Looking For The Positives

[mfh]

So glad you are safe and sound and home again. I am certain you are exhausted and coming home feels good and yes...missing your family also. Sleep well. Mary

[JeL]

I felt ready last month to register for a local grief support group, try to meet some local folks going thru similar experiences. I asked for an approximate agenda, the 12 weeks of topics and the grief mix (pet loss/job loss/spouse loss? etc). The grief group leader declined to answer my questions or call me back, suggested I just show up. Too bad it's the only grief support group option in my area.

So my positive today is that I think I'll be more active on this site for a while.

There are good hearts here.

Jo

[mfh]

Dear Jo

I am so sorry the group did not work out. It might have been difficult for the leader to give you an agenda because in a grief group much of the discussion flows from what members are feeling and experiencing at a given time. It could be worth your while to try it for 3 sessions. One is not enough. So glad you are taking advantage of all this group has to offer. Visit the Significant Quotes topic and meditation and tools topics also as they are loaded with helpful information we have all gleaned.

Yes, there are good hearts here....and you are now one of them.

[JeL]

Thank you, Mary. I understand that a group's dynamic flows with what the members are experiencing in the moment, yet I think there is likely a core, some structure as a starting point. The next session begins in 6 months, so I have time to decide.

The many tools here are helpful; I also subscribe to two online grief support resources that come to me at intervals.

G'day to all.

[Queeniemary]

Anne, so glad you enjoyed your trip to IL to visit family....but it is always good to get back home. yes, there is no place like home..click, click.

I am somewhat rested today, and doing laundry from trip. Had a dental appointment for a cleaning this morning that was postponed from when I was sick, so felt I had to do that. Cooler here today, and for several days will be even cooler. Think I am taking another day to rest, but starting tomorrow I have to buckle down to work on blocking for "Rex's Exes", our rehearsals start on Monday evening.

Jel, you are right, there are many good hearts here, and they have been life savers for me. We often talk of mundane daily things, but I think that is because we have become family, and just want to share all parts of our lives. We are here for each other, at any time.

I am excited to learn that one of the music compositions that my just graduated grandson wrote at the McNally Smith College of Music, is going to be performed and recorded at Juliard in NYC. He is invited to come and hear it. A lot will depend if they plan to cover some of the travel costs I think. Very exciting for him, hope he can go. My grandson is high functioning autistic, so it is unlikely he will be traveling alone, probably both parents would go with him. Would be an expensive trip!! But well worth it.

QMary

[kayc]

Oh QMary, that is wonderful! You must be so proud of your grandson! Artistic abilities must run in the family, with your theater abilities and his music!

I think some of the everyday chatter and sharing comes naturally because we've lost the person we would have shared with and our kids are grown and gone. I'm glad we have each other and take an interest in each other's lives, it makes a huge difference.

Jo, perhaps in six months then. I wish there'd been a local support group when I lost George, but the nearest one was about 60 miles away and I never liked driving in the dark, I had to when I was commuting, but don't do it anymore. I do understand your feelings and reticence under the circumstances.

[Queeniemary]

I never went to a support group. I might should have gone, in retrospect. However, I did have a small support group in my two friends who had also lost their spouses. We still get together once a month, cook, watch a movie, or just eat. Those two and this site have been my support.

Want to share my azaleas, they have finally bloomed nicely, they will go away way too soon, but are pretty now. In the fall the leaves are a reddish color.

QMary

[MartyT]

Your azaleas are just gorgeous, Your Grace! ♥

[KarenK]

Anne, so glad to see you have returned from your trip safely. Am hoping to visit my daughter as soon as I sell the cabin.

QM, so relieved that you are safe & were not in the path of the destructive tornado. I thought of you immediately as I don't know what part of Arkansas you are in. The storm seemed to be south of my daughter. I always worry for her during this season as her 2 story home sits on top of a hill with no basement. Such devastation those poor people have experienced!

Jan, the anniversary of Ron's leaving is May 5 also, but 1 year for me instead of 2. I just make it through each day by putting 1 foot in front of the other, my silent grief overshadowed by so many other catastrophes right now. Perhaps it is best that way.

Jo, yes we are all kindred spirits here, part of a "tribe" we never wanted join, but are warmly welcomed by those who have been traveling this path a bit longer.

Luv,

Karen

[feralfae]

You know you're feeling better when . . .

you decide this is the day you start taking care of your skin again after weeks of having flaky skin from the anesthetics, and then being too tired to do much more than brush my teeth.

Since I am going to be living a long, long time, I thought I'd better start taking better care of my skin, wearing hats, using sun screen, and generally taking care of myself again. I think I am moving out of survival mode and into living mode again.

I know you will understand.

*<twinkles>*

fae

[mfh]

You know you're feeling better when . . .

you decide this is the day you start taking care of your skin again after weeks of having flaky skin from the anesthetics, and then being too tired to do much more than brush my teeth.

Since I am going to be living a long, long time, I thought I'd better start taking better care of my skin, wearing hats, using sun screen, and generally taking care of myself again. I think I am moving out of survival mode and into living mode again.

I know you will understand.

fae, glad you are moving into living mode....but move very very slowly.

[mfh]

Anne, so glad to see you have returned from your trip safely. Am hoping to visit my daughter as soon as I sell the cabin.

Luv,

Karen

Dear Karen, I hope that cabin sells tomorrow so you can get on a plane and go visit your daughter.

[Queeniemary]

Karen,where does your daughter live? Vilonia, AR where the tornado killed 16 people is about 2 1/2 to 3 hours south of where I live. It is horrible, all the stuff that I am reading on FB about it. Three years ago, nearly to the day, this same town was hit by a tornado, with several killed then. The school that was destroyed three years ago had just been finished being rebuilt, and ready for the next school session....it was destroyed also. So terribly sad, the loss of lives.

Karen, I also hope your cabin sells right away. I have been checking on plane fares, to go see my friend Kathryn in southern AZ, and the prices are so darn high. No way I can drive it, and she cannot/will not leave her husband, who is in early stages Alzheimer disease. The doctor has said he should no longer drive alone, and should no longer try to work (he sells real estate), because he should no longer try to drive clients. He has gone done one point since last test (not exactly sure what that means).

Jan and Karen, I will be thinking of you both on May 5th. Those types of anniversaries are so hard, sometimes. Some of mine have gone better than others, I have gone through 4 of them. Praying for peace and calmness for both of you on that day.

I am working on blocking today, and my assistant director, my friend Tom, is coming this evening. We are going to grill steaks, then work on the blocking together. It is chilly today, so grilling steaks may not have been best option...but Tom will grill them. Getting anxious, as we start rehearsing next week.

QMary

[enna]

Oh Karen, I will be praying that the cabin sells quickly and for the price you want. I know how very much you want to see your daughter.

Fae dear, I am so glad that you are feeling a touch better. As Mary said I say ~ please go slow ~ healing takes longer than you think. Coconut cream with aloe smoothes the skin and smells good also.

QMary, you sent me to the dictionary to look up BLOCKING. . .I was almost right when I thought it had something to do with positioning people on a stage so they didn't run into one another. With your expertise I know you'll make it so everything goes smoothly. Your flowers are beautiful. I love red.

Enjoy your grilling ~ we grilled my last night at my daughter's home and it was pouring and chilly ~ we did the indoor prep and sent my SIL out to turn the BBQ chicken. He really didn't mind because we had fresh cornbread as part of the meal and double chocolate brownies with homemade ice cream for dessert!

[feralfae]

Oh, Karen, I hope you sell the cabin this week! I can only imagine how much you want to go see your daughter, and I hope you can go very soon.

(I am moving very slowly, everyone. I am still in bed typing this. I will get up in an hour or so, fix some breakfast, and get ready to drive into town to the surgeon's office. I am truly taking it very slow.)

QMary, so glad you are beginning another play. I know filling your days and some evenings with preparation will be a fun time for you. Vilonia is, I think, where Glen Campbell was born. How tragic that this town should be struck again when the last disaster is barely healed.

Anne, I have a coconut oil based moisturizer that I can use on my face, skin and hair. I also have some Aveda products. I am so glad you had a wonderful time, and hope you are now resting and taking it very slow while you settle back in to your Arizona routine.

It is bright and sunny here this morning. I am looking forward to the day.

fae

[kayc]

QMary, BEAUTIFUL Azaeleas!

Karen, I hope your cabin sells quickly so you can have your trip to see your daughter, I know how important that'll be to both of you.

fae, so glad to hear it! I've been wearing moisturizer since I was about 30 and people tell me I look in my 40s instead of 60s. I think self care is very important! My daughter gave me some argan Oil that I love for my neck!

Thanks Anne, I wondered what "blocking" meant as she used it.

[Wifflesnook]

Actually it's May 4th. I told you I deny things and I may have mentioned that Pete and I didn't remember death dates and I think I'm in denial again. We will be visiting our little field I think, me, our daughter and her two little girls, and if the weather is suitable we shall have a picnic. Rosie-Mae will be two on 3rd. I was our daughter's birth partner and so nit with my beloved Pete when he died which breaks my heart every time I think of it.

[enna]

This is our month for remembering, isn't it Jan? I actually think along your lines about a date ~ everyday is still so painful trying to live without our soulmates. I shall be posting something later in the month about our two year mark!

I hope that the weather will be nice so you can have the picnic ~ I can't believe Rosie-Mae is going to be two! It seems like only yesterday that we were sharing our grief and she was only a baby. We are surviving as are so many of us here.

I wish I had some magic words to say to those who are just beginning their grief journey ~ I still feel as though I am in the infant stages of grief.

I also wish I could tell you not to feel guilty about your not being with Pete when he died but I can't. As you say, "It is what it is." Remember guilt is only a feeling and we can let feelings go whenever. We are not our feelings.

Your Pete is so proud of you as you are ever present to Rainie and the girls.

Oh, dear Karen, I hope you know that we are all praying for a good sell of your cabin.

[Queeniemary]

Jan, I understand perfectly denial about the date. Half the time I say Mike died on the 10th of January, instead of the 13th, not sure why, but mind is a funny thing.

Kay, Anne is pretty much right about the blocking. Although it is more for making the actors look natural on stage as they move around, rather than keep them from running into each other (although that too) I enjoy the blocking part, and telling people where to go..... We have to have a wedding dress made of camouflage material for this play, and a bee costume. I have been looking on the internet. Finding Bee costume no problem...but we are probably going to have to make a camo wedding dress. Kind of hard to find, at least cheaply. Truly, they do make such a thing....unreal!!

Fae, hope your day was good with the visit with the surgeon. And that you are now back home resting.

Well, got to get back to reading play, Tom be here in a hour or so, so I want to be at least partly knowledgeable about the roles.

QMary

[Wifflesnook]

Anne I know one thing absolutely and that is that my Pete wouldn't blame me for not being there. And maybe he did mean to leave then? Who knows? I'm still very good at avoidance of deep deep pain. I can cope with the superficial pain but somehow I manage to move away from the real feeling. But yes it is as it is.

I love reading this thread. I come back here as to old friends. Karen, Kay, Anne, Fae, and all I wish you a peaceful evening and night. It's almost ten pm here and tomorrow our daughter and her two little ones come. A weekend of celebration of little Rosie-Mae's birthday and remembrance of Pete. Who is with us, I know.

[HAP]

Dear friends,

I've been too busy for words--and this will be short as i have another meeting to get to an about and hour.

I met with my state senator this morning in Boston. He is starting the process to get November proclaimed NET Cancer Awareness Month by the governor. We're starting early this year in the hopes we can leverage that proclamation into some other, more public, events. He is also going to back a palliative care bill the ACS is backing.

I spent the afternoon at UMass-Boston where I got my undergraduate degree. They raised the final beam for a new building today and asked me--and a couple thousand others--to sign the beam before they put it in place. I included Walking with Jane in what I put on the beam. No one will ever see the beam again once the building is finished, but I'll now it is there.

Someone from Alumni Affairs collared me afterward. None of the early classes--mine graduated just 11 years after the school was founded--has ever had a reunion of any kind and they'd like me to help figure out what a reunion should look like for the eclectic group of crazies that were there in my era. Few of us have even seen each other since we graduated almost 40 years ago. This should be fun.

QMary, break a leg at every opportunity with this play. As I recall, this is the world premiere for this. Enjoy it.

Glad to hear the assorted travelers have returned home without incident and that Fae seems to largely be following directions.

Karen, I hope that cabin sells fast and that you get to spend as much time with your daughter as you can.

Be well, all of you.

Peace,

Harry

[feralfae]

Harry,

Congratulations on a great day! I love that you all signed the beam. That will always warm your heart when you think about it, hidden there in the structure, but THERE. Wonderful to think about. And the reunion work might be a nice, light refreshing project for you. And to gather all those UM-B people who were such activists, some of them, back in that era should be greatly entertaining.

Tomorrow is Beltane, so it is the morning for us to wash our faces in morning dew, for those of us who have any around. I will check. Beltane is a holiday my grandparents still celebrated. We had bonfires. There will be bonfires in Fairbanks, but I will not be having one here this year, but I will light a candle.

So glad everyone is having a good day. Now if Karen gets a cash offer for the cabin right now, and Anne is resting, and Kay's tendon is better, and Heidi is making it hour by hour, and Chris day by day, and everyone else is doing okay, then we will declare it a very good day here around our fire.

Happy Beltane, everyone.!

*<twinkles>*

fae

[kayc]

Happy Beltane, fae!

Not much sleep last night, eye strain today, so I plan on reading the forum and then only checking email every few hours...staying off the computer most of the day to let my eyes heal up. I have a fun day planned with my Bestie, pedicures and lunch out...tomorrow she heads for TX for 2 1/2 months. When she comes back she'll be bringing her BF with her to stay a while so things won't be the same. The last time she went for seven weeks and I'd just gotten used to her being gone when she came home...this time will be a little harder. I rather imagine wedding bells will be forthcoming and she will be moving back to TX. I will miss her terribly, but I'm happy for her and her new found love and wish them the best. She's been widowed for six years and has dated a lot, and her daughter introduced her to this one a year ago, he seems like a keeper.

Yes Harry, congrats ARE in order! So glad!

fae, my tendons are bothering me a little but not as severely as the first time. The one is, however, quite swollen. Trying to stand on a stepstool on my patio to lean out and reach up on the roof to clean my gutters yesterday probably didn't help, but when you have no one to help you, you have to do what you need to do. I'm going to buy one of those tools for cleaning gutters (on a long pole) to do around the rest of the house, but I can't do the patio with it because it's too high off the ground, being on a hill. It's starting to pull away from the house, so I'm going to have to have a repairman re-secure it and also re-fasten the downspouts. I tried putting them together and didn't succeed. Another summer job, when I get my 36' ramp rebuilt! I was hoping to wait a while on that since I just got a new roof on but alas sometimes things hit in bunches, that's the case for my poor house this year. Anyway, I have a lot of swelling in the left tendon so have to ice and elevate periodically.

Jan, it is indeed hard to believe your grandbaby is getting so big! I can't help but be struck with George's death date, it follows five days after his birthday and nine days after my dad's, who has been gone 32 years now. June's a tough month for me even as May is for you and Anne and Mary (Shannon's).

QMary, A camo wedding dress?! Well I've seen a Mickey Mouse Wedding, a Cinderella Wedding, a Halloween Wedding (bride and groom dressed as Zombies), so why not camo? Good luck finding one! I did find some dresses on eBay but kind of expensive for a prop. However, I ran across some fabric that might work for making one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-CONCEAL-BRIDAL-SATIN-CAMO-WEDDING-DRESS-FABRIC-60-HUNTING-CAMOUFLAGE-LADIES-/281275909216?pt=US_Fabric&hash=item417d59c460

[Queeniemary]

Thanks for the link Kay, I will check it out. Stay off of your feet, try just putting them up today! Harry, you have been extremely productive, how cool is writing on the beam! The world premiere is next June, in 2015. This play is, however, by the same playwrights.

Had a productive evening blocking last night. My friend Tom, has a problem however, and is at a specialist in Mountain Home this morning to get it checked out. He has been partially deaf in left ear, with ringing in it for years, but right ear always good. He woke up yesterday, with no hearing at all in right ear and ringing. He is really having a hard time hearing anything. Hope they can help him today.

QMary

[Wifflesnook]

Beltane or May Day was always special for Pete and I being Pantheists. I've been out walking Kelbi and picked a sprig of. May blossom (Hawthorn flowers) and put it in front of one of Pete's photos. I had a bad attack of tears this morning because either today or tomorrow was the last time I was with Pete as I had to go to Leeds to with with our daughter. I can't remember if it was the 1st or 2nd and I don't want to really but it suddenly struck me as these things do. As you know. I've made Aubergine parmigiana and a rhubarb crumble for us. The little girls won't eat the former but R will enjoy it. I'm glad I won't be alone and I know Pete would want me to be happy on His grand daughter's birthday.