Different Ways Of Grieving

[Paul S]

On this topic of "Different ways of grieving".

I have noticed in myself that I responded to death differently over the years. Wayback in the '80s and '90s it seemed that the closer I was to a person, the less likely I was to cry/weep/mourn over the loss. The more distant, the more I cried.

A sister died in 1988, I was just numb for 2 weeks until I snapped out of it when a boss threatened to fire me unless I snapped out of it.

My Dad died in 1995, I was just a little...off...

Isaac Asimov, my favorite science fiction writer died in 1991, I cried a whole bunch.

Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the "Star Trek" sagas, died in 1992, I cried a little bit more.

Jerry Garcia, Grateful Dead frontman, died in 1995. I bawled like a baby all day to the Dead's music that the Los Angeles radio station I listened to had played in tribute. (I am not a "Deadhead", although "A Touch of Grey (I Will Get By)" is prob my favorite song).

My Mom's death was different. I cried a lot. I cried at the cemetery, I cried going for walks, bubbling "You left me, I'm sooo alooone." I cried myself to sleep.

Maybe because she was my Mom and her loss can't be quantified of analyzed like the others. After all, none of the others gave me free room and board for nine months.

Or maybe its just a maturing in my response-mechanism to death.

I guess I'm still in the grief attack.

[Maylissa]

Marty,

Thanks for that excerpt! I might even get my husband to read it at some point. It's funny how we fool ourselves. Even though I've actually reacted to important losses pretty much the same way my whole life, starting with my second budgie's death when I was 14, and so have experienced "... the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself", the time in between deaths somehow reverted, at least in part, to that 'magical thinking' again, despite the knowledge inside that that's not how it really works when a loss ocurrs. So, reading this good description, helps me to see how someone who's not anywhere near as sensitive as I am can fool themselves even more so than I can....although, it still hurts some to remember how my husband's style still didn't change much with the passing of our dearest fur-boy, especially since Sabin had really seemed to have stolen his heart ( he'd always been a 'dog' person, but Sabin changed all that, to the point where he more recently told me he actually came to prefer felines. ). I guess he just doesn't see what he's missing out on, laying one's heart so bare to love and be loved so fully, but instead sees it as a further cause of ( unnecessary ) pain down the line. And of course, if he really does end up grieving for me much harder than for anyone else before...I may or may not even know it, if I'm the one who's gone!

There was a communicator I learned from many years ago, who got a vision of Sabin kneading at my husband's heart area, and I never knew what exactly that might mean....now I wonder if he'd just been saying that he was trying his best to break through that barrier, and affect my husband more deeply, to teach him how to 'open up' his heart more.....I feel so badly for my little guy that he didn't get to feel the same kind of love from his 'daddy' that he did from me.

That excerpt also reminds me of another quote....

"Grief...is only the beginning. After a time it becomes something less sharp, but larger too, a more enduring thing called loss."

~ Anna Quindlin ~