Grief: How To Start A New Year

I don't make New Year's resolutions any more.  I see them as a recipe for failure. When my husband first died I bought a plaque that said, "Have An Adequate Day."  It made me laugh - but I also felt it was something I could live up to.  I don't like setting expectations for myself that I might not meet.  A lot of life coaches would disagree with me on this.  I find it works better to have a gratitude list and a forgiveness list.

The gratitude list contains the things I am grateful for that happened in 2013.  It forces me to look at the good things that happen to me instead of just employing my excellent skill set for self pity.  The forgiveness list contains things that I would like to accomplish but haven't yet.  They are kind of upside down resolutions.  I forgive myself for not achieving goals I might have with the hope that perhaps I will achieve them the next year.  But if I don't - they just go back on the forgiveness list.  There is no judgement list.  Living without my husband is hurtful in so many ways that I try not to hurt myself any more than I already am.  That means accepting myself where I am.  When I can't do that - I usually talk to someone who will tell me that they love me.  I have a friend I met on a grief site that has the uncanny ability to e-mail me and tell me how special I am and how much she loves me just when the dark place has grabbed hold of me and I am thinking that nobody loves me and I am worthless.  Her e-mail shatters the dark place and lets the light back in.

I am grateful for family and friends. I am grateful for all of you who are with me on this strange and unwanted journey.  I am grateful I seem to be gifted in some way to bring comfort to those who are suffering.  When I started writing the blog I said if it only helped one person it would be enough.  It has become much more than that.  I never thought  I would have a Facebook page with over 260,000 likes - that what I write would be able to reach millions of people all one the world.  It is still a little startling to me.  This year I saw a play where an actor told of a man whose wife of many years died.  He was sitting in a chair crying and people came to comfort him in his grief.  They did not know he was crying because he had no grief.  I am grateful that I learned this year from that story that my grief is a gift.  An uncomfortable one - but how much sadder it would have been to be married to someone I did not grieve for.  I am grateful always for the deep and abiding love that grief is paired with.  I also learned this year from a quote by Victor Frankl to be grateful that I outlived my husband.  What greater gift could I have given him than to take care of him all the days of his life and be the one who lives on.  (I hope he appreciates it!!)

I am grateful for many more things.  Good plays, good TV shows.  Newly fallen snow, the color of fall leaves.  A good joke, a bad pun.  A good political discussion.  I try to look every day outward to see what is outside me that I am grateful for instead of inward at my grief and my pain.  A new blanket that is soft and warm and makes it even more difficult to get out of bed!! Those questions.  What else? Who else?  I must keep asking it so my gratitude list grows every longer.

On my forgiveness list?  Still haven't written the book - still haven't given myself a healthy fit body.  All those moments staring at nothing.  All the frozen moments, the unappreciated wishing I was with my husband moments.  I would like to be healthier - I would feel better and have more energy.  i would like to write a book - maybe.  Would I like to have a new relationship? - that one is still firmly in the I don't know place.

I don't know what the new year will bring.  I know it won't bring my husband back to me.  I will have to keep finding ways to live with that.  I hope, though, that the balance will continue to shift so I continue to have more productive moments and more happy moments.  I hope that the pain will continue to gentle down and I will feel less vulnerable, less irritated by life.  I would like to look at the world more with my granddaughter's eyes.  She says "OOOO' and "Wow" a lot.  She laughs a lot.  But she is two.  I kiss her neck and she says, "Stop.  That's enough Gammy."  She is feisty and feeling very powerful.  She also knows that she is loved.  I can learn a lot from her.

I don't know what I'll do on New Year's Eve.  Maybe I'll read some old love letters.  Maybe I'll watch DVDs.  Maybe I'll listen to some hypnosis CDs.  Maybe I'll cry or laugh or all those things.  Then it will be January 1st.  Then 2nd.  Then 3rd.  Each day brings me closer to my husband - but it is up to me not to wish those days away but to live them

Perhaps that is what I would like for all of us this new year - to not wish our days and nights away - but to live them fully.  To hold on if we want - and let go if we want.  To let love raise us above the pain so that we see things ever in new ways.  Not a new year - but a new day - one at a time.  A day in which we delight in things past - but also in things present.  With love. xo

Grief: It's Been Lovely But I Have To Scream Now

That is one of my favorite bumper stickers.  I have had it on my car, on my bathroom mirror, and other places.  When Artie was alive I had a bumper sticker on our bedroom door that said "Do Not Disturb:  Occupant Is Disturbed Enough Already."

It's been lovely but I have to scream now is what the holidays have felt like to me.  I had some lovely times (again - apologies to those of you who have had children and/or grandchildren die) with my daughter Erin and granddaughter Gwendy.  My granddaughter is two already and our holiday was her birthday.  She had a small party with myself and my daughter on Dec. 20th and then her big birthday party on Dec. 21st.  My daughter had "Curious Creatures" come.  They bring animals to children's parties.  There was a chinchilla, a skunk , a hedgehog, a flying squirrel and many others.  There is a picture of me holding a python.  I love holding pythons - the first time I held one was in the Amazon rainforest.  They are very strong and it makes me feel powerful as long as there is a trainer near me!  Gwendy got a child's trampoline and loves to bounce on it while I play her toy drum.  We had a small holiday tree with her picture on the top.  My idea - because she is an angel (when she's not being VERY two).  After her birthday she walked around for a day saying - Everyone ate MY cake.  We explained that birthday party cakes were for sharing - but she kept saying - It was MY cake.  You ate MY cake.  :)  We bought her a big girl bed and it arrived the day I left so I could see her bounce on it too.  She even slept in it that night.  My daughter was also lovely.  Our relationship improves all the time.

I was having such a good time.  I was also having a stomach ache that wouldn't go away.  My daughter and my husband (she is not his child) both liked to have me to themselves so when my daughter began living on her own I spent Thanksgiving with her and Christmas with my husband.  I didn't have a stomach ache during Thanksgiving.  I asked on my Facebook page Grief Speaks Out if grief causes people to be sick.  A lot of people said yes - they talked about colds and headaches and stomach aches. I had never thought of that as a connection.

When I was in the car on the way to the train station Gwendy kept saying - "I don't wan to leave Gammy."  I held her hand.  I always feel so sad when I leave her.  At the same time I am always glad to be back in my own space.  My husband said I was a malcontent and I disagreed with him.  He was right.  He was such a wonderful buffer between me and things in life I find difficult.

I have the same feelings when I go out with friends and have a good time.  Afterwards sometimes I have great memories to take with me - but sometimes I just feel like screaming:  "My husband is still dead.  Don't you get it? Why doesn't anyone understand me?"  I think Gwendy and I get along so well because I am so good at being two!

I always talk about transforming grief into joy - about being inspired by Artie's love of life to love it myself.  They call them grief bursts or grief attacks and I know they are normal.  I am still surprised by them sometimes.  What do I do with times that I cherished with my husband now that he is no longer physically here?  How do I get the lovely part without the painful screaming part?  Haven't figured that out for all the times.  Sometimes I am present in the happy moments but I am also always glad to get back to my solitude.  Then when I am back in my solitude I feel lonely because it is not easy to adjust to having a dead husband (no matter how alive his spirit is) instead of live one.  See... a malcontent!

I have gone out on New Year's Eve since he died but I have chosen this year to spend it alone - with him - which is alone and not alone.  He never really liked New Year's Eve so we always spent it together at home.  One year I covered all the clocks and we watched Monty Python movies.  When I uncovered the clocks it was after 1 am.  We laughed and kissed and wished each other Happy New Year.  We often watched the ball come down in Times Square on the television.  Our last New Year's Eve together boxing or something he wanted to watch was on.  When he came down after it was over and asked me if I wanted to watch the ball come down I said no.  I was angry that he didn't want to spend the entire night with me.  Of course, I didn't know it was our last New Year's Eve together.  I didn't even know the cancer was probably already spreading throughout his body.  All the precious moments wasted...and all the precious moments shared.  I like to remember it all.  I like to remember it as it was.  It makes the love mean more to me that it wasn't always perfect - that we were often bad at expressing it.  I wish I could have a do over though.  I want to go back to all those moments that we threw away and make them something different.  A perfect love...an imperfect relationship. Yet we kept our promise - Nobody leaves.  A love that was truly for better, for worse, in sickness and in health.  And even death won't part us now.

Maybe that's part of the screaming part.  There is so much I want that is impossible.  I want him to come back.  I want to relive moments and change history.  I want to live to an old age so my family and friends never have to grieve for me - and I want to be with my husband as soon as possible.

At least I have more moments of "It's been lovely" than I used to.  The screaming is quieter.  The grief has gentled down.

What is it about holidays and dates that make the celebrations often have an undercurrent of stronger pain? My husband is just as dead today as he was yesterday and will be tomorrow.  It's how I feel about his death that changes.  I have my birthday/anniversary (Artie married me for my birthday present) and Valentine's Day coming up.  I try to ignore that.  It's not being in the present to think of February while it is still December.  But like some people are waiting for January 2nd - part of me is waiting for March.

I have a lot of fun things scheduled in January and February.  They are things I am looking forward to. I know they will be lovely...but then will I have to scream?   I usually don't actually scream - but I do sometimes cry or curse.  I am impatient with life and with people.  I went out yesterday and was annoyed it was a beautiful day.  I wasn't in the mood for a beautiful day.  How silly is that?

Of course - I am trying to eat healthy food again.  Not medicating myself with sugar.  That makes me a lot more temperamental.  How normal and how self destructive improperly medicating ourselves is.

I am wandering off into a ramble.  Maybe finally writing this blog post is lovely but I am getting to the I have to scream now.  I do feel badly that I am not posting as often.  I am more productive than I used to be...but nowhere near where I could be.

I wish us all moments of pure loveliness and joy that are not colored with our grief.  I have those too.  I found myself wandering home after seeing a play with a friend and wound up in front of the giant Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center.  I didn't feel sorry for myself.  I thought about my granddaughter and how much she loved some of the adventures she had in New York City with Gammy and Mommy.  I smiled a real smile.

Here's to those real smiles - the ones that go all the way through.  Here's to noticing them when they happen and training ourselves to have more of them.  With love. xo

Grief: I Wish I Didn't Know The Code

I couldn't sleep so at 3 o'clock in the morning I turned on one of my favorite British murder mysteries - Inspector George Gently.  George is played by the intense and lovely actor Martin Shaw.  It started with him (an older gentleman) getting a doctor's exam.  The doctor tells him he is very fit.  Then the doctor says, "When does it hurt most?  In the morning or the last thing at night?"  They cut away to a totally different setting:  his partner being called to the scene of a murder.  I'm thinking...if George is healthy why is the doctor asking him when it hurts?  Two seconds, it takes me.  Oh.  The doctor is asking him about his wife's death.  When does that hurt most.

They cut back to the doctor's office.  The doctor says, "How long has it been?"  George says, "4 years, 3 months and two weeks.  I don't miss her less, I miss her differently.  I think what gets at me is the never again."

I got the code.  What else hurts first thing in the morning and last thing at night?  Someone you love has died.  I open my eyes and I remember.  My husband is still dead.  I turn over to go to sleep and, by choice I guess, I'm alone.  I'm sleeping with ashes and a Yankee jacket.  Still.  That's when I usually say, "Come back.  I know you can't but please come back."  It's the silence at the end of the day.  It's the time when we would be holding each other and sharing all our stories of what happened to us.

It's a 4 and half years for me.  I know Martin Shaw is and actor and George Gently is a character but there is a writer writing this that knows grief.  A writer who knows 4 years isn't such a long time and yet it is forever.  A writer who knows that you don't miss someone less but you miss them differently - that never again is impossible to accept and yet we have to accept it every minute of every day.

December 11th was my husband's birthday.  I did the usual post on Facebook asking people to do something kind for themselves or for someone else in his memory - to keep his smile alive.  I heard from some of his friends I don't usually hear from.  I went out with my daughter and granddaughter and had a good time.  Then I had a bang up fight with my daughter about something to stupid to even mention.  It continued the next morning and she said i was "too easily wounded."

Damn straight.  I am too easily wounded.  I always have been.  When my husband was alive I would say "I can't do it, it's too hard." and he would hold me.  He was my buffer against the world.  He was my anchor.  He was my safe place.  I want to change all the "was" to "is" but I have been feeling too easily wounded for a long time now.  Part of me stopped breathing when he died.  I have to keep pounding my heart to keep it going.

I bore myself sometimes with the repetition.  I tell other people to accept themselves where they are.  I know that people deeply miss the ones they love 40, 50 years after they die.  Yet part of me now asks, "Still?"  I don't miss him less, I miss him differently.  There is a trajectory from the night he died until today.  I haven't stood still.  Yet some days it is just too much to bear.  Then I bear it.  But there's a certain tiredness that goes along with it.

There are still days of falling backwards with no one to catch me except myself.  I have so many friends and so many good things in my life.  Yet I am drawn back to the malcontented part.  My granddaughter is going to be 2 already.  She is so smart.  She makes me laugh and love.  We took her to a Rod Stewart concert at Madison Square Garden and she danced and jumped and danced.  I have work that satisfies me.  I have done a lot to make my husband proud.

But when does it hurt more - first thing in the morning or last thing at night?

Dates and holidays and memories and hope for reunion some day and being present in my present and creating meaning and round and round.

Grief and I walk hand in hand.  Sometimes I can dance with it, sometimes it still thwacks me upside the head and I lie down rather dazed.

I have a cold.  Colds are miserable.  Not serious but miserable.  Once I had a cold and I asked Artie to buy me some chicken soup.  He went to the store and came back and said he couldn't find any.  When I got better I bought about different kinds of chicken soup and didn't say a word - just piled the cans up on the kitchen counter.  I miss stuff like that.  All the little private jokes that no one else can really understand.  We had a code too.  I liked that code - the one where we understood each other the way no one else ever could.  Where being too easily wounded was okay because he could be my protector.

I wish you ways of creating new traditions and memories to carry you along through the holidays.  I wish us all the ability to remember the smiling part of us - the laughing part of us.  Now that we know the code...maybe we can be extra tender to ourselves so that even if the hurt doesn't go away we are able to be fully alive with it as a part of us - not the whole of us.  Don't make the hole the whole.  I guess I wish us silliness as well and the ability to look at the world through the eyes of a small child - with wonder.  

What I really wish is that I had a magic wand that could bring all our people back even for a day.  The planet would be very crowded that day but what a precious day that would be.  With love.  xo

Grief: The Word Is Vulnerable

I like to write more during the holidays because I know they are difficult for so many people.  I have spent the last 10 days not quite getting around to doing that.  I have spend the last however much time not quite getting around to doing a lot of things.  That sounds worse than it is.  I have had many lovely times.  I have been with my daughter and granddaughter and many friends. I have been trying to think of how to describe how I feel.  The word I came up with today is vulnerable.

It is as if my physical immune system isn't bad...but my emotional immune system is almost non-existent.  I know it is a combination of the holidays and New Year's Eve and Artie's birthday on December 11th.  I know that I say grief has no timeline.  I know that people hurt for years.  I know I tell people to be gentle with themselves but somehow I am feeling enough.  It's enough.  It's time for Artie to come back.  Wait:  that's impossible.  It's time for me to stop caring so much.  Wait:  that seems to be impossible.  I've been writing and doing so much work around this why am I spending time still staring into space trying to motivate myself to do things?  Why does it still hurt so much?  Because it does.

People might say I need to join the living.  I have.  I do quite a lot.  In fact I am busy almost every day.  Sometimes. a lot of times. I have a good time.  But then I fold up again.  I hit the same wall and it doesn't matter how much protective gear I have on; when I hit the wall - the wall wins.

I look and sound strong.  I look and sound happy -most of the time.  I talk about being alive with grief.  I talk about tasting the sweetness of life.  I talk about wanting Artie to be proud of me.  I have a long list of accomplishments and happy moments.  But I feel weak and vulnerable.  I feel like I am still an easy target for the dark side of grief.

I went to see a play today.  It was an impossible ticket to get and my source got me a single ticket.  I sat there wanting to be happy I was there and I was in so much pain.  I couldn't share being there with Artie.  I couldn't call him up when it was over and talk about it.  I remembered seeing plays with Artie and holding hands and snuggling up.  I remembered seeing plays by myself and if they were good I would buy two copies of the script and take them back to California where we lived and we would read them out loud.  He would take all the male parts and I would take all the female parts.

This was a Beckett play.  A sad play.  There are two simple lines:  "It's a fine day for the races."  "But will it hold?"  It didn't hold - by the end it was pouring rain.  It's a metaphor for life - but for me - a metaphor for grief.  Nothing seems to hold.  It's always sunny with a thunderstorm or blizzard about to hit.  I have succeeded in becoming more productive and generally happier but it doesn't hold.  I have a lovely time and come home to what I haven't done in a long time - that simple crying out of wanting the impossible.

In the theater I used the technique of feeling the pain and then looking around at what was there to bring myself into the present.  It worked a little.  The clutching in my chest went away.  I counted the lights.  I noticed what people were wearing.  There was a woman with a red jacket sitting a row behind a man with a red baseball cap as if they had decided to match.  The women behind me were having a funny conversation.  But then I kept almost falling asleep during the play.  Why?  I think it was because it was an elderly couple together.  Miserable - it's Beckett - but together.  To see them laugh together - and cry together - was more than I could absorb.  I'm vulnerable.  I wanted that.  I don't like laughing and crying without Artie.

Other people understand me - to a point.  He understood me completely.  He adored me.  I was his raison d'être (reason for being) and he was mine.  But almost 5 years.  Enough already.  I want to die and be with him.  I want to live and be there for my granddaughter who if you say, "Where does Gammy live?"  She says, "New York."  I don't ever want that little girl to be said.  I don't want Gammy to be living in Heaven.  Gammy always comes back.  If I'm in Heaven or wherever you go... I can't come back. I don't want my daughter and friends to be sad.  I don't want to miss things here.

So I'm caught in this vulnerable place.  I've made a space for myself where it is impossible to be happy because I want two things that can't happen at the same time.

I want the pain to go away - but I don't want the pain to go away.  The pain is part of loving a man who died.  I could take the wedding rings off again but I don't want to.

So that's how I've been feeling.  Vulnerable and devastated while all the while I go about doing fun things and having a good time.  Erin and Gwendy are coming in tomorrow and we are going to see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, and the Nutcracker Ballet, and Rod Stewart at Madison Square Garden because Gwendy has to go to at least one rock concert before she's two.  It's going to be a good week while they are here.

But I'm still going to be vulnerable.  I am going to see some married couple holding hands or kissing and I am going to forget the happy part of me.  I am going to wake up in the morning or turn over to go to sleep and wonder again what the reason is that I'm still here.  I know the reason...I am a mother and grandmother and a friend.  I write this blog and I do a Facebook page.  There are some other good works I have been doing lately.

Nothing is Artie.  I still haven't learned how not to be vulnerable to what some people call grief bursts.  You are walking along singing Tra la la and all of a sudden it's like you are shot in the heart - again - and you just have to pull out the bullet and go back to singing.

This is starting to sound like something Artie would laugh at.  He would tell me to get away from my self pity - get out of my head.  He would call me a malcontent.  The glass seems half empty and poisoned when actually the glass is overflowing with sweet nectar.

I wish for you this holiday season that you don't feel vulnerable.  I wish you to be inspired by all the love and laughter you have had and that still exists around you.  I wish you the ability to be present with all that is good in your lives.  I wish it for me.  Here it is - oops there it goes - here it is again.

Maybe that's just the way it is.  Appreciate the openness to the delight - and have the dark be a backdrop.  Don't stop trying.  Celebrate when you can and weep when you can't.

Tomorrow I am having lunch with two wonderful women and then we are seeing a play - Waiting for Godot.  It is a Beckett weekend.  Then I am meeting my daughter and granddaughter.  What better day could there be for a Sunday?  (the ones when Artie was still alive)  Leave out the parentheses and let me present for the joy that will be there for me tomorrow if I am willing to feel it.   With love. xo

Grief: Holidays Again?

I feel like 2014 is coming before 2013 even happened.  How can it be another Thanksgiving coming around without my husband somehow miraculously returned to life to sit in his chair?  One year I was eating Thanksgiving dinner with just my husband and my daughter.  I said, "Let's we say what we are thankful for before we eat."  Going first, I gave a long and thoughtful list of things I was thankful.  They looked at each other and then at me and then said, unplanned, but together, "We're thankful for everything.  Let's eat."  What could I do but laugh?

What can I do but laugh at that memory?  I am thankful that most of memories are no longer tainted by the knowledge of my husband's death.  I can remember them with only the emotions I had when they happened.  I was once in Dallas, Texas, on a short trip, studying John F. Kennedy's assassination.  One of the things we did was eerie.  We rode the route that he took through Dallas.  He was smiling and waving; maybe even enjoying the enthusiasm of the crowds.  He didn't know that these were the last minutes of his life.  We did.  As we got ever closer to the place where he died the tension grew.  So it can be with our memories.  We don't remember them with the purity they had at the time.  We remember them with the tension and the pain that the person we shared them with has died.  So many memories in their true, original form are beautiful, and funny, and full of joy and comfort.  Remember them as they were.  Go back in time to those lovely moments and then bring the good feelings forward into the present.  I've practiced that a lot - and I am thankful that I can laugh at that memory.  Perhaps I will get a chance to tell that story this year during Thanksgiving dinner.

One person wrote me and said he was afraid that the sadness he was feeling would ruin the holidays for others, especially the children.  I hadn't thought of something so simple.  I suggested the technique that I have said before - that he look down for a minute and acknowledge the sadness and then look up and really put himself in the present moment...noticing all the colors, the smells, the sound of chatter.  This isn't simple - this takes practice.  The simple thing is that you can always excuse yourself from the table for the moment to use the bathroom.  Everyone has to use the bathroom.  If you need to - you can always go into the bathroom, have a good cry, splash water on your face and come out again.

It is difficult to believe the world goes on when the person we love so much has died.  How can that be?  How can this be the 5th Thanksgiving since my husband died?  I just counted on my fingers 3 times.  It is.  Impossible and yet true.  The world has gone on and so have I.  I have stumbled and wept.  I have cursed and hidden myself away.  I have also gotten up and laughed.  I have acknowledged blessings and made myself part of the world.  I learned this year to even be grateful for my grief.  The biggest gift I ever could give my husband is to grieve for him so he does have anguish of grieving for me.  I never would have imagined I would learn that this year.  Doesn't mean I still don't feel the burden of it...I do.  When people say I inspire them I am grateful - but also glad you all don't see me still in my pajamas at noon eating ice cream and watching bad TV.  I have those days too.  I still cry sometimes.  I miss my husband every day in so many ways.  However, if I am to be honest, my grief has gentled down.  I am more productive.  I do laugh more.  I have transformed my grief so that I more alive with it.  My husband alive in my heart and soul inspires me more often now that my husband dead in reality makes me want only death.

I have had some of the fifth year blues.  I have felt exhausted and disinterested.  I have gotten help.  I have - I think - accepted that this is how my life is.  Moments of loveliness where life is - dare I say it - good.  Moments where the idea of going through one more day again - one more holiday again - without my husband sitting in the chair next to me seems devastating.  Devastating.  When I went for my therapy tune-up I was asked how my husband's death makes me feel.  I said, "Devastated."  I surprised myself.  I thought I didn't feel that way anymore.  I do.  There is a part of me that will always stay devastated.  The question is - what will I build around the devastated part?  Like a house that is turned to sticks by a tornado - or burned to the ground - and another is built in its place.  Like the World Trade Center destroyed by terrorists - which has both a memorial and a shining new building rising toward the sky.

So...here I go with this part of my year.  Thanksgiving.  Chanukah.  My husband's birthday.  Christmas.  New Year's Eve.  My birthday and my wedding anniversary on the same day, Valentine's Day.   I must take them one at a time.  I will celebrate them and make a space for tears as well.

Thanksgiving is first.  I am thankful for each and every grief warrior.  I wish I had super powers and I could bring all our people back.  I wish we had met because of another reason than grief.  Yet, I am glad that we understand and support each other.  I am glad we can be honest with each other.  In 25 years if I am still alive I will probably be writing some of the same things.  A stranger asked me if I was trapped in the past.  I said, "Absolutely not."  I love my husband - his spirit is very much alive.  It is my love for him and his for me that I am most grateful.  This love enriches my present and my future.  What a silly thing it would be for me to forget about it or make it less important that it is.  It isn't my prison; it is my open door.  If I let it be, my grief is my angel wings that allows me to fly.

I am thankful for my little family - my daughter and granddaughter.  I am thankful for loving friends.  I am thankful for good books and good theater.  I am thankful for kind and funny strangers.  i am grateful for ice cream and elephants and indoor plumbing.  I am thankful for warm clothes and the way stars look at night.  This is a good what else question.  Ask yourself what you are thankful for and say or write it down.  When you run out of things - ask yourself again - What am I thankful for?  Think of more things.  If your answer is I am so angry or sad I'm not thankful for anything - say..."Yes, I am so angry...I am so sad...I feel like I am not thankful for anything.  But what else?  What small thing can I be thankful for."  I know you are thankful for the time you had with person you are grieving for.  That's one. You can find more.

In the United States Thanksgiving seems to have become very small this year.  Many countries do not celebrate it - or celebrate it on a different day.  What ever is happening each day....find something to celebrate.  Find something to be thankful for.  I hope for you that during this holiday season you are surprised by many moments in which you find yourself smiling instead of crying.

I just realized.  I have been longing for my husband to sit beside me again.  I have forgotten.  He always is.  Nobody leaves is what we used to say.  Death is final in so many ways.  However, if I do not feel him sitting beside me, perhaps that is my fault - not his.

I wish you extra love and give you many hugs during a time when seeing happy intact families can hurt.  I wish you the ability to feel your beloved dead's spirit all around you.  I am grateful for each and every one of you.  I think you are very special and very brave.  Take tender care of yourself.  xo

Grief: The Fun Is Done...Find Some Fun

Content Warning:  Some of this post is about my daughter and my granddaughter so if you are sensitive to those kind of stories I wanted to let you know.  When my husband first died it was hard for me to listen to people talk about their husbands or wives.  Today someone told me her daughter was engaged and I was able to be happy for her.  Sometimes things change.  Sometimes they stay the same.  Sometimes you thought they changed and they didn't.  Sometimes you thought they stayed the same and they changed and you forgot to notice.

General confusion in that paragraph.  However; with all we share I could probably write blah blah blah, tea la la and you would understand.

My daughter is kind enough to have given my own room in her house in Marblehead, near Boston.  I spend about 10 days a month there because my granddaughter Gwendy blue eyes is not quite two and she changes so much.  I hate missing things.  Now she is talking and she is able to express how much she misses me.  She doesn't like it when I leave.  One thing I have been teaching her is that in order to do the next fun thing you have to say goodbye to the fun thing you are doing now.  So if we are at the aquarium we say goodbye penguins. goodbye fish and I tell her something else fun we are going to do.  That way she doesn't cry or throw a temper tantrum.

I had an idea.  Yesterday morning when I was leaving to go back to my apartment in New York City i took two little dolls.  A Grandma doll and a Gwendy doll.  They hugged and kissed.  Then I took the Grandma doll over to her train set - which is little - so the Grandma doll rode on top of the train car  to New York City and hung out for a while.  Then she came back on top of another train car and hugged and kissed the Gwendy doll.  When we went to the car to take me to the train station Gwendy wanted to take a purple bucket.  I put the Grandma and Gwendy dolls in the bucket, thereby inventing the saying, "We will always be together in the bucket."

On the way to the train station Gwendy looked at me and said, "The fun is done."  What a complicated concept for a little girl.  I said, "Yes, the fun is done."  I'm all about validating people's feelings even when they are tiny.  But then I said, "The fun is done but you will have fun with all your friends."  I named as many of her friends as I could think of. "  She named her friends after me; counting them on her fingers.  Then I said, "I will miss you but when I come back we will have fun again.  The fun won't be done any more."  When we got to the station I kissed and hugged her goodbye and this time she didn't cry or ask me not to leave.

What does any of this have to do with grief?  The fun is done.  With those we love - people and pets - we have a lot of wonderful old memories but no new ones so in some ways the fun is done.  The dark side of grief tells us the pain will be all we will ever feel.  The work in transforming the grief is to acknowledge the part of that which is true - but then to count on our fingers and in our hearts all the ways we can still have fun - or put in better terms - how we can still find happiness and meaning.  If you stay only with "the fun is done" you will not be alive with grief - you will be dead with grief.  The fun and happiness you had teaches you to appreciate the fun and happiness you can have.  My husband's love for life and the fun (and the bad times but always the love) teach me that I have the possibility in me for more fun.  I have to show up.  I have to be willing to be broken open instead of just broken.  When I do laugh and have a good time I have to notice it and let it in.  I know that I don't have to feel guilty - either way.  If I am living my life fully I am honoring my husband's memory and life in the best way.  If I am staying in bed staring at the wall - I am being perfectly human.  I know he understands and I must forgive myself.  Sometimes I do that and time it.  I set the alarm for ten minutes or a half hour.  Sometimes I don't need as much time as I think.  I had another dentist appointment this morning and I tried to go back to sleep for an hour or just suffer.  I couldn't.  I got up and started doing things.  I feel better now.

I wake up every morning and remember - my husband is dead.  I ask myself. "How will I live today without him?"  The answer to that is...there is no answer.  Just do it.  Just take the next action and if I can't, stop and rest.  Yesterday I got up early in the morning to post on my Facebook page.  Then I took care of my granddaughter because she and my daughter both have colds.  Then I took the train from Boston to New York City (four hours).  On the train I did work on the computer.  I had an hour at home and then I went out to a lecture with a friend.  When my husband first died that kind of day would have been impossible.  What I am dealing with now is feeling slightly overwhelmed with how much I am doing.  I am missing my down time.  Sometimes I feel a little crazy.  Sometimes I am a little crazy.  But I am doing it.  If I can do it - you can too.  I am a very ordinary person. We are all ordinary and extraordinary both.

Am I healed?  Nope.  I also turn over every night and feel how alone I am that he is not in bed next to me.  I have nightmares some nights where I search for him and I can't find him anywhere.  Morning and evening bookends of sadness - with flurries of sadness throughout the day.  However...there are so many more happy and productive moments every day.  I see occassional comments about how I am supposed to turn some switch - accept - pray - something - and then I will be happy all the time.  If that's you - I'm happy for you.  It's not me.  I'm still okay with not being okay.  I don't need or want to be fixed - I just want to keep looking for where the life is at the same time I miss my husband and wish we were together again in the same form.  I don't have trouble holding both.

The difference between grief and my story with my granddaughter is that she knows I am coming back for more fun.  My husband isn't coming back to me in my lifetime.  His beautiful face and body don't exist any more.  His voice is gone.  But, when I die I won't have mine either.  I hope that we will be reunited and we will have fun together again too.  What does it feel like not to have a body?  I don't know.  How will we hold each other if we don't have any arms?  I don't know.  Perhaps not having a body is more fun than having one.  He knows.  I will too some day - or I won't.  What matters is what I do with this moment and the next.

I know that I have to learn and relearn what I so glibly teach Gwendy blue eyes.  You have to move from moment to moment.  You can't stay in one moment forever.  That's not the way life works.  What I wish for you is that with whatever pain and sadness you have - and may have forever - that you are also finding fun - ways to help others - ways to tenderly take care of yourself.  I think the favorite sound our beloved dead hear is the sound of our laughter.  I don't believe, as some do, that they are hurt by our tears.  I think they simply try to wipe them away and hold us tenderly with great love.  But I do think they love the sound of our laughter.  I wish you laughter.  Why?  Because you will always be together in the bucket.  (If that doesn't make any sense go back to the last line in paragraph four. If it still doesn't make any sense...may it's not supposed to. Maybe it's nonsense.  Nonsense is often more fun than sense.)    With love.  xo

Grief: Can It Possibly Be A Gift?

I hope this isn't confusing.  I wrote it on the train last night and am posting it with some comments added.  If it sounds like it is written in two different spaces and times - it is.  I left it that way because isn't that how our lives are as grief warriors? They take place in two different spaces and times.  I don't always sound disjointed but I always feel a little disjointed - as with my husband dead I still don't know exactly who and where I am.  I do - but I don't.  Maybe I should have called this post - welcome to my confusion! 

I am on an Amtrak train and the internet is not working. (It never started working so this is the first blog post I ever written on a stickie note.  Not a big deal for some but sometimes the littlest thing throws me back into a very dark place.)  I am going home to my empty apartment and feeling very sorry for myself.  (I did.  I got home and felt very sorry for myself.  I am better this morning - actually - afternoon.)  Fell right back into the dark place in spite of all my tools and techniques for being happy.  Aha.  Sometimes they just don't work.  Here is all the gratitude for all the wondrous things (oh - and the lights on the train keep going off as well and it is dark out so I can't read) in my life and all the lovely loving memories of my husband who loves me and would tell me to stop being so malcontented and still I am going poor me in my head.  I must be the only sad person in the world right now.  In my crazy head anyway.  My blog and my Facebook page are Grief Speaks Out and I want to say shut up grief you are making me exhausted.  You are taking my life and blah blah blah.

I went to a one man play last week.  Eamon Morrissey told the story of Maeve Brennan who was an Irish short story writer in New York City and Washington D.C. in the 1900's.  When the actor was young (he is 70 now) he ws reading an story in the New Yorker and all the descriptions seemed very familiar.  That was because his family lived in the house that Maeve Brennan had lived in when she was still in Ireland and she used it as the locale in many of her stories.  So now....doing a show about her late in his life it is as if his memory has come full circle.

As part of this story he tells another story about a story that Maeve wrote.  A man and a wife have been married for many many years.  They don't even sleep in the same bedroom any more.  One night she is having chest pains and he asks if he should call the doctor.  She says yes.  She dies anyway.  The next morning he is sitting in a chair crying.  His sister tries to comfort him, thinking the death of his life long partner has caused him great grief.  No; he is crying for his wife Rose because he has no grief at all.  He thinks that she deserved better.  After all those years together she should have her husband grieve for her - and he does not.  He is also crying for himself that he is as empty of grief as he was empty of love.  He deserved better than to spend his life with someone whose death causes him not a single tear.

As I walked home from the theater I felt something shift inside of me.  What if grief was in fact a gift?  What if all this pain and loneliness were the gift I was given because I was lucky to have such a great love in my life?  I want so much for Artie, my husband, to be here with me.  I don't think it's fair that he left me; even though he couldn't help leaving me - his body was too sick to stay.  And yet, better that I should suffer life wihtout him than he life without me.  Better I should suffer life without him than a life that never had him in it at all. 

When Artie was dying his hospital bed was in the living room.  I brought his favorite things from all over the house into the living room so everywhere his eyes looked there was something beuatiful or something to make him laugh. Jazz was always playing, and the front door was left unlocked from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m..  Many people came to visit to tell him how much they loved him.  We spent many  loving moments together.  I am proud that I was able to do that for him even though I was feeling so sad and scared inside.  I am glad I was with him when he took his last breath.  How can it be he exhaled and didn't inhale?  We used to say staying alive is easy - just keep breathing. Then he didn't. 

I know he wouldn't have been strong enough to take care of me that way.  I know it because I was once in the hospital for 10 days after surgery.  i was angry with Artie because even though he took great  and loving care of me when I got home; when I was in the hospital he spent almost no time with me.  I stopped being angry when he told me he was so afraid I was going to die he was at home by himself lying in bed crying. As much as I depended upon him - it seemed - for my very breath, as much as I leaned on him - I was still emotionally stronger than he was. 

I still have to be the strong one.  I am the one with the unwanted gift - but a gift just the same.  The gift of grief.  It is my grief that tells me how important we were - are - to each other.  It is my grief that tells me of the depth of our love; the special uniqueness of our relationship.  (Although I know from so many of you that you too have deep, special, unique loves.)  He was a real man that I love who loves me.  If grief is the price I have to pay for that than I am grateful for it.  I would not give up a second of my life with him; either the wonderful moments or the hurtful horrible ones.  If I gave up my grief I would be giving up my love.

I have to keep working on transforming that grief.  I have to keep working on making that grief be something that makes me feel inspired - not crushed like I do this very moment.  Even though I am having a not so good time right now - I had many lovely times last week and will have many more in the future (even though I have TWO dentist appointments next week.)

Maybe I can remember how light I felt walking home that evening after the play.  How lucky I felt that brief moment to be a grieving person.  

it was a memory circle for me too.  Many years ago I went to Ireland for the first time because a friend invited me to go to Sligo for the Yeats Festival.  I had never even heard of Sligo.  I made many friends, I fell in love (with the wrong person) - Artie was the right person.  I met my daughter's father (the right person to create my splendid daughter but also the wrong person for me).  I have many glorious memories of my youthful days in Sligo.  When I got to the theater there was a flyer about the Yeats Society that does the Yeats School.  They have a branch in New York City now.  It was a memory come full circle for me as well.  

I don't know how much my past is my future.  Some of it is.  Some times I feel a certain warmth in the past that I don't feel in the future.  Everyone around me right now seems to be partnering up.  I am happy for all of them and hope it all works out.  Any chance I want to be one of them?  One of those widows who date and then remarry?  That's still definitely in the I don't know column.  After reading posts on my Facebook page from women who are quite content not looking for a new love I wonder if struggling with this issue is causing some of my pain.  Perhaps it is best not to try to figure it out, but accept it and see what happens next. 

Is part of the gift of grief that it tells you if you were happy in the past you can be happy in the future?  Could be.  So many grieving people either feel guilty about feeling joy or say they can't feel any joy at all.  Sometimes when I am talking to someone who says they are sad all the time I hear them laugh.  I hear them talk about good times they had.  We have to do more than have joyous moments.  We have to notice them and hold them in our hearts and remember them.  It is not wrong that we are still alive when someone we love is not.  We are meant to be here even though sometimes we don't understand why.  

Joy is one of the things we are here for.  I know my husband wants me to cherish my life even though he knows how hard that sometimes is for me.  I keep my granddaughter's smiling face in front of me.  A child's eyes filled with wonder always go back and forth between sadness and happiness more quickly than and adult's.  A tear rolls down their face - they kick their feet and scream - and then suddenly they are laughing and running about with great glee.  I wish for all of us grief warrors that we are surprised by joy - if not tonight - maybe tomorrow or even yesterday.  xo