to peek at for more than eighteen months after his death, now sometimes makes me smile. It might take me the rest of my life to puzzle out the meaning of our shared life, our incredibly bond, his death — if in fact there is a meaning — but what I’m left with right now is the knowledge that for whatever reason, he shared his life with me. He shared his dying. And then he set me free.

***

Posted in being me, grief, life, relationships. Tags: 1000 days of grief, death of a soul mate, gift of freedom, third year of grief, two years of grief. 24 Comments »

After Grief: Crashing the Party of Life

December 14, 2012 — Pat Bertram

witch Once a long time ago, I crashed a Halloween party. It sounds as if I am very bold, doesn’t it? But truly, it was out of character for me, and besides, I was in costume. I remember that the party was given by a friend of a friend, but I have no idea how or why I decided to go — perhaps as a joke to see how long it would take for people to realize they didn’t know me.

I dressed as a comic-book witch — the whole bit: long black scraggly hair, puttied nose and chin almost meeting, heavy black brows, green-tinged skin, cackling voice. I walked into the party as if I belonged there, and for a while I was the belle of the ball as people tried to guess who I was. It finally occurred to one guy that I was a total stranger. So I left. Rather hurriedly.

That’s how I feel now as I am reawakening to the world after the numbness that gripped me during the long dying of my life mate/soul mate and the grief I experienced after his death — as if I have crashed a party, and I don’t know myself or any of the guests. Everyone seems costumed in happiness and success, though I know those facades are as misleading as mine. Our smiles and even our laughter hide old sorrows and new insecurities.

I couldn’t follow my mate to wherever he went, so I this is what is left to me — trying to find my way alone, wondering why I am at the party. I don’t belong, but where else would I be?

I remember the quiet excitement I felt at that Halloween party, the adrenaline rush of stepping out of my normal life, and occasionally I feel that now, as if the world is opening to me, if I only knew what to do with it. I left that Halloween party when the situation became too uncomfortable, but I don’t have that option now. Even though I am not comfortable with life’s party I have inadvertantly ended up attending, I have to stick it out, waiting for . . . what? I do not know.

And so here I am, boldly acting as if I belong, but secretly wondering if anyone will guess that I am a stranger in a strange land.

***