Kieron

Thanks, everyone. In retrospect, I kind of wish I had stayed and stuck it out, because the facilitator was so kind and welcoming, but I know this former client lacks boundaries and would be wanting to know my story, and I didn't like working with him anyhow, and was relieved when he quit our services. I'm just amazed that this random person from last summer shows up here of all places. Only I would have this happen. Ugh, what can ya do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Gwen, that's so sadly and profoundly true. I think I stay silent far more than I should. Aint that the truth!

I don't know where to put this mini-rant, and it doesn't really require a whole new post of its own. Oh well. If it doesn't belong here, forgive me and overlook it. Today was the day from hell (aside from watching Mark take his last breath, that is). Today I was signed up to attend a periodic widow's group with a trained counselor and a chance to walk a labyrinth and reflect on how you've changed. Apparently it's been taking place twice a year since 2016, so I decided to sign up and go. Unfortunately, when I walked in, one of my former clients (I am a mental health case manager) was there, recognized me and greeted me loudly, referring to himself as one of my former clients so that others at the table couldn't help hearing it. Awkward... 😖 He had to go there, didn't he. Of all people, of all places. Bloody hell! I was so uncomfortable at this breach of boundaries and the prospect of having to share my loss in his presence, that I ended up explaining to the facilitator/counselor why I was leaving abruptly. She agreed it was awkward in the extreme and understandable. I am PISSED because it took me a lot of effort just to convince myself to go. I almost didn't go. I took the risk and it blew up in my face. Then to make matters worse, what was in the mail when I came home? A postcard advertisement for cremation services, addressed to Mark. I just got done scattering his ashes last week. Brilliant timing. If I wrote a screenplay about my life, no one would ever believe it's real. It feels like the Universe is telling me there's no use in trying to feel better about anything. Who needs this?

Well, it's done. Being me, I dreaded the whole thing but once taking action, it was easier than I expected. There was an interesting change of the weather patterns. Earlier in the day, it had been windy, with choppy waves, rain and clouds, which all stopped when I arrived, and it became sunny, pleasant and calm, a picture-perfect autumn day. That lasted my entire visit, then the wind started to rise and the water became green and choppy again as I packed up and departed. Hmm! Anyway, I was joined by the relatives who had planted a tree in his honor, and as we stood nearby talking, a little orange butterfly (not a Monarch but something else) briefly paused on the mound of mulch surrounding this sugar maple. It stayed just briefly before flitting off, so a picture was impossible. I can't be 100% sure, but after coming home and doing some research, I can only conclude it was probably Polygonia interrogationis, also known as... Question Mark. I find that strangely meaningful, both for the name and because I have so many, many questions. https://www.insectidentification.org/insect-description.asp?identification=Question-Mark-Butterfly I wish I could say I felt lighter in spirit. Maybe that will come. Meanwhile, I try to focus on the following passage by Rainer Maria Rilke (December 4, 1875–December 29, 1926), in "Letters to a Young Poet," written in 1903: I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Thanks for reading.

This is good advice. I'm shoulding a lot, for some reason. It dawned on me yesterday... there is no due date for accomplishing steps on this journey.

What a lovely bench and charming virtual office! 💖 Totally get that sentiment. It's such an unbalanced feeling, after 18 years, to not have that person who has your back at all times.

Thanks, kay, she was quite professional as always. Usually the only one pressuring me is me. 😏🚹

What a sweet idea! ❤️

Thanks Darrel, I didn't take it in that way at all. I suspect you're right about it being part of the healing process. I will think about it some more in the days before I'm due to leave. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. I guess there's no due date...

It's not crazy in the least. Clothes are like an outside layer of a person. Clothes express who we are, what we like (such as colors or styles), how we feel about ourselves, and our social status or wealth. Clothes are (and can be) intensely personal. They also take on scents such as someone's fragrance or perfume, that we associate with them. When someone passes away, their clothing can be a comforting reminder. If the suitcase of clothing brings you comfort, then by all means continue. How does it hurt anyone? Husband's comment says more about him than anything else. 🙄

Like anyone, Mark and I had a special place that we visited every summer for a few days when we could afford it. We went less often in recent years due to his increasingly fragile health. Poor weather forecasts prevented our trip in 2016 because of predicted heavy rain all that week, which really crushed me. And then our lives went sideways at the end of November 2016. Going alone last summer was unthinkable (not to mention unaffordable). Now, however, in about one week, I will probably be going there, with the idea of taking Mark's ashes and scattering them. I don't know where exactly... maybe around the roots of the maple tree that a relative of his planted last autumn, in his memory. I have photos of it. I'd like to see it in person. Part of me is looking forward to going, because the place renews my spirit, but part of me is dreading it because I am, frankly, afraid of the intensity of my emotions if I go through with it. Just envisioning myself traveling there, reaching the area, and seeing certain places and people but without Mark, has me emotional enough right now before I actually go, that I wonder if I am moving too fast. The emotional soup includes sadness, nostalgia, regret, and some anxiety, but also anticipation for a retreat in a natural environment that has many pleasant memories. I took many photographs and wrote about the place over the years, so it has a special significance. I have a habit of overthinking anything, and this could be another example. No one is requiring me to take this trip. I can back out if I decide to. I owe no explanations to anyone if I change my plans. But I know it's going to just open up the wounds all over again. Is that healthy, or counterproductive? I suppose this, like everything about this grief journey, is different for everyone. So I went through the archives to see if it's been addressed here, but it just makes me overthink even more, so I stopped that. How do you know when you're ready for this step? Will I regret doing this, or regret not doing this? Not to mention his 62nd birthday is coming up in 3 weeks. The prospect of scattering ashes has scattered ME, it seems, and this right on the heels of my grandmother's passing 2 weeks ago. Although I knew she was ready to go and she was able to stay at home through the end of her life, the funeral was surreal. I felt out of place and isolated and like a stranger. Everyone (and I mean everyone) in my family is married or paired up in some way, with kids and the whole nine yards. Then there's awkward, embarrassing ol' me, sticking out like a sore thumb, reminding everyone of what they'd rather not dwell on. I guess it's a good thing my counseling session is tomorrow afternoon. Thanks for reading my rambling.

💖Thinking good thoughts on your behalf. I can only echo the sentiments others have already expressed so well.

Super! Someone tweaked my toe a day or so after Mark passed away, as I was trying to rest, half asleep with the cat curled up nearby but away from that foot. She didn't twitch but I distinctly felt a touch on my left foot, although no one was there when my eyes flew open. He used to do that to say goodbye, when getting up early for dialysis at 4:00am. Nothing like this has happened since, although I have had probably about 12 distinct and clear dreams of him in the last year and a half. I started keeping a dream journal so I would not forget details. I would swear that I dream more often than I can clearly recall because I distinctly feel like I dreamed of him, or that he came by to "look in" on me, but no recollection comes to mind, even if I make myself lie down quietly on waking, to gather the bits of dream sequences before they vanish.

A clarification: flower essences and essential oils are different things. Never put undiluted/pure essential oils directly on the skin, only diluted with a carrier oil, or in an aromatherapy device. Flower essences have no such cautions. 🌺

Martha jane, that's very heartbreaking to read. So many "shoulds." I so understand. That's similar to what happened with Mark. He was in ICU for almost 30 days after barely surviving sepsis. When he turned the corner and improved, and was allowed to come back to consciousness, and extubated (he was intubated for low oxygen levels), he was very weak from not having moved a muscle on his own for a month. No standing, no walking etc. was possible although he could and did move his arms and legs, and sat up and was eventually able to eat, and talk, and have visitors. It was Christmas by that time and I spent it in ICU with him. When they moved him to a rehab hospital elsewhere, it was supposed to have helped him regain his strength, walk, etc. There were some small mis-steps from the time he left ICU, that I suspect led to him losing that "spark" that kept him going while fighting the sepsis. For one, I think the rehab hospital (not the ICU one) discharged him far too soon, to a less-intensive rehab center in the community. I remember questioning the rehab hospital social worker about whether he was really ready and she overruled me. I have so many regrets for not pushing back, and pushing hard, and demanding to speak to her supervisor and fighting the discharge. 😖

EFT is effective when done right. I have also found flower essences to be helpful for the emotional "gunk." I don't mid if others think these two methods are bunkum or weird. They worked for me, or at least took the edge off the sharpness so I could function.

^ So relate to this. ^ ☹️ Most of his clothes are folded and waiting to go to a clothing closet for disadvantaged people. Yesterday I found the cat curled up on one of his folded pants. She probably wonders where he is, or maybe she's forgotten him since it's been almost 2 years since he has even been at home. Of course it made me sad all over again. Since he was a big man, no doubt guys of a similar size would appreciate some nice clothes for job interviews and such. The ones I won't part with are folded in a drawer. His bathrobe still hangs on a hook. I won't part with that either. Thankfully I never threw it in the laundry from the last time he wore it. Funny what is true and similar across the board, no matter how different our circumstances.

Yeah, that first time I had to change my emergency contact at the doctor's office, to have a physical... I managed not to cry at the front desk, but when the nurse came in to the exam room to start the preliminaries like blood pressure etc., I lost it. She was a much younger person and was pretty flustered by my behavior. I managed to explain that all this was making the loss much more real and immediate. And then shortly thereafter, my longtime doctor (Also Mark's doctor for even longer) came in, and I lost it again. I can smile at myself in retrospect, the way you do when you look back at something. Sometimes it's surprising what brings a smile and what just brings the cut of the knife.

Echoing Marty, but privately thinking of a few harsher words than that. I held my beloved's hand for an hour as he took his last shuddering breaths after being removed from life support, and I still choke up 18 months later. I attended my 95 year old grandmother's funeral last weekend and had an unpleasant attack of anxiety and hyperventilating and somehow barely got through the ordeal because it just dredged up all the past 18 months' worth of "stuff" I have been stewing in. The pain you describe is real. It feels like having been torn into pieces, or torn out by your deep, 35-year roots with this man, and sitting slumped over, wilted and drying out, like a plant ripped from the soil. It sounds like some people are carelessly walking all over your shocked roots and leaves. 😖 I'm hoping that this place acts as a drink of water for you as you struggle to root yourself back into whatever stable ground you can find. 🥀

😢 Words are inadequate. 😖

Drained. Trapped. Oh yes, I remember those feelings. The days and weeks after he was gone and everyone else had returned to their normal lives, I didn't do much but force myself to go to work with a mask on, come home and set that mask aside, and find a chair outside, or inside when it was winter, and just sit, sometimes read, mostly stare into space. When I read any books, it was books I had read more than once, because I could enjoy them without putting too much energy into the activity. Looking out at the arc of my new life only resulted in the panicky realization of "Oh crap. He really is gone. I'm alone." I needed time to reach a certain amount of distance from it, but that time was hard to come by. I remember often feeling like a caged animal caught in a trap it never saw until the trapdoor snapped shut. I still have those moments, 18 months later. All I can do is breathe through them, and let them move through me and go on their way to wherever it is chaotic feelings go. I pace some nights when my mind won't shut off, and I roam the house from top to bottom as though searching for him, look at everything around me and think "What the hell am I going do with this place?" I still have no answers.

George has called it right: unspeakable is the appropriate word. Your words won't come because you need to conserve your strength, so no apologies are required! ♥️

Hello. ironically enough, I have worked in the field of mental health for over 15 years, and now looking at it from the other side, in a way. Here's what happens: you meet with a shrink, you're going to walk into the clinic or office and check in. The shrink may have a small office they or a colleague work out of, and you see maybe one other person in the waiting area. Or if it's a big clinic, lots of people will be checking in, coming for appointments or leaving, and there will be office staff taking calls or checking people in. Most of the time, no one really interacts or makes eye contact in the waiting area. Once you're called in by the shrink, you'll sit down on a sofa or comfortable chair and make small talk with the shrink. Lying on the sofa is kind of a thing of the past. They'll ask you what brings you in to see them. You can say as little or as much as you want. If you aren't comfortable with the person, you can look for another one. It's OK to ask for a referral to someone else. it happens all the time. There's no way we can all like everyone else. You might want someone who has a similar background to you, ie. gender, ethnicity, etc. Or you might not care. Again, it's not to be taken personally by the shrink if you decide they're not a good fit. This is YOUR time and the shrink had better be the right one. They do take notes, but these are only for reference later to check progress. They cannot share your information with anyone else (like Dad) without your written consent, or but they can and must share it with law enforcement if the patient starts making threats to harm themselves or other people. That is called Duty to Warn. They will explain all this in the first session, and give you paperwork such as Rights & Responsibilities, and forms about HIPAA (data privacy, basically). They don't prescribe meds unless licensed to do so. When you come and go from the clinic, you will probably pass people in the hallway or lobby or street and no one will have a clue you just left or are just arriving at a shrink's office. And to be quite honest, most people are so wrapped up in their own problems, they really won't care. I hope this was helpful. I'm sure someone else will add something I forgot.

Tobacco is well-known for calming nerves, so it's not surprising that it's a coping mechanism for you. Having said that, I'm sorry that you've lost your mum. Everyone here knows the struggle is real, so you're in the right place to share your story.

Oh no. I feel for you. Been through something similar. I agree with Karen, it's troubling. Never felt so powerless in my life as I did when he was in that rehab center. 😢

And then today I got the news that my 95 year old grandmother, my last surviving grandparent, passed away this morning. I had had a foreshadowing dream about this last night and knew something was "up," when I got the call, as she had been slowing way, way down, and sleeping most of the time in recent weeks and months. She had a good life, and avoided the nursing home by being able to stay in her own home, for which I am grateful. I know the funeral will just rip and tear at the Mark-shaped hole in my heart. They got along well, at family gatherings, because he knew how to talk with little old ladies. 😄 I will be able to truthfully say, "It's complicated," when people ask how I am this coming Friday.