A special welcome to anyone who is new to The Grieving Room. We meet every Monday evening. Whether your loss is recent or many years ago, whether you have lost a person or a pet, or even if the person you are "mourning" is still alive ("pre-grief" can be a very lonely and confusing time) you can come to this diary and process your grieving in whatever way works for you. Share whatever you need to share. We can't solve each other's problems, but we can be a sounding board and a place of connection.
When we grieve, so much is mixed up together. It is just not a simple straight-forward action. If you look at the spokes of a bike at rest, you can see the spokes in some order though it is hard to see each one individually. You could touch each spoke and you could even paint each spoke a different color and you could eventually sort them all out or even remove them all and lay them on a tarp neat and tidy. But if you spin the bike tire, the spokes blur together and that is what I am talking about tonight.
We don’t usually get to look at anything but the spokes spinning away in a blur when we are bereaved or in the process of losing a loved one. There is no time to separate things out or lay them out neatly in a row. There is no chance to consider what everything means in a tidy way.
Grief and feeling heartsick affects us in many ways and our feelings are hard to sort out. We have regrets, we have guilt, we have fears, we have people to deal with, we have the effect not only on our own lives, but we are involved with other family members and friends of the lost loved one. We have to sort out feelings of the past, the present, and the unknown future.
We are usually exhausted. Life doesn’t stop long enough to let us really grieve as we might need to do. We have to go back to work, back to caring for others, back to planning meals. At least, that is what happened to me.
We have to call people and give them the sad news and we have to take phone calls from those who are reaching out to us. Often, we don’t know what to say to them except thank you and I don’t know. Thank you for calling and I don’t know what you can do.
The roller coaster of emotions is in full swing. One minute we are accepting of what happened, one minute we are screaming that it can’t be. One day we can get through the activities and one day we utterly collapse. We can’t predict when we will be fine and when we will end up in tears.
One night at night school, a student explained how she had gone to another state, directed the funeral plans for her father and come home again, all in a natural voice. The next night, she was sitting on the floor outside my classroom dissolved in tears. I was not surprised.
The neurons in our brain can short-circuit just like a toaster. We can turn numb and our mind goes blank. We can have good dreams and bad dreams. We can see that some things have to be put off to think about later while we deal with what is the biggest problem of the moment. But later will come no matter how many years we put it off.
I knew my sister had been sick for years, but I thought she was doing well with her diabetes that she had had since she was nineteen. She was caring for her feet and eating the right things and taking her shots.
Yes, she was tired a lot and she had been fragile for a long time. But she didn’t want to lose her independence. She was feisty, all four feet eleven inches of her. She hated it when people thought she couldn’t do things because she was little. She didn’t weigh much soaking wet. But her mind was sharp.
She had lost a lot of her eyesight, but she began to paint pictures with tiny strokes. My idea of painting if I did it would be bright splotches, large and colorful, representing abstract things like vases and flowers. My sister literally copied photos she had taken in California. It took many, many hours for each painting. Then she would get them copied and frame them as gifts for us.
She began painting shortly after her dearest friend died too young who was an artist. When my sister died, I began practicing writing because as she had thought, we do not have time to put things off over and over. It was a wise lesson that she taught me.
Pictures of three of her paintings:
She spent many hours with her nieces and nephews doing fun things with them on the computer and with cameras and encouraging them. She loved to plant and care for flowers and she really frowned when I brought cut flowers to mom’s birthday parties.
She is about three in this picture and she is already watering things carefully.
The other thing she loved was Halloween. She would dress up to hand out candy. Once she was the Cat in the Hat and once she was a pumpkin. She and I went to the Renaissance Festival for several years and we both dressed up sometimes.
I made her a collage of one day at the Fest and she framed it. I also drove an hour each way and took her out for lunch about once a month for the several years after my mom died. I am so glad that despite working nights, I managed to do this. We also talked on the phone a lot. A few months after my sister died, my father died.
Here is a picture of a few of the lighthouses that I gave my dad for gifts and he gave them back to me in his will that I have mentioned here before. My oldest girl grandbaby who is six loves to look at these and she bought me one in FL. "I knew you didn’t have this one, grandma, because there is a palm tree on it."
It has been years since my folks and my sister died and of course, I miss them. It is especially hard when there are weddings and grandbabies being born. I know how much they would have loved them because they were all so good with my own three children.
I realize how lucky I am to have grandbabies to play with and to watch grow up as they learn to read, sing, and dance. It helps a lot to see the cycle of life going on. I am blessed.
My very best wishes to all here and many {{{{{{HUGS}}}}}} for wherever you are on the grief journey. I have reached the stage of acceptance and of being glad for the good memories. I have let go of many of the bad ones and of the confusion of the time, but it is complicated as I explained above. I think the Grieving Room and all of you who post have helped me tremendously the past years. Thank you!
Purple Priestess told me about the book by Neil Peart called Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road. It is a good book because he understands loss and he shares what he is doing to survive. He takes us with him as he rides a motorcycle for several months through four countries. His idea is to keep moving. It is so much more than a diary. We all can’t ride motorcycles, of course, but it is the other things he mentions that seem good to me.
He speaks of seeking things he liked to do around the edges of his former life. He liked nature and watching and identifying birds and writing so he tries those things. Considered the world’s best drummer, he couldn’t drum and talked of his past as "that other guy". It is good to know that he did go back to drumming eventually.
A couple of sites about Neil:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
http://www.rockdrummingsystem.com/...
Neil Peart (Buddy Rich Memorial Concert)
http://www.youtube.com/...
Last week JaxDem brought this quotation to the Grieving Room and it seems to fit my experience so well:
From The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini:
I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night."
That's how I picture grief coming and going...in it's own time and under it's own terms.
Blessings...
by JaxDem
A link to all previous Grieving Rooms diaries