I Don’t Feel Your Pain

December 16, 2011 — Pat Bertram

Soul-deep grief changes a person, or at least it should. I still don’t feel much different, and yet I’m gradually finding small differences in myself. First, I discovered I am no longer impatient. Ever since my life mate/soul mate died, there is no place I want to be more than any other place, no place I need to be. Next, I discovered I burnt my “if only”s behind me. I’d tormented myself with thoughts of what might have been if only I had done things differently, but the truth is, no matter what I would have done, he still would have died.

Recently I discovered a third difference: I am no longer a bleeding heart; nor do I attempt to be a surrogate sufferer (one who suffers so another doesn’t have to). Once upon a time, other people’s pain used to weigh heavy on me. It took the death of my life mate/soul mate to make me realize that by shouldering someone else’s pain, his in particular, I was:

a) doing him a disservice because it diminished the truth of his own experience. His pain belonged to him. In no way did my empathic pain lessen his pain. In fact, it made him feel worse, knowing how bad I felt for him.

b) not really feeling his pain. I was feeling what I imagined I might have felt in his situation, which means I was feeling my own pain, not his.

About a year before his death, he took a huge turn for the worst. We hugged every day, knowing each day might be his last, until one day I inadvertently jostled his ear (apparently the cancer had metastasized to that part of his body). An arrow of agony through him, and he pushed me away. From somewhere deep inside me, somewhere deeper than thought, came the harsh words, “He might be dying, but I am not.” (I’d only heard that voice once before, and it was a couple of minutes after I met him. Back then, the voice wailed, “But I don’t even like men with blond hair and brown eyes.”)

So, during that last year, he kept pushing me away — figuratively speaking; I didn’t touch him again until he was on morphine lest I cause him more agony — and I let him. I went about my life, untwinning myself from him as much as possible and cocooning my feelings so that I could survive his dying.

Afterward, I agonized over my dissociation from him. Once he had been everything to me. How could I have possibly have left him to his own pain?

Then I had an epiphany. (October 23, 2010 to be exact.) I realized if, during that last year, I had let myself see what he was feeling, let myself feel what his dying and his death would mean to me, I would have been in such agony I would have cried all the time. He would have hated that he was causing me so much pain, which would have made me feel even worse. I still couldn’t have done anything for him, so eventually I would have blocked out all that was happening. I would have gone on with my own life and left his dying to him. I would have become impatient with the restrictions of our life, with his weakness, with his retreat into himself. In other words, even if I could have gone back and relived that year knowing the truth of it, my behavior would have been the same. And he would still have died.

Ever since this epiphany, I’ve never bled for another person. A dear friend has been struggling with cancer. I feel helpless since there is nothing I can do except send messages of love. Part of me feels I should feel her pain, but mostly I know the truth — that it won’t help her — so I continue with my life and wait for her recovery. (She is surrounded by family so I am not abandoning her.)

Oddly, despite my non-bleeding heart, I have tapped into a deep well of compassion, especially for the bereft. I understand what they are going through, I connect to so many of them, but I don’t feel their pain as if it were my own, because it isn’t my pain. It belongs to them.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

What Do You Say to Someone Who is Grieving at Christmas?

December 15, 2011 — Pat Bertram

Christmas is a hard time of year for those who are grieving. Not only does the festivity of the season remind the bereft of all they have lost, but it’s a time for getting together with loved ones, and the goneness of that one special person seems even more unfathomable when you are alone or alone in a crowd.

Grief makes everyone uneasy. It’s a reminder how vulnerable we really are. How, despite our beliefs, we know so very little of life and death. Even well-meaning people stumble around the bereft, suddenly clumsy in the face of grief, and this unnatural behavior makes the griever feel even more alone. Some people give looks of speculation, as if you are diseased and they’re wondering if they should step away so they don’t catch your illness. Or else they give you wrinkled-forehead looks of sympathy that make you feel even worse.

Shortly after the death of my life mate/soul mate, I noticed how uncomfortable people were around me, and how they wanted to say the right thing but didn’t know what the right thing was, so I offered suggestions in What to Say to Someone Who is Grieving. I can see there might be a special concern about saying the right thing at Christmas, but the truth is, there is no right thing. Nothing you can ever say will bring the bereft what they most need: life to make sense once more. (That might not be what we most want, but it is what we most need.)

If you know the person huggingly well, the best thing is a hug. If you knew the deceased, share a story. “I remember how Bob loved (or hated) Christmas.” Don’t assume that by ignoring the dead you are making things easier for the bereft. We remember, and it’s nice to know that others remember, too. One thing to never say is, “I know how you feel.” You don’t. You can’t. Even if you had a similar loss, everyone’s grief is different, every person is different, and by telling them you know how they feel, you are diminishing the truth of their grief. Also, don’t pressure them to tell you how they feel. Grief encompasses so many different emotions, it’s almost impossible to know how one feels. All you know is that you are in pain.

It seems such an emotional minefield, doesn’t it? But, whether you are family, good friends, or casual aquaintances, there is something you can say, something that is so common and almost rote that no one stops to analyze the words. And still these words manage to convey exactly what you want to say. (In fact, leaving off these words may make the person even worse since they will know how uncomfortable you are with their grief.)

So, what do you say to someone who is grieving at Christmas?

You say, “Merry Christmas.”

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in culture, grief, How to. Tags: , , , , , , . 38 Comments »

Rethinking Ways to Think About Grief — Part II

December 12, 2011 — Pat Bertram

In yesterday’s post, Rethinking Ways to Think About Grief — Part I, I discussed some of the opinions about grief mentioned in the Time Magazine article of January 2011 “New Ways to Think About Grief.” Today’s post continues my evaluation of that Time Magazine article.

Supposedly, researchers have identified specific patterns to grief’s intensity and duration. (Sounds like “the stages of grief” all over again, doesn’t it?) “And what they have found is that the worst of grief is usually over within about six months. In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2002, Bonanno tracked 205 elderly people whose spouses died, and the largest group — about 45% of the participants — showed no signs of shock, despair, anxiety or intrusive thoughts six months after their loss.”

First, you can’t extrapolate a defining pattern of grief from 205 people, let alone a group of elderly people. Though there are some similarities in how those of us who lost a mate feel, grief is specific to each person. To make any generalities, especially with such a small group (and one that is not reflective of the population in general) is like telling us there are stages we go through when we know very well we didn’t go through any stages.

Second, the age of the person who died affects your grief. One of the things that has driven my grief is that my mate died when he was only 63. I could not comfort myself by saying that he’d lived out his full lifespan. I couldn’t comfort myself by saying at least he accomplished all he wanted. His dreams died with him. Another thing that drove my grief in the first year after my life mate’s death was my age. I come from long-lived people. I might have twenty-five or even thirty-five years to live without him. If we were both old, then we would already have grown old together, but I am now left to grow old alone. I’m not saying the elderly don’t grieve as much or feel as much as younger people. Nor am I denying that they have their own particular challenges to face. All I’m saying is that a study of elderly people has little relevance to the challenges the rest of us face. So much of my grief and that of my bereft friends stems from the relative youth of our mates and the long, lonely years stretching out before us, both facets of grief the elderly do not have to face.

Third, so what if 45% of the participants showed no signs of shock, despair, anxiety, or depression six months after their loss. That means a lot of people continued to suffer with these symptoms. And just because you’ve gotten over your shock and anxiety by six months, that does not mean you got over your grief. There are other facets of grief that do continue — bursts of grief, upsurges of sadness, missing your mate, yearning for him.

And Bonnano agrees: “That didn’t mean they didn’t still miss or think about their spouse, but by about half a year after their husband or wife died, they had returned to normal functioning.”

As for normal functioning (whatever that is) — I do not know of a single person who lost their mate who wasn’t functioning normally after a month or so. Generally, we functioned normally from the beginning. We felt our grief, we wept, we screamed, we cried out to our dead mates, but all of that was about relieving the incredible stress the death of one’s mate, one’s way of life, one’s dreams, all put on a person’s psyche. It was about making sense of the totally senseless. Coming to grips with how terribly gone the person is. But we continued to do everything we had to do despite how we felt.

Still, according to Bonnano’s study, some people’s grief left them earlier than other people’s grief. (I wonder how much grant money he spent trying to figure out that little gem.) His conclusion was that some people were simply more resilient than others, and the resilient ones handled their grief better.

Resilient? Resilient? I’ll tell you about resilient. While dealing with the horrendous loss of their mates, while still grieving well into their second year, women have travelled the world alone to honor their husband’s dream. By themselves, they have closed up the house they lived in for twenty years and moved halfway across the country. They have put in irrigation systems, have finished building a house, have written books, have taken up painting, have gone back to school, have started businesses, have blogged about their journey. They have made new friends. They have worked to support themselves and their families, and to pay the bills their husbands left behind. They have welcomed grown children back into their homes, helped take care of newborns and elderly parents. All while dealing with active grief. These women sound pretty resilient to me!

The article continues; “Only about 15% of the participants in Bonanno’s study were still having problems at 18 months. This small minority might be suffering from a syndrome clinicians are starting to call Prolonged Grief Disorder.” Perhaps some of those 15% needed help, but perhaps some of them had an added depth to their grief that not everyone feels. Grief depends in part on how many roles your spouse played in your life, perhaps best friend, lover, companion, support group, home, business partner, teacher/student, the one person who understood you, the one person who loved you no matter what. If your spouse played a single role, and other people played other roles, then your grief is considerably less complicated. But if your spouse was your soul mate, and he played all the roles, then each role has to be grieved and processed. Which could take a lifetime, especially since the one person who could help you through your grief is the very person you are grieving

For a small percentage of grievers, there is an additional shock to the system. If you were deeply connected to your mate in some mystical way, then part of you went with him when he died. You feel the breath of the eternal, the awesomeness of life and death. You feel — or almost feel — the driving force of the universe. This is something we humans are not equipped to handle, and so we grieve. And we yearn. And we search for new meaning.

But this mystical aspect of prolonged grief is not one that shows up in any study.

Bonnano concluded “What we do know is that while loss is forever, acute grief is not.” Sounds like a contradiction to me. Nowhere in the Time Magazine article, except for that last sentence, was there any mention of “acute grief.” Because yes, there are variations of grief, perhaps even vague stages, just not the typical stages that have been rammed down our throats.

One final contradiction. The woman who wrote the article spent many words telling us that talking about our grief or going to grief support groups didn’t help, but that “perhaps just the knowledge that our survival instinct is strong and that a great many people have not only endured terrible losses but also thrived can be a source of hope, something in scarce supply in our grief culture.” That is exactly true. But without grief support groups, without talking about it, without sharing what we are experiencing, how would anyone ever know there is hope?

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 20 Comments »

Rethinking Ways to Think About Grief — Part I

December 11, 2011 — Pat Bertram

A few months ago, another woman who had lost her mate and I were talking about how unstoic we’ve been about our grief. We cried when we needed to, screamed it to the heavens, flung it into the blogosphere. We admitted to feeling a bit childish, because in earlier days, people just accepted death and moved on. We decided that if we had lived in an earlier age — pioneer times, for example — we might have acted the same as they did, but since we live in the times we do, we have the luxury of letting grief take its course.

This conversation niggled at me. How do we know pioneer women just accepted death and moved on? How do we know they didn’t cry themselves to sleep when they lost a child or a their husband? How do we know they didn’t scream their loss to the heavens or suffer a crisis of faith?

So much of what we know about earlier times is from men — probably sociopathic men who have no feelings or sense of empathy for another’s suffering. (Not all sociopaths are serial killers. Some psychologists estimate that there are thirty thousand psychopaths who are not serial killers for every one who is. What makes a sociopath is lack of empathy, conscience, and remorse.) Most pioneer women didn’t read or write. (Which could be another myth?) If so how would they ever be able to convey to future women (us) how they felt?

Last night online I tried to find out the truth about the way early American women grieved, not just as dictated by their societal and religious mores, but how they really coped.

I didn’t find out much. Since grief is such an individual process, I would presume they grieved much like anyone today who has to work from morning to dawn. In other words, they found themselves crying at odd moments of privacy when no one could see them. Grief at the loss of a child or a partner is endemic. The show of grief is what changes from culture to culture.

In my online search, I came across an article in Time Magazine that had been published at the beginning of the year: “New Ways to Think About Grief.” The article started out great, debunking Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s stages of grief. They agreed with what I’ve been saying all along, that what we bereft mostly feel is a yearning to see our loved ones again. The Kübler-Ross grief model doesn’t hold true for most of us, and why should it? Those stages were conceived as a way of showing how people came to accept their own dying, not how people learned to deal with the death of others.

Then the article entered a gray area: One study of 66 people by George Bonanno, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College who specializes in the psychology of loss and trauma, suggests that tamping down, not expressing, or avoiding negative feelings, known as “repressive coping,” actually has a protective function.

Another 60 person “study conducted by the husband-and-wife research team Wolfgang and Margaret Stroebe of Utrecht University found that widows who avoided confronting their loss were not any more depressed than widows who “worked through” their grief. As to the importance of giving grief a voice, several other studies done by the Stroebes indicated that talking or writing about the death of a spouse did not help people adjust to that loss any better.”

I don’t know who those people in the studies are or how they were chosen. All I know is that in life and on the internet, every one of the bereft I have encountered found comfort in talking about their grief, or in writing a grief journal or letters to their mates. But what really helped all of us was listening to others tell their story. Grief is so isolating that it’s important to know we are not alone. It’s possible some of those people in the study weren’t deeply connected to their spouse — not every spouse is a soul mate — and so it didn’t feel as if they’d had part of them amputated. It’s possible some of those in the studies had young families to care for. Like the pioneer women mentioned above, they would have no time for grief. It’s also possible those in the study had large families or many friends to surround them with love and give them needed hugs. Those at the grief support group I went to were mostly alone and lost, with no one to hang on to. So we hung on to each other. That is the benefit of grief groups. The connection.

Interestingly enough, in not a single discussion, online or offline, did any of the bereft I encountered indulge in negative thinking. We were all trying to find a way through the morass of physical pain and emotional shock. We were bewildered by what had happened to us and our mates, and though some had unresolved issues with their mates, they never gave in to bad mouthing their relationship. It was all about the love that once was there and now is gone.

(This rant of mine was so long, I’ll post the other half tomorrow.)

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

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 »

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.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , . 10 Comments »
« Older posts
Newer posts »