If You're Going Through Hell

[Margm]

1 hour ago, Eagle-96 said:

And now that I know the intensity, I am glad she doesn't grieve for me.

Sean, I am so selfish.  I know Billy could handle some of the family problems so much better than I could.  I won't go into them. (Surprised?)  I know he would miss me and he would hurt, but our family provides enough drama that he would not have time to do much grieving.

Something recently made me keep thinking "Your 75, you should not be getting so upset", and sure enough this morning I had minor pains on the heart side.  Took two baby aspirins.  No, I am not going to have it checked out.  This old body of mine can still gain weight, walk, carry things, shop, and worry.  The insides of my body are another thing entirely.  I scare doctors.  So, I do not get alarmed easily.

This latest family drama made me fight with myself.  Do I take a Xanax and aspirin or do I just worry?  I have Factor IX blood, so aspirin is not advised, nor is it advised for the colon problems.  To hell with that, I needed it, I took it.  Consequences?  Will worry about that later.  

This morning I was just missing Billy so much.  He handled family drama so easily.  I did not have to worry.  Internally, and he kept things internal, internally his blood pressure would have gone up, but he would be his wise, calm self outwardly.  I melt into a puddle of anxiety and cannot show it outwardly, I talk to Billy.  No, some things I cannot do or show.  He has taught me.  I am him, he is me.  Sometimes thinking about the two of us though, one of us is very lonesome and alone.

I had not read my daily "devotions" by my favorite "cheerleader" and that is the wrong word.  But, I flipped through from the last page sometimes in August to September 7th and Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D., he told me this:  "Sadness flies away on the wings of time." and it was written by Jean de La Fontaine.  Then Dr. Wolfelt breaks it down to my understanding.  Briefly: "I know that time alone cannot heal my wounds.  Only active mourning can do that."  Now, I understand that.  

Tomorrow, (I read ahead) is something we all can understand by C.S. Lewis: "The death of a beloved is an amputation."  I am you and you are me.  There was an amputation.  Sometimes I need strength I just cannot conjure up.

Please be safe all you people in the path of all these hurricanes.  Every life loss is part of our's also.  

I quote this often.  Strange that we give the poem to Hemingway, maybe not strange afterall.  John Donne felt this in the 16th and 17th century.  It applies today also.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."

Another word salad.  I put it on paper and now will go wash my dishes and live with the living.  Billy always put them in the dishwasher.  I learned how after he left, but the dishwasher was "Billy's job" and I will do it the old fashioned way.

[Eagle-96]

26 minutes ago, Marg M said:

Sean, I am so selfish.

That doesn't make you selfish. It makes you human. 

[TomPB]

3 hours ago, Marg M said:

Sean, I am so selfish.  I know Billy could handle some of the family problems so much better than I could.  I won't go into them. (Surprised?)  I know he would miss me and he would hurt, but our family provides enough drama that he would not have time to do much grieving.

I know Susan could handle emotional stress WAY better than me. She always had her beautiful smile and "don't worry about it" when I was unhappy over things I now realize don't matter. I know she would have let me go first if she had a choice.

[Gwenivere]

I'm 'selfish' too.  Steve would have been much better at this, if you can call it that.  He had his music, technical curiosity and a huge support network.  Mine is so minimal and 2 biggies are people I pay.  I always said if he truly loved me he would prefer me go first.  Not a fair thing to say as  we don't make these choices.  He did say he probably wouldn't stick around long, just til the dogs died.  I can't see him living without his family long either.  He had alcohol demons I think he would have unleashed to stop the pain.  That is what he told me.

No matter how you slice it, the one left behind got the crappy end  of the deal.  I had someone ask me as I am so miserable, that I needed to get on with life as I was still alive, blah blah, blah.....would I want Steve to feel this bad?  My first reaction was no.  I ran it by my counselor and she said yes, ina way.   We want to feel our love for each other would not be a simpler thing for the other if lost.   

[Gin]

Just wanted to send support to to all  our group in danger...Hurricanes and fires.  

[Widowedbysuicide]

Gin,  I second your hopes for safety for all our members in dangerous situations. ❤️

I also am hoping for some comfort for all of us who are hurting so much right now.

 

[kayc]

I'm glad George got to be the one to go first, I love him and wouldn't want him to go through this.

Marita, I second your wishes.  So many going through hurricanes and fires/smoke, flooding, etc.  It seems the US is under siege from every side.

[Cookie]

I guess I'm also selfish...I get mad at John sometimes because he didn't have to go through this.  Then I get mad because I do believe he would have handled it better.  He also was a musician, played golf, played pool with a group of guys once a week and handball once a week.  He also rode a motorcycle with friends.  I am social but would rather have spent all my time with him.  This thing about "getting on with life because your alive".....easier said than done.  I think that is what we are all trying to do.  You just don't realize how hard it is going to be.  I am getting on with life but don't feel very happy, which is what I miss.  Contentedness, snuggling down into life and feeling like everything is so right.  That is what I would like again.  Will I get it?  Right now after 2 years it doesn't seem like it.  I think I had more hope in the beginning because I couldn't imagine this.  Anyway, I will keep hoping, but it is wearing kind of thin.  Cookie

[kevin]

Marg, term feet of clay does that also refer to  shuffling your feet?....We had a term " feels like feet  are stuck to the floor"...Had an exercise and basically it was walking down the road stepping over cracks,,,don't know why I thought of that.... Cookie, I find re-engaging Socially is a slow process...my target is one new"contact" a year and keep it up.......Within five years you will be "too" busy........Unfortunately ,one of my new contacts is moving......As you may guess, contacts don't come to you, you always must be the engager....Over two years now , get Grief bursts at times, but still moving forward......Any word from Marty?

[Margm]

Honestly Kevin, I was referring to something in the biblical sense I thought I remembered hearing in sermons, but I looked it up and it says  "a character flaw that is usually not readily apparent."  Who knows.  Kind of like me using the term "word salads," which I think used to be used by psychiatric docs for people that talked in a way you could not understand, words not making sense.  Which actually is how I talk most of the time. Some of the colloquialisms that I use come from being a southern, country papermill town gal.  Others from just being a dumb___.  

And, we have the hurricanes on our coasts down south, how are y'all doing with the woods burning?  Wish we could tilt the water up on top of the burning.  

[Gwenivere]

I haven't really heard at much about our wildfires with Irma being the.focus of the country.  I do know the haze we had is finally gone.  I  don't watch a lot of news because it is so depressing.   I just hope for the best for anyone in harms way.   Were so helpless to anything but donate to help. 

[kevin]

Still burning, visited family on the Island(Vancouver Marita), actually rained a couple of days, but got home yesterday, only few sprinkles....Cool at night and that helps a lot....Things will be back to normal within week or two....October may bring lost rains....Just finishing up on garden, bumper crop of Tomatoes, beets, and squash/zuchinni....I got lots of healthy food...Got two months of good weather to trim trees and continue down sizing......Looks like Florida may have dodged the worst of the storm....prayers to the effected...

[kayc]

Yesterday it was 96, right now it's 56, quite the temperature swings!  May be about 90 today, guessing, their predictions are always way off.
Rain sounds good to me, Kevin!  Our air quality is down to moderate, that's a start!
 

14 hours ago, Marg M said:

 "a character flaw that is usually not readily apparent."

Haha, I always assumed it meant you were weighted down, couldn't move!  Shows what I know! 

[kayc]

10 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

I haven't really heard at much about our wildfires with Irma being the.focus of the country.  I do know the haze we had is finally gone.  I  don't watch a lot of news because it is so depressing.   I just hope for the best for anyone in harms way.   Were so helpless to anything but donate to help. 

Ours are all still burning but the wind shifted just right giving us a brief reprieve, I'll take what I can get!  They're saying they'll burn until mid-October.  The huge one, Chetco, is only 5% contained last I heard.

[Margm]

I'm not reading backwards, but I think of it mostly in biblical terms.  But, knowing my mama, maybe it was "mama-cal" terms.  Just being human.

[Margm]

Today my daily reading in Alan D. Wolfelt, PhD's book gave a quote from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.  He immediately gave his own understanding and that he does not agree that "grief ever discretely "ends',' (it softens and erupts less frequently as, over time, we do the work of mourning.)  I think I agree with everything this man says anyhow, because he talks to me, about me.  No one has talked to me like he does, and there is not much that I argue with him about.  

I read some of your thoughts, all of you, and I see people that mourn with a sadness that I don't think will ever lessen with time.   But, that actually speaks of my own mourning. And, though the shock has lessened, the loss itself has not. Then some decide to move on from this grief and find new love, a new life, and you think "maybe this is possible for me too."  And, really, it might be.  It does no good for me to think of my grandma saying after 18 years it was as if it was yesterday.  She is now with  her "knight" so, unknowing actively of life after death, I hope to be with Billy one day also.  At my age, probably sooner than later. " ..........promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep" (RF)

I think this is a good forum to show both sides of the mirror.  I have friends who found new loves.  They did not lose their mates at my age.  My years with one person does not make me immune to other happiness, but it does make me immune to wanting to move on with another.  (Besides, as many years as I lived with this one man, I know if he could talk to me, he would tell me to "be still" until I could be with him again).  Even in angelic form, I would know this man's thoughts.  I have no desire to move on though.  I am not drowning in my grief, it is just there with me at all times, and again, he is me.  

Still, I would not deny, probably my best friend, the 14 years of happiness she found with another mate.  This one "treats her like a queen" and while we were to talk about her deceased husband, we have not, and since he was Billy's friend and mine too, and she was both of our's friend too, I am happy she found 14 years of happiness.  She had been angry for so long.  This husband hangs on a tenuous thread, but those are 14 years she did  not grieve so actively.  Her mom lost three husbands, but each time she found happiness again.  

A couple of years before Billy left, we visited his parents graves.  To the right of them, just up a couple of rows was Danny's grave.  Danny had been Billy's best friend throughout his life. He married his high school sweetheart  and when he came in from Vietnam, he found her with another man.  Many, many years later they remarried.  She placed a marker in the cemetery for him with her name beside his.  For some reason, possibly because she did not want people to wonder why she was not buried beside him, on her side she had engraved "married _____, and the date" and Billy just got really angry.  To him it was as if she had put a dagger in Danny's heart.  Danny was gone though, but like Billy, I could see no reason to have that engraved on the stone for the world to see.  You see, that was my Billy, and I was his until time we could be together again.  He sometimes was a complex man, but I loved the complexity of him also.   

One size really does not fit all.

[Cookie]

On ‎09‎/‎11‎/‎2017 at 4:39 PM, kevin said:

Marg, term feet of clay does that also refer to  shuffling your feet?....We had a term " feels like feet  are stuck to the floor"...Had an exercise and basically it was walking down the road stepping over cracks,,,don't know why I thought of that.... Cookie, I find re-engaging Socially is a slow process...my target is one new"contact" a year and keep it up.......Within five years you will be "too" busy........Unfortunately ,one of my new contacts is moving......As you may guess, contacts don't come to you, you always must be the engager....Over two years now , get Grief bursts at times, but still moving forward......Any word from Marty?

Kevin:  You're right.  You must always be the engager.......I like the one contact each year idea.  I've been trying to connect too much, I think.  Seems like I'm throwing myself at everything and am starting to feel the stress of it.  That wasn't the way I was before John died.  I have to reassess.  I know I do it to try and escape the pain.  Moving forward also but always with that intense pain in the pit of my stomach....take care...

[kevin]

Cookie, I know I've mentioned this before, not for any religious reason, attending Church is a good step to engaging.........the other ones are activities you enjoy or want to try.........swimming,dancing, weaving, senior bowling(no talent needed)and my latest, Darts(no talent needed)......only thing holding us back is ourselves....God knows I'm way past the embarrassing faze of life.......Have a good day

[kayc]

Yesterday a lady from my other site, out 1 1/2 years, said her therapist admonished her for her tears and told her she needed to move on.  So inappropriate!!!  Basically invalidated her grief feelings.  I posted Marty's credentials and told her to look for someone with those, that not all counselors/therapists/doctors are trained in grief and some can do more harm than good.  It seems everyone calls themselves a grief counselor but few really are.  I went through that with the one I had.  He had not a clue.  Marg, I definitely agree with Alan D. Wolfelt, grief doesn't end, but it does change...we may start out in shock, grief fog, immense pain and tears, anxiety, doubts, confusion, but it seems to settle into a quieter grief that we carry inside us, a kind of sadness, a continual missing them. 

[TomPB]

My PCP asked me if I still thought about Susan "every day" and when I said "how about every 5 minutes" or something like that he offered me psych meds since it had been over three months! At least I've learned enough by now that I knew he was so clueless about grief that it didn't bother me.

[Margm]

24 minutes ago, kayc said:

.we may start out in shock, grief fog, immense pain and tears, anxiety, doubts, confusion, but it seems to settle into a quieter grief that we carry inside us, a kind of sadness, a continual missing them. 

Can do nothing but agree with this.  

[kevin]

22 hours ago, Marg M said:

(it softens and erupts less frequently as, over time, we do the work of mourning.)

That phrase "erupts less frequently"....is hopeful on its own...All good council for this Journey.......Skies are clear today, good for Yard work.....have a good day

[TomPB]

47 minutes ago, kayc said:

 grief doesn't end, but it does change...we may start out in shock, grief fog, immense pain and tears, anxiety, doubts, confusion, but it seems to settle into a quieter grief that we carry inside us, a kind of sadness, a continual missing them. 

My question to everyone who is helping me is "Am I going to be sad for the rest of my life?" Deepak Chopra says the memories must become happy memories instead of bringing up the pain of loss for grief to "release". Not there.

[Eagle-96]

8 minutes ago, TomPB said:

My question to everyone who is helping me is "Am I going to be sad for the rest of my life?" Deepak Chopra says the memories must become happy memories instead of bringing up the pain of loss for grief to "release". Not there.

I'm not sure grief ever really releases. It never really leaves us. My cousin is approaching three years since she lost her husband to suicide. She said that she still thinks about him every day and still grieves the loss but she also feels that she can have something that at least approaches joy in her life. That's what we have to shoot for. Some joy. Some happiness. Some smiles. Some laughter. There will be sadness and tears mixed in to be sure but hopefully the mix will swing in our favor with time. We will never go back to the person we were before we lost our soulmates. We are changed forever, and that's ok, but we CAN find something that approaches joy.

[Margm]

22 minutes ago, TomPB said:

At least I've learned enough by now that I knew he was so clueless about grief that it didn't bother me.

I worked part-time for three family practice docs.  I remember when I was a child, all we had were GP's, and I think Marty can attest to this.  They knew the family.  They knew the patient.  They even sometimes made house calls in our little papermill town.  The family practice docs had to have new training in the new techniques every three years.  They treated everything.  When my new family practice doc gave me the antidepressant and I knew that one medicine could have killed me, when they called me back to come in for the bone density tests, I told them I would not be returning to this doc.  She had not listened to a word I said.  I told her I probably needed referral to a neurologist for my tremor, she actually was hateful to me about my not wanting the antidepressants and I knew she had not listened to a word I said.  I "fired" her and now know I need to find a doc that will listen to me.  Actually, we all know ourselves better than a first visit to a doc.  Sometimes now, specialty docs will only take referrals from a family practice doc.  We cannot protect our mate anymore, but we can protect ourselves.  Sometimes it feels like we are in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight.  We know the mistakes that can be made and if a person is not trained sufficiently to hear our grief, don't let them treat you.

I did go to my nurse practitioner that I had become comfortable with in AR, but it is about a 150 mile drive. She looked at the new medicine given to me and said that she wondered how the doc thought I could afford it.  It was a free "sample" but, having worked for docs many times, I knew how that worked too.  My insurance picks up after a certain amount, and mostly gives me generics that I don't even touch my insurance, although they add it in and the cost is insignificant.  Those without a generic, the cost are horrible, especially for fixed income people.  

I could not believe it, but some people without money for prescriptions, without insurance, they would go to the local farm store and buy antibiotics for farm animals.  I could not believe this until I heard some people talking that did this.  We have such a mixed up health system now.  I know for a fact (my daughter worked as a nurse for doc's) they will put a 15 minute timer on each patient.  More patients seen means more money for the practice.