There is No Measure for Grief

I am filled with shame at my casual comments on a person’s recent miscarriage because she was only eight weeks pregnant, because she has four other children. How arrogant of me.  Her grief was real and minimizing it was thoughtless, even if my comments were said to others I was not listening to her profound sadness. I was judging her bereavement.

Recently while having a discussion on grief with a group of longtime friends I heard myself agreeing with levels of grief that losing a spouse or child is the highest form of grief. I have not experienced those losses, but how  can I agree to such a broad statement? No one can know what trauma a death can bring to someone else. I think it impossible to make analytical calculations on grief.  One could argue on a child’s age at time of death, three months or thirty years, whose grief is greater? The cause of death could be a factor, which is worse a wife’s death from a violent murder, or a long painful cancer? If a death is caused by suicide is it less, because our uninformed logic believes they chose to kill themselves. I don’t think anyone chooses to be mentally ill.  It is the illness that makes that decision. 

Not everyone in this life is blessed with children or a partner. Their grief is no less real, no less painful when they lose someone close, as one friend said later “I feel as if my grief is not worthy.” 

 My brother who cared for my parents was inconsolable after our mother’s death.  His best friend, supporter and purpose was gone. I grieved, but his grief encompassed a large part of his life. There was a dark hole that he filled with despair.

 Pets are dismissed as replaceable, but to those who have embraced their unconditional love, acceptance and dependability know the depths of sorrow as they mourn their constant companion.

If we live for very many years we all will say good bye to much more than we thought our hearts could bear. It is in the arms of our friends, family, and for some their pets that brings  solace, kindness and the strength to get up, breathe,  forever missing them but remembering with gratitude the time we were given with those we love.

No Explanations- No Excuses - No Do Overs for Monsters

It should not be a forever moment, if it brings bile to my throat, my skin  begging to shed like a reptile, a closet to hide in, a bottle of wine. These episodes of disgust and fear assault my system  raping the pleasant passages into submission. The monster wins again. This deity of destruction always hovering, a cloud of  piss obstructing my view. 

How do I kill this monster? Do I capture it and push it into a deep, dark, grave? Do I throw away all physical reminders, and utter  a mantra of  it's nonexistence? Do I keep up this exhausting battle of guilt and loathing? 

It is time to follow a different road with purpose- not desperation- keeping ahead of  the beast. Guilt washed with acceptance, proximity banned with detachment, good kicking evil into the stink of its own rotting hole.

  




There is light just ahead.......

I will not apologize for the Buick or the semi-feral cat in the spare room.

 How you live your life and how you perceive those around you is fundamental to your experience on earth. If you ignore the drunken garage door operator, the ex-meth   provider working to make child support, the hoarding OCD ranting uncles, as a waste of your time, you have removed yourself from what makes you interesting.  The ability to sift through  the crap that doesn't matter and listen to lives lived in another dimension is an extraordinary gift.  A culture with its own definition of rules,  opportunity and success is an expansion of the rigid solitary existence from which we mature. Who decrees what is acceptable? Where is the right place? Why is it embarrassing to have three old vehicles? How do you remember when the question is gone?
I did not graduate from college,  I have never made $15,000 on my own in a single year. I do not drive and buy 95% of my clothes at thrift stores, but I have lived in Italy for two years.  I was given the opportunity to work with amazing, intelligent, kind people. I mothered three wonderful children who I  fought desperately for them  to achieve and far surpass me.
 I married at eighteen and do not regret a minute. It has been such an adventure.  I am so fortunate for the people I have known, the time they have given me. I am happy.

I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE FOR THE 97  BUICK  OR THE SEMI-FERAL CAT IN THE SPARE ROOM.

Where is my.....?

My personal  mantra is I can't find..... my phone, my glasses, my pills, my keys, my purse, my shoe. no matter what object is named it has disappeared locked within a circle of manic searching.
Organization is futile when a skipping brain is in frenzied pursuit for the most logical, most convenient, most perfect location for each item of material existence. There is no magical assignment bin for this repetitive Hell. 

My tangible world fights and taunts me pummeling me with  it's sentimental importance. Boxes overflowing with plastic forms, mountains of polarized images, bags of paper reminders begin to fly and dance above me.  I feel the cool air rush upon my face.

I can not waste this time, this life, this world looking for things. Everything I need has never been gone, just quietly, patiently waiting for me.

Help or Hinderance?

So many times in life I just float going with the tide that drags me along. I close my eyes to the passing humanity and silently hope someone else will help, terrorized I need to keep gliding forward anesthetized with anti-depressants and wine. So many funerals, so many losses I continue as one of  the fortunate who keeps moving .

Perhaps endings are the motivation to begin again. I am insulated in my cocoon of mediocrity safely nestled in routine. I need to change, to feel necessary, to be necessary. I am unsure what path to take.  It is time to shed the layers of my bundled refuge. No more talking, circular thinking, empty flasks, passive hours watching high definition trash lulling my spirit into limbo.

Where to start, at my beginning, my family? Is my protective cover an excuse or another compulsion? Can I continue to coddle and nurse the fragile egos of my siblings? I need to go beyond this insular mission that will never reach completion. I bid farewell to those that are unwilling to help themselves, content to live in an angry negative cave of blame.

I see the door of opportunity, of hope and it is beyond the narrow road I have been following. I  run silently into the air.

Yellow is Happy.

I've been thinking about colors wondering if my blue is someone's yellow. I think colors are nouns, concrete matter existing on a separate plane of light. Vision is such an amazing computation. My brain is taking longer to process what I actually see and skips ahead like a bored kindergartener. There are coyotes, non existent birds flying in open  spaces, warped and wavy, a dizzying Wonka-esque  landscape.

 Fantasy, reality, faulty wiring, it is magical, my theater of sight.

2012 Good-Bye

I need to say goodbye to 2012.  It was a year I kept saying good bye, but the words never fully connected to my brain. I have been stuck in a circular grief that I have refused to acknowledge.

 It started with the impending demise of the company that Dean had left his job of 28 yrs.  He took a huge pay cut, but the opportunity of working close by, great benefits, and more time off was a dream.  It wasn’t long before he was laid off and the Company’s future was looking grim.  The company went bankrupt and more than the loss of income the loss of insurance was overwhelming. My medications without insurance were over $1500.00 a month. The only sensible decision was for me to take an early retirement. I would be able to purchase health insurance and have approximately 60.00 left for a pension.  I dutifully followed all the rules of retirement, sending my letter of resignation, not stepping foot on school grounds for thirty days, handing in my keys.

I loved my job. I loved my co-workers.  I loved the kids. I was devastated and in some fuzzy state of denial kept saying, it will be fine, I will be fine, I am fine. I wasn’t fine. I kept moving and when my son and daughter-in-law began talking about selling their small house on the lake. I became obsessed with buying it. It was a perfect for us to purchase, small and warm with an incredible view. We would have to put our home of 26 years on the unforgiving housing market. My husband had acquired a new albeit temporary job as maintenance in a factory in Grand Rapids.  It paid well.  He also worked seven days a week.  

I began sorting, clearing, removing twenty-five years of living.  Truckloads left, and sentimentalism was blocked off by the ultimate goal of selling. The world map and early nineties movie posters were scraped off walls replaced by subdued paint.  The shag carpet that I had pulled up so long ago then earnestly painted lay scratched and dirty,  sad reminders of chipped dolphins and earth symbols weeping for children long gone. The toys in dusty boxes, covered in cellulose insulation, rows and rows, piles and piles, of silent innocence, unwanted, discarded with childhood.

 Reality is no longer being someone’s daughter and the knowledge that you have for most purposes been retired from motherhood. Two pivotal identities pushed into the recycle truck.

An automaton feverishly working blocking out the present until my replacement child Maude, my dog from her birth ceased to breathe. Grief erupted as I stroked her fur, holding her paw, as violent sobs wracked my body.  Every mistake, every loss, every unspoken truth pelted me.  

I need to let go and say goodbye to my parents, my job, my house,  my motherhood, my dog.  What a wonderful life it was and so much more to discover.

Greetings to 2013 I am ready to begin again.