There are times when I feel like a shell. Empty and void of all emotion, joy, and pain. Then there are the other times, when I feel like I'm going to explode with pain, anger, rage. There have been times, few and far between, where I think maybe everything will be ok. But then I have a nightmare, or see a plane and throw up, or remember watching the images of that day on T.V. My daughter, five at the time, drew. She filled page after page of a plane crashing into the towers, with her daddy's face in the window saying "bye-bye". At the time she didn't understand her daddy's plane hit the Pentegon, and as hard as I tried to protect them from the images, friends and family piling into my home at the time had the TV on non stop. I was in no shape to stop this for a day or two, but by then the images of planes crashing and burning buildings were seared into the minds and hearts of my daughters.
I had two deaths to deal with. One, traumatic, life altering, violent and unexpected. The other, my mother's, expected, sad, just as traumatic. (Val, if you read this please know I am writing in a state of prayer and love for you!). She died of lung disease. Not cancer, sort of a combination of emphasyma and asthma. She was 60, young by todays standards. Her lungs were blackened and chrystalized. They had no ability to oxygenate her once beautiful body. Her mind had started to go as well, but in His grace I was allowed a last lucid conversation with my mother before she died. She apologized for doing this to me so soon after loosing my husband. She kept telling me how sorry she was she couldn't be around to help see me threw this awful thing. I don't know if she even knew her own death would be another awful thing for me. I really think she thought I would just "get over" loosing her, but always be in a state of grief for Len.
Grief has since become a daily companion for me. It is not something I'm done with. It's there in every day life. I've read that grief and grief work are what we do to get past, move on, assimilate the loss, accept our new realities. If that's true then I guess grief is a friend. It's the friend that forces us to live a life different from the one we wanted, or thought we'd have. It's the faithful words of a true friend, that wound for now with the hope of making it better later. It's the one that doesn't allow us to sugar coat our new realities, but holds our eyes wide open with tooth picks until we see. See that our loved one is truly dead, see that the dreams we once had are no longer a possibility. See that like it or not death is non-negotiable. Grief will not be bargained with. It won't change it's mind. It is relentless. It finds me when I want to hide, and is not very nice about it.
In some ways I tried to out run grief, the process, the work, the pain. But it's faster, smarter and stronger. If I ignore it during the day then it comes into my dreams and finds me at night. If I push it aside until a better time I find myself depressed, unable to function, until I acknowledge it's presence. I find it a foe at these times. When I want to pretend for a little while longer that I'm ok, and the next minute tears stream down my cheeks and I can't remember why I'm at the store, or on the road. Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder. Part of my experience. Part of the girls experience. Part of life now. The same way grief is.
As the anniversary of my husband's death approaches I imagine I will be visited by this friend a lot more. 9/11 is my January 1. It is the date I wait for all year long, then once it's gone I start a new year of preparing for the next time it shows up on my calendar. And in the mean time I try to be hospitable to grief, with the hope that at some point we won't have such a close relationship.
((((Karyn))))
Your words are wise. I'm going to chew on them for a while, I think.
Posted by: Val | August 24, 2005 at 02:54 AM