Ten Things I Know to Be Absolutely Certain

December 10, 2011 — Pat Bertram

Every time I publish a new post to this blog, I get suggestions for topics from WordPress. One such topic — ten things I know to be absolutely certain — caught my attention several days ago, so I started making a list. This is as far as I got:

1.
2.
3.

For a week now, that list has been sitting by the side of my computer. I can’t think of a single thing I know for absolutely certain.

I used to be enamored with particle physics and quantum physics. I loved that everything could be broken down into smaller and smaller particles, until you ended up with a particle that acted like a wave or a wave that acted like a particle or some such, and then if you broke that wave/particle down into further components, you ended up with . . . nothing. Which to me means that the universe was created out of nothing, not just way at the beginning with what some people call the big bang, but that every single day the universe creates itself out of nothing. So how can one be certain of anything when nothing exists? Whether any of this is true or simply my own bizarre extension of an already bizarre idea, I have no way of knowing, let alone knowing to an absolute certainty.

I’m sitting here at my computer, with my elbows on the table, wondering if there is a certainty about that, but since all solid matter is mostly air — the particles that create the atoms that create the molecules that create the table are so far apart as to be bits of dust floating in empty space. Yet somehow my brain translates those particles into the table and my computer. At least I think it’s my brain that does it; I don’t know. I can only assume I have a brain. I have never seen it. I think and feel, but perhaps those thoughts and feelings don’t exist either — they could be brain blips, things my brain tells me are real for its own nefarious reasons.

And what about me? Do I exist? I listened to a pod cast the other night where a biologist explained his theory that what differentiates us one from the other is not our brain or a soul somewhere deep inside, but something from without. Eternal energy, perhaps. Specific rays of energy that are beamed into our body/minds like television signals into a television channel. A fascinating idea, but it’s only that — an idea. Not something anyone knows for certain.

I took a walk in the desert today. I could feel the warm air, smell the drying cresote bushes, hear the ravens overhead, feel the ground beneath my feet. For a moment or two I was not a separate being walking in the desert — I was connected to it in so many ways that it seemed we were a single entity: desert/woman. And that could be the truth — our bodies do not end in a hard barrier but extend beyond our cells to where there is an overlap with our environment — with something that is not us. Or maybe it is us. Maybe we are everything and everything is us.

Okay — now I know one thing for absolutely certain. I spend too much time alone walking in the desert. Where else would such mystic ideas come from?

Posted in culture, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 6 Comments »

Grief: Counting the Days, Weeks, Months

December 8, 2011 — Pat Bertram

When you first lose a significant person in your life, one whose death rocks your world to its very foundations so nothing will ever be the same, it’s as if your internal clocks reset themselves.

At first, you count the hours you’ve lived since he died, then, after you’ve survived twenty-four or forty-eight interminable hours, you being counting the days. Eventually you move on to counting weeks, months, years, and even decades. To the uninitiated, this counting seems as if you’re dwelling on the past, constantly reminding yourself of your sorrow. But the truth is, it’s a recognition of life — your new life, the one that was born the day he died. It also tells your fellow travelers where you are on this terrible journey in the same way your age tells people where you are in life’s journey.

When I talk about Saturday, my sadder day, and mention how many sad Saturdays I’ve survived, it’s not the number that makes me sad. Nor is it the day that makes me sad.  It is the onset of sadness that makes me realize what day it is. The sadness is a subconscious, visceral reminder that I once loved, once was loved, once shared my life. Since I now count my grief by months, I often have to check my calendar to find out how many Saturdays I have mourned/celebrated that shared life. The number is merely a street sign, the name of a crossroad so others know where I am in relation to my grief. I don’t need the number. I know where I am — I can feel it.

I used to worry that I was putting myself in a bad light by all this talk of grief, that I might seem weak or even pathetic, but the more clearly I see this journey for what it is — not just resetting your internal clock but resetting your life — the more I understand the importance of showing the truth.

We live in a civilization that reveres positive thinking and positive thinkers. We admire people who bear their sorrow with a smile, who swallow their tears and talk brightly of their future. Perhaps they are admirable, perhaps they are in denial, perhaps it is their nature. But it puts an intolerable burden on those who have to push their grief deeper inside so that no one faults them for it.

We need people to show us a way to grieve, to show us their pain and their healing; otherwise, how are we to know what is the truth of grief? So often, the bereft feel they are crazy because they’ve never seen/read/heard of anyone who experienced such symptoms as theirs. We’re so ingrained into believing that Kubler Ross’s stages are the blueprint for grief, that anything else is abnormal. But in my experience (talking to others who have lost their mates), her stages are mere blips in the spectrum of grief. Other stages are much more prevalent: physical pain (not just emotional), bewilderment, yearning, seeking. And counting.

Counting isn’t really a stage. It’s more that we are aware of the ticking of our internal clocks, the clocks that were reset on the day he died.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , . 12 Comments »

Growing into the Woman I Am to Become

December 7, 2011 — Pat Bertram

In a previous post, Maiden/Mother/Crone — The Mythic Stages of a Woman’s Life, I talked about living my mother stage first. I was the oldest girl in a large family, and by the time I was five, I could cook simple meals, clean house, do laundry, feed babies their bottles, and change diapers. By the time I was eighteen, I’d changed more diapers than most women do in a lifetime.  Then, in my middle years, I reached the crone stage. Crones care for the dying and are spiritual midwives at the end of life, the link in the cycle of death and rebirth. A few years after I met the man with whom I would spend the middle third of my life, his health took a turn for the worse. I wasn’t much of a healer, but I was a stayer — I stayed with him until he died. I also helped out when my mother died. I’m now staying with my 95-year-old father, helping him to be as independent as he can be during his final years.

When this part of my life’s journey, this crone stage, has played itself out, the only stage left for me is maidenhood. According to Lisa Levart, author of Goddess on Earth, the maiden aspect of the Goddess is symbolic of new beginnings, youthful enthusiasm, independence, and a time when a girl is growing into the woman she is to become.

Who is this woman I will become? I already know she will be patient. I know she will be forward-looking, leaving all her “if only”s behind. I hope she will be bold and adventurous, able to embrace new beginnings, youthful enthusiasm, and independence. Most of all, I hope she will be spontaneous.

Life with someone who is chronically ill destroys your spontaneity. You have to be practical, and you have to plan, taking his limitations into consideration.  You can try to take time for yourself, but so often the constraints of his illness rule your life.

Two or three years before my life mate/soul mate died, he told me he regretted that he killed my spontaneity. He loved that I had been so spontaneous, and it saddened him that I became captive of the regimens he needed to follow to keep himself as healthy as possible. This declaration surprised me because I had never considered myself particularly spontaneous. To be honest, before I met him, I’d always been a bit careful — not timid, but not carefree, either. Meeting him brought such a surge of energy into my life (he was radiant, back then, glowing with health and happiness) that I felt emboldened to try new things. I’d never seen the point of life (though I spent my youth searching for meaning), and I never really felt comfortable in the world. After I met him, I thought that if he were in the world, it must be a wondrous place. (This was before we ever got together, before either of us realized there was an “us.”) His radiance, faded and ragged though it may have been at the end, still lit my life, and now that he is dead, so is the light. And once again I’m searching for meaning.

To honor him and the life we shared (and to honor myself), I plan to be more spontaneous. (Did you smile at that wording? So did I. Old habits are hard to break.)

Spontaneous, bold, adventurous, enthusiastic, and independent. I can hardly wait to grow into this woman I intend to become. (But what will become of that woman I become? Will she be too old to make a difference? Ah, but those are questions for another day.)

Posted in culture, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Introducing Joylene Nowell Butler, author of “Dead Witness” and “Broken But Not Dead”

December 6, 2011 — Pat Bertram

Someone left a comment on my blog the other day, then apologized for intruding where he didn’t belong. This worried me. I wondered what I had done to make anyone feel unwelcome. Then it occurred to me that I have made so many friends here that perhaps it seems like a private blog. When you talk about the important things in life (writing, grief, life itself) you connect quickly, even though the commenters might live in such mythical places as Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Georgia (USA).

Joylene Nowell Butler was one such commenter who has now become a friend. We have never met, might never meet (though I would like to), but the connection is very real. She eased a terrible time in my life with her wisdom and sympathy, with her steadfast presence. I’m ashamed to admit, I am remiss about returning the favor and visiting her blog, A Moment At A Time On Cluculz Lake, though I intend to get over there more frequently. She has insightful posts, wonderful guests, and gorgeous photos of Cluculz Lake in Canada.

Joylene is the author of suspense thrillers Dead Witness and Broken But Not Dead. In honor of our friendship and the publication of her second book, I am gifting her with a mini blog tour.

I am interviewing her today on another of my blogs. Click here to find the interview: Pat Bertram Introduces . . . Joylene Nowell Butler, Author of “Broken but not Dead.” I always enjoy hearing (seeing) how other authors view writing and the writing life. Don’t you?

Click here to read an excerpt from: “Broken but not Dead” by Joylene Nowell Butler

More than three years ago, I posted an invitation to interview characters, and she was one of the few who took me up on my offer. It impressed the heck out of me! (That was how and where we met.) Here is that interview: Pat Bertram Introduces . . . Valerie McCormick, Hero of “Dead Witness” by Joylene Nowell Butler

Click here to read an excerpt from: “Dead Witness” by Joylene Nowell Butler

Thank you for everything, Joylene. I hope you have a fantastic New Year, filled with hope and peace and many wonders.

Posted in blogging, life, writing. Tags: , , , . 13 Comments »

The Awesome and Awesomely Terrible State of Grief

December 5, 2011 — Pat Bertram

Whenever I hear that one of my sisters (or brothers) in sorrow is being cajoled into taking drugs to overcome her grief, I want to lash out, and this is how I lash out — I write a blog about it.

Grief is not a medical disorder. If the bereft has sunk into a severe depression, if she can’t sleep, if she is suffering symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, perhaps pharmacopeia can help. But if the bereft is taking care of herself and her family, if she is connecting to people in a real way (or as real as is possible considering how isolating grief is), if she is not endangering herself or anyone else, then the last thing she needs is to be badgered into solving her problems by taking a pill.

Grief is not a problem to be solved. It is not an abnormality that needs to be corrected. Daily bursts of grief during the first two years are normal. In fact, for many bereft, the second year is worse than the first. The original shock of losing the most significant person in your life and the shock of confronting death on a visceral level do not begin to wane until after the first year. As that protective shroud begins to unwind, the truth is shown in all its stark horror. He is dead, and there is nothing you can do about it. Of course, you knew that, but during the second year, the knowledge seeps into your soul, and you feel the truth of it.

All during my first year of grief, I kept listening for the phone, hoping he would call and tell me I could come home, that he forgave me for whatever it was I did that made him reject me. I do not know where that thought came from. I never did anything (except small inconsideratenesses) for which I needed forgiveness. And he didn’t reject me. He died. But somehow, that is the way my mind made sense of the situation.

About fourteen months into my grief, the truth sunk in that he will never call to tell me I can come home. This set off an upsurge of grief that stayed with me for weeks. Now I’ve regained my equilibrium, but I still have bursts of grief every day. Sometimes they last seconds, sometimes they last minutes, sometimes they last longer. This is normal. Truly. (Not having bursts of grief everyday is normal, too, but that is not the issue here.)

All grief is not the same. I lost my brother and my mother a few years ago. I was sad at their deaths, but felt no great life-altering grief. Then my life mate/soul mate died, and his death caused such a soul quake that I am still reeling from the effects. (Recently, another layer of the shroud has unwound, and I can think more clearly now than I have for many years. I must have been more numb during the last years of his dying than I thought I’d been.)

Grief is not just a state of sadness. Grief is a regulator, rewiring our brains to accept the enormity of life and death. Grief is a prism, focusing our attention on the big picture, forcing us to ask the important questions of why we are here, where we are going, and how we connect with each other and the universe. Grief is a teacher, helping us to grow, to become more than we ever thought possible. (At least I think it does — I am not yet the person I hope to be.) Grief is also a gift, perhaps even a privilege. Not everyone has the opportunity (or the ability) to connect so deeply with another person that the death of that person changes the whole universe.

I make grief sound like a good thing, don’t I? And maybe it is. Why do all good things have to be happy things? Given a choice, of course, I’d rather him than having to deal with the pain of his absence, but it’s only by feeling the pain and processing it that I can see what it does and how it works. Sometimes I think my whole life has led to this very moment, to this place where I can separate the myriad feelings of grief and translate them, to explain the truth of this awesome and awesomely terrible state.

This normal state.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , . 10 Comments »

Getting a Grip on Grief

December 3, 2011 — Pat Bertram

Today is Saturday, my sadder day. The eighty-eighth one. It’s odd that my body remembers this is the day of the week my life mate/soul mate died. Even when I don’t remember, I wake up sadder than I normally do. (Whatever it is that remembers, though, can’t count. For that, I need a calendar to figure out exactly how many Saturdays he’s been gone.)

Despite the lingering sadness and random bursts of grief, I am healing. Today I casually picked up a glass, and it felt solid in my hand. Or perhaps I mean my hand felt solid on the glass. Seems a small thing, doesn’t it? But it’s a big step that came so quietly, I don’t have any idea when I got a grip.

During the first months after he died, I lost my grip, not just figuratively, but literally. Things often slipped through my fingers for no apparent reason. I simply couldn’t hold on. It seemed as if when I lost the connection with him, I lost the ability to connect with anything. Or maybe grief sapped all my strength. One night, a mug slipped from my hand. My fingers were crooked through the handle, so I don’t know how it happened, but all of a sudden the mug hit the hard tile floor and exploded. Well, actually, the mug shattered, but it sounded like an explosion. It wasn’t an expensive mug, nor did I have a particularly sentimental attachment to it — it was one of two give-aways we’d received from the phone company during a local festival — but I wept as if my heart had broken. Or as if he had died again.

Gathering up the shattered pieces and slivers of the mug, I understood for the first time that as the months and years passed, all our things would break or wear out, and every loss would take me one more step away from our life. This had such a profound affect on me, I made sure I had a good grip on anything breakable before I picked it up. Until tonight.

By such small steps, we heal the ragged wounds where our loved ones were ripped from our lives. By such small steps, we move into a life far from the one we once shared. By such small steps, we get a grip on grief.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , . 5 Comments »

Is There too Much Promotion on Facebook?

December 2, 2011 — Pat Bertram

I got a message from a woman on Facebook the other day asking if I’d be willing to write a post about too much promotion on sites like Facebook. At first, I thought this would be an easy task. I detest all the self-promotion that goes on at the site, especially in the groups.

Some promotion is understandable. Pages, of course, are all about “soft sell” promotion, and so any promotion that goes on there is part of the package.  Mostly I use my fan page for announcements, such as kindle sales, and for discussions. (You can find the current discussion here: Do your characters always act at maximum capacity? Should they?)

What people post on their own profile, of course, is up to them. Self-promotion is sometimes the least offensive thing they post on their profiles. How many times can the same dang too-annoyingly-cute-for-words animal video or cloyingly sweet sentimental photo/saying be shared? Sometimes the same thing shows up in the feed day after day after day after day. . . But I digress.

I thought I did a lot of promoting on my profile, in which case I would be the last person to talk about too much promotion on Facebook, but here is a list of the last twelve things I posted on my Facebook profile:

  • Two posts were about Malcolm’s Book Bits and Notions, a great compendium of links to publishing/writing/book news, which everyone in the industry should subscribe to.
  • Two posts were brags — 1) I just posted my 700th blog post!!! and 2) My blog is ranked 177,350 of all blogs and websites in the United States. People stay an average of 4 minutes. And based on internet averages, ptbertram.wordpress.com is visited more frequently by females who are graduate school educated and browse this site from work. At least according to Alexa.com
  • Two posts were pithy observations: 1) At the grocery store today, I saw a book written by someone I met here on facebook when they were first starting out. An odd commentary of our times when hitting the grocery store endstacks means hitting the big time. 2) I doubled my memory!! Facebook works faster now. I don’t.
  • One was an announcement for my live chat on gather.com: Maximum Capacity — No Whine, Just Champagne… | Gather (Same discussion as on my facebook page, but with different participants, and different comments and conclusions)
  • One was an announcement of an article (written by me) that was published in Angie’s Diary: Rhythm in Writing | Angie’s DIARY
  • One was an announcement of the Second Wind Publishing Short Story contest: Short Story Contest. No Entry Fee!
  • The remaining three were links to my blog posts.

Does any of that constitute promotion? In some respects, all of it does, but it’s not blatant. At least I don’t think it is. Maybe you have a different opinion on the matter.

Nor do I promote in the groups I moderate. I post links to interviews I do with other other authors, I welcome new members to the group, and sometimes I post questions to get people to talk. Mostly what I do as moderator is delete everyone’s promotions. The group decided to ban self-promotion except on Saturday because they were sick of it, but apparently everyone assumes that self-promotion is what everyone else does, not what they themselves do. So they continue to post links to their books, links to reviews of their books, requests to “like” their page, and all the other blatantly self-promoting things that we all do on occasion but hate when anyone else does.  Instead of just turning everyone loose on Saturday, I’ve turned Saturday into a self-promotion extravaganza, which has become a lot of fun, and maybe people sell a few books from it, but still, it’s promoting to other authors. We need to be promoting to readers, not each other. This is a concept many authors don’t seem to get. Nor do they seem to understand that being generous and promoting other authors does not take sales away from themselves. I keep plugging away, though, trying to build a kinder, more giving group, one that is not so deep into self-centered promotion.

So, when the woman asked me to write an aritcle, I thought I knew what to say: that there was too much self-promotion on Facebook. Anything interesting gets buried beneath the constant barrage of “Look at me! Buy my book!” But . . . and here’s the sad truth . . . for some people, this constant self-promotion is catapulting them into star status on Amazon. Just because I think there is too much promotion on Facebook, doesn’t mean that there is too much from other people’s points of view.

Recently I’ve been reading a lot of articles about promoting on Facebook, looking for the magic ingredient that I seem to be missing. The only thing I can see that I am missing is a willingness to constantly and blatantly plug my books. One guy maxed out five profiles and made a fortune.  (Of course, that fortune came from the money he made off his book telling how to max out your profile, but it was still a fortune.) I was near maximum capacity on my profile once, but didn’t want to have to switch solely to a page — I like the interaction on the profile — so I unfriended all the blatant promoters such as the multi-level marketers, the people trying to sell me self-improvement books, people urging me to buy their book that will tell me how to make money on facebook, the people who had maxed out their profiles or were about to, and I was left with about 2,000 friends. I’m trying to make friends with my friends, to see if in the long run that will help sell books. And if it doesn’t? I’ve still gained a lot of online friends.

This has turned out to be a rather lengthy post when in fact all I wanted was to get your opinion. Do you think there is too much promotion on Facebook? What would an acceptable form of promotion be? Do you mind all the promotion? Do you do a bit (or a lot) of promotion yourself? If so, what do you do to promote yourself?

Posted in How to, internet, life, writing. Tags: , , , , . 10 Comments »

Burning My “If Only”s Behind Me

November 29, 2011 — Pat Bertram

The other day I wrote about how grief changed me, that now I am more patient, and today I discovered another change. The death of “if only.” How many of us torment ourselves with thoughts of “if only”? And it is a torment, that thought of what might have been  . . . if only.

The bereft are especially prone to this syndrome.

I have talked to people who followed doctors’ orders or accepted the doctors’ hopeful prognoses, and now they are haunted by “if only”s. If only they had known it was their husband’s last day. If only they had known their mother would suffer so much longer under a doctor’s care than if she had been allowed to die at home. If only she hadn’t insisted on his going through another operation or round of chemo.

I have talked to people who didn’t follow doctors’ orders, and now they are haunted by a different set of “if only”s. If only if they had done what was prescribed. If only they had insisted their wife see a doctor. If only they had insisted their husband stop smoking.

If only . . .

I saw a twitter yesterday that said hope and maybe were two of the most damaging words in our language, but those words don’t even come close to the wreckage “if only” can do. (As for hope and maybe, as Virgil Sweet in Talent for the Game says, “Maybe is powerful stuff.”)

I had my share of “if only”s — if only he’d hadn’t been so sick, if only I could have helped him, if only I could have kept him from dying, if only I hadn’t taken his dying for granted. (It seems unreal, now, that we took for granted he would die young. Shouldn’t we have railed against it more? But he was so disciplined, focusing his energies on trying to prolong his life and be productive. It was just the way we lived.)

When I realized how few of us felt we did enough for our dying mates or hadn’t done it right, I came to the conclusion that in these situations there is no “right.” There is just “do.”

A couple of days ago I learned something about twitter (or rather, it seemed to click and I finally got it), but hash marks are used for tagging a post or for categorizing it. I hash marked grief before I posted a blog (#grief) and ended up getting an influx of readers to my blog (including a woman whose life mate/soul mate died the same day as mine, a woman who is facing her grief the same way I am, a woman who makes comments that sound exactly like what I would have written).

Astounded by this turn of events, I began to form the thought that if only I had known about the hash marks, I could have reached more people with my grief blogs, but the “if only” died in wordbirth. I couldn’t even think it. I realized then, I’d burnt up all my “if only”s. I had none left. Not one of my “if only”s had changed a single moment of his dying. Not one “if only” could change what had already happened. And not one ever would.

One of my sisters in sorrow uses this tagline line at the end of her emails, which I always marveled at because the sentiment seemed so positive compared to the horror of the grief she was living:

Perhaps it is true. And if the universe is unfolding as it should, there is no place for “if only,” so it’s just as well I burned all my “if only”s behind me.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , , . 15 Comments »

Grief’s Growing Pains

November 28, 2011 — Pat Bertram

I often walk in the desert, finding solace (and exercise) among the rocky knolls and creosote bushes. Sometimes I even find a bit of enlightenment. And so it was today.

From the beginning (odd how I always refer to my onset of grief as the “beginning,” when that time seemed to be all about “endings”), I tried to break grief down into its various components to demystify it and make it more manageable . When grief is new, one is bombarded with so many emotions, physical responses, and mental gymnastics that it is almost impossible to see/know/feel what is happening. As time passes and the bombardment slows, it’s easier to separate the feelings into categories and deal with them. As time continues to pass, some of the components of grief dissipate (such as the panic, the need to scream, the confusion) and some disappear (such as the nausea, dizziness, difficulty breathing, inability to eat or inability to stop eating). But always is the knowledge that the world is forever altered because your loved one is dead.

Now twenty months have passed since my life mate/soul mate died, and that awareness of his being dead is the part of grief I have the hardest time with. I miss him and yearn desperately for one more word from him, one more smile, but I can deal with that now — I’ve mostly grown used to it. I can also remember him and our shared life without breaking down. I can deal with what life throws at me even though he is no longer by my side. And I’m learning to deal with the loneliness and the aloneness. But what I can’t deal with is his being dead. That is where my mind hits a wall and causes so much pain I start crying.

I few days ago I wrote in my Grief Doesn’t Take a Holiday blog: He is gone, and there is nothing I can do about it. I keep
re-realizing those two simple facts. I do not think our brains are wired to understand the sheer goneness of death. Someone emailed me not long ago, expressing her admiration that I can talk about grief without feeling sorry for myself, but honestly, except for isolated moments, which I refuse to feed, I don’t feel sorry for myself. A lot of grief has to do with the mind disconnect that happens when you realize your loved one is no longer here on earth. It’s as if for a second you open up to a cosmic reality or an eternal truth. The façade of life shatters, and through the cracks you can almost see, almost sense, almost know . . .

And this is where today’s enlightment comes in. Out in the desert, which historically is a place for mystical thoughts, I realized that my tears are caused by growing pains. My mind/spirit/psyche is trying to stretch so it can understand why he is not here, why I can’t see him or hear him, why he is so very gone. Maybe my grief will burn itself out before my mind stretches enough to encompass such an enormous thought, but maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to where I need to be.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , , . 11 Comments »

Grief: Defragmenting and Making Room for Something Wonderful

November 27, 2011 — Pat Bertram

A had an interesting exchange with a facebook friend yesterday. She responded to my Gathering Patience for the Lonely Years Ahead bloggerie that I posted a couple days ago, and then she responded to my response. When I worry that I’m showing weakness by all my talk of grief,  I think of the people I’ve met who would have remained unencountered if I hadn’t let my vulnerabililty show, and I know I’m doing the right thing. Here’s the exchange:

PB (quoted from blog): A major loss in one’s life, such as the death of a long-time mate, often changes a person. For almost twenty months now, I’ve been saying I’m no different than I was, but lately I can feel a small change. It started with his long illness, developed during his final agonizing weeks, and came to fruition in the months since his death. This change? Patience. An ability to wait.

FBF: That patience will serve you well, Pat!  When you are coming out on the other side of the grief process, you will know that you can get through anything — including a long, painful wait.  I lost my partner in 2007, and it took four years to come to terms with it all, but I am now not in a hurry for ANYTHING! Before losing him, I could barely wait for my luggage at the airport without getting impatient. And the long years ahead don’t have to be lonely; you can never fill the void he left, but you can shift things inside, “de-fragment” and make room for more love than you could ever anticipate!! I’ll say a prayer for you tonight and wish for you love overflowing!

PB. I keep coming across that four year mark. It seems to be how long most people take to come to terms with it all. Which means I have a very long way to go. I’m looking forward to being where you are now. I can tell that your outlook was hard-won.

FBF: Yes, it was a long and arduous process, but there is no way it can be avoided.  Those who bury the emotions that come with profound loss (or simply ignore them) never come out on the other side. Rolling around in that mud smells rancid, looks terrible, feels slimy and dries crusty — but when you eventually stand up, take a shower and throw away those clothes (or bleach them and fold them away in a drawer) . . . it is no longer possible to be bothered by a little scuff, splotch, scrape, rip or splatter — never, ever again.  🙂

PB: The main shock for me was how long it takes. I thought two or three months would be enough. How naive of me! But in my defense, he’d been sick so long that I thought I’d already gone through all the stages of grief. I hadn’t a clue what an amputation it would be. Thank you for your comments tonight. I hadn’t realized how much I needed a bit of encouragement today.

FBF: Happy to give encouragement; I know what an emotional quagmire this can be. As time goes on, most of our friends and family who have not been through this amputation don’t understand why we are still wallowing.  They think we need to “snap out of it.”  Right now, I imagine the majority of the patience you have acquired is spent dealing with well-intentioned loved ones trying to rush you along in your grief process. Bless their hearts. 😉

—

Actually, the only person trying to rush my grief process is me. I get tired of relentlessly looking forward and trying not to dwell on the past. I get tired of the ups and downs, the sideways shimmies, the grief bursts, the rolling around in the emotional muck. I’ve always tried to keep myself on an even emotional keel, but unless I want that keel to be one of sadness, I have to keep going through the process. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about hurrying through grief to see what was on the other side and my disappointment at discovering that nothing wonderful waited for me. The truth is, I am not through with grief. I am not yet on the other side. During my good days, I think that I am, but then comes a hard day. Yesterday was such a day.

Not only was it Saturday, my sadderday, but I posted an excerpt from A Spark of Heavenly Fire here on my blog in preparation for #samplesunday on Twitter. Posting an excerpt should have been an innocuous, pain-free task, but this particular excerpt is one my life mate/soul mate and I worked on together. I’d write the scene, read it to him, and he’d tell me if it worked or not, then I’d rewrite it and read it to him again. I must have rewritten it at least ten times. It was my first real bit of violence, and I wanted it to zing. I felt very close to him when I posted the excerpt, remembering its creation. I felt as if we’d been together just a few days ago, and the thought that he is dead got to me.

Although today marks the twentieth month since he died, I’m back to my new normal, even felt a touch of “possibilty.” But days such as yesterday show me that I need patience for the long haul, patience while my psyche defragments to make room for something wonderful.

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