Reflections and musings

[Guest]

 

“This is, finally, all you are left with: what you meant to someone and what she or he meant to you. The hope is that, in the fullness of time, meaning wins out over grief. While now this may seem like a tall order, ask yourself this question: If there were a way to erase all the grief you feel, but it would mean also erasing the person from having ever been in your life, would you sign on to such a deal? We asked a number of people this question and never found anyone who would. Maybe this realization—that loving the person you lost was worth it, is worth it—maybe this is the place to begin.”

Excerpt From: Ron Marasco & Brian Shuff. “About Grief.” 

[kayc]

Brad,

I have heard people say they would wish never to have met, the grief was too painful.  I do not feel that way, I could not wish away any of our time together and if the price I must pay is grief, then I will pay the price.  I think most of us feel that way.

[Guest]

I, personally, can't imagine not wanting to have loved as deeply and as long as I was able to love and to continue loving.  Yes it hurts, I don't need to tell anyone that, but it is also so wonderful realizing that we had something so very few people can even dream of; the kind of requited love that is so complete and all encompassing.  I would gladly trade a lifetime of misery for one day of that kind of love and I was blessed with thirty-seven years and two months.  And yes someday I will marvel at a night sky without stars; not today or tomorrow but someday.

[Gwenivere]

A thought hit me last night going to sleep alone again.  

I don't know what it feels like to die, bu I know what it feels like to not be alive.

[KATPILOT]

Now what is left would be to remember what it feels like to live.

Brad the trick is learning how to not only be glad you met them, and glad to have loved them, but to actually be glad you love them still. 

I feel my goal is to be happy, still in love, and living as good a life as I possibly can. I'm getting closer to this feeling. I get a taste of it every once in a while. I don't think I'm crazy but then crazy people could never recognize that in themselves yet there are times though few and far between where I have felt joy in loving her even though I'm all alone. If I could put a scale on it, I think maybe 1% of my day but that's enough to tease me. It makes me want to go there.

I said goodbye to my son's family at the airport yesterday. watching my four grandchildren heading for their plane to Japan for three months, I felt that old familiar feeling of being alone again. All the distractions left at once but even though I felt sad and empty, the first thought as I left the airport was how damn much I love that woman. That was one of those 1% moments. She is so much a part of me. I wonder if Kathy had any idea what was going to happen in me. How could she? I was never this person before. Death changes us, those who are left behind. I have grown more in the last five months than in the last five years before that.

On 5/20/2016 at 7:53 AM, Brad said:

 

 

“This is, finally, all you are left with: what you meant to someone and what she or he meant to you. The hope is that, in the fullness of time, meaning wins out over grief.

I get this. I really do.

 

[Margm]

2 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

I don't know what it feels like to die, but I know what it feels like to not be alive

Gwen, needless to say I have not done any excess work in seven months.  Have not moved my body much.  But, I walked the aisles at Lowe's, Walmart and that farm store that starts with "A" and I cannot think of the name of it.  I waited on Sears, which is part of the mall, to fix my truck.  I was there rather early.  Not many shops were open.  (Bath and Body Works was open) and I now have 10 new jars and bottles of smelly stuff.  Anyhow, I walked those malls floors till they finished with my truck and last night my legs hurt so bad.  I just wondered if that was what it felt like dying.  I wondered about Billy's pain.  I tried not to let him hurt any at all.  It was such a short time and the morphine made him feel good, so maybe he did not hurt.  I cannot take pain medicine and I am afraid my empathy will go out the door if I take any more Tylenol.  But, I was not alarmed.  If I didn't wake up, well, I just would not know it.  Did not scare me, but I hated the legs hurting.

[mittam99]

4 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

... I know what it feels like to not be alive.

Gwen, I'd say it's more like a state of suspended animation. I mean, we're still breathing, our hearts are beating (albeit like a broken clock). we see, we hear, we think... but each 24/7 is spent in a new world of nothingness. Like we're stuck in the mud. Nothing feels like it once did. Nothing gives us the pleasure it once did. Nothing is done with any sense of true enthusiasm. The clock ticks by and you wonder if this slow torture will ever somehow lessen. We're in a world of pain, in a world of emptiness, in a world without meaning. And there's no one who believes in us or comforts us like our one true love did. Yes we're alive, but sometimes we wonder why.

Grief is the hardest journey. Grieving a soul mate that loved you like no other, and somehow trying to "pick up the pieces". and "move forward", is a near impossible task. Yet, we are supposed to live this life that we never wanted and find a sense of happiness. It often feels like an insurmountable challenge. Like trying to climb Mt. Everest and using two wooden toothpicks to do it.  Every time it feels like we're making progress, those waves hit and you're pounded over and over and knocked back... sometimes all the way back to day one.

We're still here, feeling alone, in misery. But, what choice do we have? Like I've mentioned before we actually have two. Try our best to make a life for ourselves or give up. I've chosen choice #1. And honestly, I'm not doing a really good job of it... yet. Sure, I work, I feed myself, I bathe, I watch TV, I exercise, I chat here and there on the phone, I let the world know how special Tammy was, I shop, I do chores, etc. So, I guess you can say, I function. But let's face it, that's a pretty basic, unfulfilling, doing "what I need to", existence. Yes, I think that's the word for it... existence... not life.

For a while I thought I was "doing better". The past few weeks though, more and more, I realize I haven't progressed at all. My real life happened before March 6th, 2015. All the days since have been some surreal, crappy, made for TV horror show. And the show would be canceled cause nobody would watch it... just too depressing. Every time the sun seems to starts peaking through, the clouds and thunder and lightning take over again. Every time I feel like I've started to climb out of this dark hole, I fall off the top rung of the grief ladder. And it freakin' hurts!

Having said all that, I still try to maintain a sense of hope. Maybe, just maybe, tomorrow will be a better day than today. That's all any of us can really do.

[Gwenivere]

Mitch, perfectly worded.  All so true.  This is like a bad movie and we are trapped in it.   No exits from this theater.  The movie lasts so long too.  Sequel after sequel.  

[mittam99]

I remember a long time ago relating this new existence to the movie Groundhog's Day. Same $hit, different day. Deja vu all over again. What makes it so tiring and gut wrenching is that we are reliving not something pleasant but the worst event in our entire life. Living in a world of pain. A world without intimacy. A world without the one person that completed us.

The grief journey...

Lather, rinse, repeat.

The "rinsing and repeating" is "easy". Just go about your day not really accomplishing anything. Cry often. Be sad and miserable. Of course, it's understandable we feel this way. Our lives are now so different and we're so emotionally fragile. We're here, but we wonder why we're still here and for what purpose.

Now the hard part. Changing the rinse repeat cycle we're stuck in. So how do we change that and somehow go from sad existence to happy life? I honestly don't have a clue. Some of us aren't even ready do that. And that's ok. This grief thing is new to us. We didn't learn how to cope with this when we were in school. Nothing prepares you for this.

The only thing that has me standing on my two feet and trying to take baby steps in a forward direction is my love of Tammy. I do things in my life with the thought that she can somehow see me. I want to always do her proud. She's there with me gently prodding me to do things and she smiles when I accomplish something positive.

That's the only way I can function in this awful new place we now live in.

[brat#2]

Gwen and Mitch - I really don't have anything to add to your latest posts, other than I totally agree and hope we all can keep going to make our loved ones and ourselves proud in the meager life we are living.

Joyce

 

[Gwenivere]

This is like Groundhogs Day except for one minor detail.  At least Bill Murray got the chance over and over to make it right.  You're right, Mitch, that's the part that sucks.  

Joyce, I don't know about making Steve proud.  All I have are memories of when I did something and he was impressed.  From this point on, since I don't feel his presence at all, that is where I get tripped up.  Yes, there is some pride we did it alone, but that is not what I was used to for decades.  So I look at things and go great!  Got that done but no one really cares but me.  And sometimes I don't either, it just had to be done.  

Last night my computer upgraded to Windows 10 without my permission.  I was always declining the pop ups for it.  My DVR updated too and created problems.  Now I have to adapt to more changes I didn't even want.  As I was telling someone, it was  time I needed to be wearing my 'all stressed out and no one to choke' T shirt.  

[mittam99]

Gwen,  I don't feel Tammy's presence per say, either. It's more of a gut feeling that someone with such an incredible life force as Tammy's simply cannot just "cease to exist".

Believing that she can somehow see or sense what I am doing, gives me some measure of comfort. She's in my heart forever and of course I have the memories of our life together, but, this added feeling that she still exists at some level helps me cope.

I understand that you don't have the same feeling. We all experience this journey in a somewhat different way. Maybe you can say I've taken a leap of faith.

Mitch and Tammy, forever and always.

[kayc]

Gwen, I love that! (T shirt)  I have no one to blame but me for upgrading, mostly I try to ignore their stuff and just use what I want.

I do know the feeling of "no one really cares but me."...and no one to tell.  But still, knowing George the way I do, I know he'd be proud of me.

[Patty65]

Feeling him with me, I just don't know. I watched "What Dreams May Come" last night for the first time since all this, and I didn't like it.  I think I started realizing that when the wife was hoping he was with her, and then realizing he wasn't (and so she destroyed her painting), and according to the plot, indeed he was not, he was busy in his heavenly world. he was staying away from her because he realized it was too painful for her.  He left her for "heaven". 

 Then to see the part where "suicides go to hell" because they are stuck in denial that they are dead and they could not even recognize their loved ones - yuck.  I don't know what I want to think, and I realized that I want to believe he is with me, but I don't know, and don't feel it. If I do think I feel it, I end up sobbing, like when Robin Williams was close to his wife and it would make her cry. I think that's crazymaking.  I think I saw it long ago not knowing what grief was like and it gave me beliefs I thought made sense, and they don't make sense anymore.  Nothing makes sense. And I feel I have no beliefs, if they can change so easily.  

In all this hell, isn't it possible to feel them, even in our imaginations, and feel that old goodness and love? Can't that part be with us? That's supposed to be the eternal part, anyways. Bittersweet yes, ok.  I'll take that.  Just give me the goodness and love, just for a second. Something to hold onto, like an invisible version of our intertwined fingers. Please.  

[Gwenivere]

Patty, I did not like that movie at all.  Not even the time I saw it and had no experience with this kind of grief and the heaven and hell concepts.  I found the whole movie depressing.  There is nothing in it that would help me.  I was particularly depressed by the fact that even tho the wife committed suicide, she would be so mercilessly punished.  I am not advocating suicide is a good thing, but the woman lost everything she had!  We always hear that we can make it despite how painful it may be, but I think there are circumstances that can break someone to the core.  I truly understand that now.  

[KATPILOT]

It is a dark movie to be certain. Hard to watch after grief becomes a reality but I was drawn in for several reasons. 1. I could feel the anguish Annabella Sciorra (Annie) was going through with her own grief, a grief so severe that she took her own life.  Damn there were times....     2.  When Robin Williams said to her "For being so wonderful that a guy would choose hell over heaven just to be near you". If I believed in hell and Kathy was there? Then damn right I would say the same thing.  3. I loved Max von Sydow's character (the tracker)  who turned out to be Christies mentor (Albert). 4. I loved the wet paint when he found he was in one of her paintings, and finally I loved the dalmatian who reminded me of Panda my dog who died years ago.   So I took it as a movie that had a lot of meaning to me even if it was and is a fantasy. It's a movie I would never recommend to anyone who has had a loss and those who haven't, have all said it was not that great a film.

Would I watch it again? Most likely because above all else, it is a love story.   

[Guest]

I haven't seen it in years but I agree with Steve - I loved the movie back then.

 

[KATPILOT]

Might be best to give it a few years Brad. Just saying. 

[Patty65]

9 hours ago, KATPILOT said:

"For being so wonderful that a guy would choose hell over heaven just to be near you".

My favorite line, too...

[Guest]

59 minutes ago, KATPILOT said:

Might be best to give it a few years Brad. Just saying. 

Definitely not on my top twenty list of movies to watch right now.  Still trying to find a good comedy.

[iPraiseHim]

I like comedies too. Here is clip from the movie "in-laws" 1979 which my wife and I laughed so hard... Serpentine...

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/465903/In-Laws-The-Movie-Clip-Serpentine-.html

Running Scared (1986)

http://www.videodetective.com/movies/running-scared/263

Movie line: "Calling all cars, UFO reported on Michigan Ave."

 

Good memories.  My wife loved the movies.  Shalom - George

 

[kayc]

I liked Madhouse (Kirstie Alley):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100087/

Office Space:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Mother (Albert Brooks, Debbie Reynolds):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

(Can you tell I'm from a wacky family?)

[mittam99]

Kay, Office Space was a favorite comedy film of both Tammy and me. So many classic scenes in it.

Opening scene (nsfw/language)

"Airplane" is another funny movie with one gag after another.

 

[kayc]

I love the guy mumbling about his stapler!  As someone who spent 45 years working in offices, I can really appreciate this movie!

Airplane too!

[mittam99]

Milton... what a character.

Btw Kay, did you get the memo on the TPS reports?