Denial Or Suppression Or What?

[Wifflesnook]

Fae, this was what made me want to respond last night:-
As I went for one of my strolls today through our very drought-stricken forest, I was deeply touched and made aware of all our shared projects in the forest, and more deeply and painfully aware that Doug was not going to make any more balance logs, benches, bird homes, or decorative rock walls. He was not going to mow the forest against wild fires come autumn. For me, this is a whole new sort of pain than the pain of being in the fog. Now, I am feeling a lot more keenly, and I am also able to process on an intellectual level beyond the simple acknowledgement of the amputation and resulting torture.

On Saturday my friend John and I went to the field that Pete and I have owned and loved since 2002. I have someone who strims the paths but the pond has just got completely neglected. It's overgrown, full of unsuitable weeds, has lost a load of water and is almost inaccessible. John is a naturalist and has offered to try to reclaim it by yanking out the weed and strimmimg round it. So I found some photos to show him next time he comes and they were so poignant as there is my beloved Pete working hard making steps down which are now completely overgrown and invisible. And I thought how futile it was, and how similarly pointless for John do this when it will happen again when he can't do it any more (he is the same age as me).
But since then I've thought perhaps this is a lesson in the ephemera of everything. Which we are all here having to confront in a way we would rather not. Of course when my Pete was alive I knew this intellectually but not deep down. Now I KNOW IT. But if we let it rule all our actions we bereaved ones would sit all day and do nothing. It's obvious that we don't do that. So I'm going to try to work through this. I'm going to help John to bring back Pete's steps, even though they will disappear again. I'm going to take blessed Bill's Mary's advice and spend a little more time with the pain, even if its only a very little. I think that way I will achieve a balance in my life which is lacking. On the computer I have so many many photos from the last few years (and pre digital many too). They have been the source of pain because they show times past. But I'm so lucky to have so many and they can act as aide memoires to help me on this path. I know that the repression, suppression, denial is not the way forward. Even though it seems to help. Anne's words were wise. All of you said things I needed to hear. I've learnt something about myself in the last 16 months which is that my approach to grieving is often intellectual. I think too much. I need to feel more even though its going to hurt like hell. But I can't do it too much because I might collapse. A little at a time. Thanks. I'm going to copy this entire correspondence and read and re-read it.

[feralfae]

Dearest Jan,

Yes, I know exactly what you are feeling. Even as I am in the process of getting so many things done around here from our "before we move" list, each project, each tool I use for the first time, reinforces the facts which I must now come to accept: Doug is gone, and he will not be here to do these things, with these tools. Earlier, I was hurting so very much with the overwhelming pain of Doug's leaving (and I will not ignore that the attacks and robberies were also terribly painful) that the detail of things were just lost in the fog. I have no idea how I got through all the paperwork. I have glimpses of that time, but most of it is lost to me, and I can barely remember a lot of it, of meeting with trustees and things like that.

Now, I am not in so much deep and traumatic pain. Now, I notice all the little things, some not so little. I have a pond here that needs cleaning as well. It is a small pond with cat tails and other water plants, and they are overgrown and choking out the birds and maybe even the deer. It needs a lot of work, and I know I will not get to that project until next year if I am still here.

Now, 19 months after Doug left, I am beginning to feel so much more of the day to day sense of loss. Before, it was just an overwhelming sense of being entirely off balance, of being numbed against any more blows, and of being unable to bring my focus to the small things such as the pond or the forest, or even the house staining. I was just doing well to stay alive, eat, brush my teeth, and make it through the days. Now I am feeling more, and it hurts.

Yes, my tendency is to go live in my head, especially when my heart hurts or I am confused emotionally. It is easy for some of us to do.

Jan, I think you are doing things at exactly the right time for you, and I am proud of you for your courage and willingness to try new ways to find a healing path, and also to find a way to let out more of the pain and grief. Good for you. We cannot change who we are through this time, but we can certainly come to know ourselves a lot better, and to learn a lot more compassion for ourselves and others.

Blessings dear Jan,

*<twinkles>*

fae

[Wifflesnook]

Dearest Fae,

Thank you. I'm just gob-smacked (maybe an English term?) at how we all understand each other here. We are all at different stages of loss, we have all lost totally different people and are all very different ourselves, and yet we connect at the deepest level. I know I can try to express the inexpressible here. I dont even know what I think until I try to share it with all of you. I've been looking at our photos of our field and pond tonight and they show such happiness. One thing I find really hard is the advice to live in the present, when I truly dont want to be here. I want to dwell in that lovely past. I don't think it's harmful, do you? We had such happiness and I am so grateful that we knew it. We never took it for granted. But we never expected it to be snatched away so soon. I think of the poet Seamus Heaney, who died at 74. He had still so much to give the world but he is lost to us now. And I'm very aware that others on this forum (too many) have lost their partners younger than my Pete was. Your Doug died at what sounds to be the height of his powers had he not been affected by cancer. Kay, Anne, Royal Mary, Bill's Mary, Harry etc etc all lost their beloved ones too soon. But when would be the right time? Never of course.

I really can't imagine how I would survive without visiting this forum at least twice a day. I know I will find solace, understanding, empathy, even humour here. It's evening here but the time zones don't signify. I feel we are all one in a very meaningful way. I haven't copied all this yet but must do so, though to be honest I feel like copying the whole forum way way back. Don't you find, when you go back to older postings of people, so much that you want to preserve?

[Queeniemary]

Jan , so true all were taken too soon, no matter what their age, it was too soon. We don't want to give them up, and we still live in the days that we had them here in the physical being. I believe when people are taken "too soon", that what they were supposed to accomplish here in this time was completed. We may not understand, but someone does, and I think the part of them that lives on was ready. My Mike was 62, and I felt had so much more to give to the world, but it was not to be, and I think somewhere there is a reason for that, that he had done what he was put here to do. Pretty simplistic I am sure, but it gets me through the day.

I am also very glad for this forum, and for the sweet caring people who come here.

Mary (Queeniemary) in Arkansas
,

[HAP]

Dear friends,

And sometimes the manner of their death is why they go. I look at what has happened with NET cancer that is directly and indirectly attributable to Jane's death and the intellectual part of me understands why. The emotional part of me...not so much.

Jan, I think sometimes I am the King of Repressed Grief and Repressed Memories. Like you, I never feel I can safely let myself feel things in public. Nor does it help that I was raised on analysis. It is not enough that I experience something--I have to understand it as well--and then be able to explain it to everyone else.

Mary has the right of it: we have to let ourselves feel the pain in small doses that gradually increase as we become increasingly aware that we will come back from the edge of that madness. It is a matter of building confidence, I think. It comes with time. Someone asked me today how I am doing. I try to be honest with both others and myself on this. I am better in the sense that the really awful days are more rare than they were at the beginning. But the really awful days are still just as awful as they ever were. And I still don't always see them coming. Nor when I think I see them coming do they always arrive.

I think repressing grief is sometimes a good thing. I think sometimes denial is a good thing. The size of this variety of grief would completely overwhelm us if our minds did not engage in those actions--particularly at the beginning. There comes a point when it is time to let those feelings out--holding something like that back forever would have bad effects both mentally and physically if we did not relieve that pressure eventually. But the timing is different for all of us. We have to be able to perceive and listen to our inner selves and then follow whatever path is best for us. Following someone else's path through grief is about like following someone else's path anywhere: you end up in the wrong neighborhood in the wrong house in the wrong bed.

Peace,

Harry

[enna]

We have all talked so much about handling this grief of ours on a more intellectual level that I can’t help but be reminded about what my HOV grief counselor said to me at our early meetings when I didn’t want to waste her time coming to me, “Anne, we do have work to do. We must now work on bringing the mind and the heart closer together and then you will begin to heal.” It took me several months to understand that and buckets of tears. I think many of us begin our grief journey on an intellectual level especially if we were caregivers to our spouses – I’ve got this under control, I’ve handled these things before, I can take care of this, I can take care of that…and on and on. It is when we are no longer doing those things that we are faced with the reality that our loved one is gone and now what is our purpose?

We also protect ourselves from really feeling the pain of our loss by rationalizing things. I had no idea and still don’t know what permanent means. There are times when I’ve told myself that, “I’ll talk to Jim about it.” Or, “I’ll call Jim and see if he wants me to pick anything up while I’m out.”

As so many of us have said, “No time is ever good to lose a loved one.” We have to adjust to there being gone. We have to take the time to process. We have to allow the loss to sink into our beings. And this means that we have to feel the loss with our hearts.

My Jim had a love for pruning the bushes and trees to the point of perfection. I tried to keep up with that until I began to have health issues and I couldn’t any more. It really bothered me thinking that somehow I was letting Jim down. Today things grow more naturally and only when I’m afraid I’ll get a call from the HOA do I call my landscaper and tell him that I have a jungle over here and the yard needs attention! As I said in an earlier post, our defense components can be both positive as well as negative. It is always going to be our journey. We will move through it at our own pace. I have a feeling I will be the turtle – moving slow and easy yet always moving.

[feralfae]

Good evening my Tribe.

I love you all for your courage to be open and present within this circle. It is remarkably helpful and I will no doubt have more to say tomorrow, when breathing is a bit easier. I hope you are all breathing free and clear this evening.

It is very smoky here in Montana tonight, so I am going to go hug the best air cleaner we have and read a book and just breathe.

Really. I can smell the smoke in the house now. Not as bad as I have experienced in Alaska, but pretty darned smoky here. Eyes stinging, scratchy throat. The whole works. But so far, we are blessed that there are no close fires. This is smoke from the west coming in, but still thick enough to obscure the view.

Okay, I am going to go snug in by the air filter, and sip some more MIM tea with Alaska honey in it.

Cough *<twinkles>* cough

fae

[KarenK]

Perhaps, my situation differs somewhat from most of yours. I still have moments when the "I am truly alone" creeps into my thoughts and hits me in the face, but for the most part, I cannot afford to expend any extra energy on grieving. My brain is too tired already, worrying about my daughter's health and ultimate survival as well as my own survival with more financial responsibilites than I can handle. Sometimes I think if I add one more worry, I will become a blithering idiot, so in that respect I guess you could say I am suppressing grief. Ron is gone. He's not coming back. There is no "white knight" coming to save me. I am on my own. Although I feel he was a much better person than I am, I am the one that was left alive and I must make the best of it.

Karen

[Wifflesnook]

Harry, as usual you said wise things, and I feel better for reading them. And Anne too. We all grieve in the way our personalities make us, together with the circumstances in which our loved ones died. I am doing this. I see it more clearly now. I've always been a person who responds intellectually. It's why I lost my faith in God (but that is another story, and ongoing). And I've always thought that life is hard, should be hard and that pleasure is fleeting. Pete was always trying to cheer me out of it. And I kept a tight tight rein on myself when Pete was stricken with the stroke, and didn't let myself weaken. So the way I am dealing with my situation now isn't surprising, I can see. And I feel I have Harry's blessing to deal with it in doses, but not to turn myself into stone.

Karen I am so very very sorry that you have your daughter's health to deal with too. I know we all have extra problems, issues in ur lives whilst grieving, but that is so very very hard.

[feralfae]

Perhaps, my situation differs somewhat from most of yours. I still have moments when the "I am truly alone" creeps into my thoughts and hits me in the face, but for the most part, I cannot afford to expend any extra energy on grieving. My brain is too tired already, worrying about my daughter's health and ultimate survival as well as my own survival with more financial responsibilites than I can handle. Sometimes I think if I add one more worry, I will become a blithering idiot, so in that respect I guess you could say I am suppressing grief. Ron is gone. He's not coming back. There is no "white knight" coming to save me. I am on my own. Although I feel he was a much better person than I am, I am the one that was left alive and I must make the best of it.

Karen

Oh, Karen, I felt so much the same the whole first year. I could not stop to grieve, for trying to get things straightened out, paying off medical bills, wondering if I would make it, and not knowing what to do some of the time. I was numb, and just did things while on automatic pilot, I think. All I could think was: Doug is gone, I am alone, and I must go on. For the first year, until I found HOV, I was trying to go on alone, and to figure out so much, as well as dealing with my cauda equina and surgery and all, and the robberies, all the papers being taken, overwhelming bills from the clinics and doctors, as well as losing the one person who always made things all right, no matter what. We are all alone now in so many ways. Doug is not going to be able to help me navigate through a lot of the remaining issues I must face.

Every day, I resolve to find the good in the day, and every day I have times when I feel so lost and alone that it is frightening. And rather than having a loving and supportive family, I have had to deal with the rascals, so much so that the house is still bare of many things that are in a security vault so no one can steal them. Big bare places on the walls where art hangs when it is safe. Lots of bronzes tucked away. I still feel under siege enough to not want to have things around they could steal.

I don't know how we make it, but we do. You have a lot going on with your daughter's illness and the prognosis there. I am so sorry you have such heavy loads piled on top of each other right now.

Karen, we will all be here to help you on this journey. Be gentle and compassionate with yourself as you do the best you can each day. Remember that taking care of yourself comes first in your life right now.

Peace to you, dear Karen, as you make it through this day.

*<twinkles>*

fae

[kayc]

As someone mentioned earlier, I think repression is our body's way of protecting itself until it can better cope. Little by little, as we begin to allow ourselves to experience our grief/pain, we deal with it and begin healing. We can't expect to do that all at once, it'd be too much, it's a process that takes time.

[Wifflesnook]

Thanks for that Kay.

[MartyT]

Jan, my dear, you may have read this already, but if not, I invite you to read this post, along with the related articles listed at the base: Tips for Coping with Disbelief and Denial in Grief

[Wifflesnook]

Thanks Marty. There is some new stuff there. Jan Warner is wonderful. She speaks to me.

[KarenK]

Just one more thing and then I'm off for my exciting day at Walmart, grocery store, library, & funeral home payment. What a life !!

There are times when I feel guilty because I come across as being a "cold hearted bi*c*". So many things in life have made me that way. But inside, I really am not. I am just frightened because I see the freight train coming and I cannot stop it.

Karen

[MartyT]

You are so welcome, Jan. I often add articles to posts I've already published on my blog if I happen upon them later, if they address the topic at hand, and certainly if I think they will be useful to my readers. I agree with you, too: I think Jan Warner's article, Grief: Disbelief Is Not Denial is wonderful, and so is the rest of her blog, Stop Thief: Don't Steal My Grief. ♥

[enna]

Oh, Marty, thank you for those links. I remember reading both of them and I just think Jan Warner's articles are so on target. I like your blog and go to it often because it is so helpful to me.

Karen, it is in the mandane things that make us who we are. I know that I am a good, caring person and so are you.

Jan, when you wake, you will really like Marty's last links. They are good. They are so good.

[mfh]

I love the Stop Thief blog and have read it for a long while. Today this post was particularly relevant....I appreciated seeing it today as I have not been reading much of what I get or see on line. Thanks, Marty.

Karen, fear can easily influence how we come across. Frankly I do not see a "cold hearted bi*c*" to quote you but rather a frightened and lonely and in pain person. You know you are always welcome to share whatever of those many things here. It helps sometimes to share, as you know, and see that others might have some of the same experiences and it sort of purges it also. Peace to your heart, Mary

[feralfae]

Dear Karen,

You are one of the least cold-hearted people I have encountered. You are overwhelmed, have a lot that you are trying to handle, and I know you must feel lost a lot of the time trying to handle all these things alone. It is just hard, and you are going through a really hard time with everything that is before you.

I agree with Mary that fear can influence who others see us, but it does not change what is going on for us. I am sure I came across as an angry, out of control person the first year and more after Doug left. I was flailing about, trying to keep more bad things from happening, feeling attacked (being attacked) and not sure how I would pay off all the medical bills from the clinics and alternative care and private nurses, etc.

Actually, I have no idea how I made it through the first year: it is a blur and if someone told me that I had adopted ten sheep from Australia during that time, I would not doubt it at all. I was just lost, entirely lost. I was lashing out at people who were only trying to help, and had PTS so bad that I often slept on the floor by the front door so no one could break in. When we have these traumatic experiences, especially when we have also just lost our husband, we fall apart and we try to find something to hang on to, some structure, some semblance of reason in it all, when there is no way to rationalize our loss. It is a loss we must slowly absorb, and it just takes a lot of time. I know am still absorbing Doug leaving, and some days are better, and some days I am almost paralyzed with grief, fear, anger, and loneliness.

How could we feel otherwise with what we have been through? We have been torn in half, and lost all our maps, and there is no one we can trust the same way we trusted our Beloved, so what do we do? I still don't have much of it figured out.

We are not cold: we are numb. There is a huge difference. You are doing your best to cope the best way you know how. We are here, around you, listening and sharing, and sending you lots of love and

*<twinkles>*

fae