Random thoughts. . . not in any order. Raw emotion spread out on paper. What is today very well may not be what is tomorrow. Then again it may be my hell everyday, from here on out!
I'm tired, I'm lonely, I'm hurt, I'm angry, I'm depressed, I'm discouraged, I'm so sad, and if you can't tell. . . I'm negative. Death has buried me deep in an avalanche of emotion, physical pain and unrest. Death is a messy thing. It isn't peaceful. The real world can be dirty and gritty and death is even worse. Death is loud and painful, silent and messy and most of all desperate.
Disclaimer: I AM NOT A NORMAL PERSON!
It's Christmas. I have had to shop with happy people. Listening to Christmas music in all the stores has practically done me in. I keep trying to think of Christmas morning with out the one person who made everything about Christmas, HAPPY! Crying has become my pastime. I keep looking for hope through all the rain. Grief does not abound in hope. I cannot bare to think about Christmas without Glade. Grief seeks to destroy joy in any holiday.
It never ends. . . the heavy heartache. It knows no schedule. I don't know what sleep is. I haven't slept a full night since July 29th. Hours that are usually passed with my eyes closed and my mind at rest are now spent awake. The pain of grief startles me continually throughout the night. Just as my mind shuts down and my breathing slows to a state of slumber, the pain vigilantly wakes me and I am present in the dark once more. Grief and heartache are soulmates and they love to entertain loneliness. They have no positive motives. They have devised their plan and executed it. I am now a prisoner. Did you know you can cry in your sleep?
It is amazing everything that stretches through the mind when ones entire life is blown apart by an unfathomable unplanned explosion. My life feels as if it's now been defined by a single moment in time. I don't know how to reassemble the shredded fragments of my heart and when I try to focus on which pieces I should first wire back together, it's an impossible decision. How does one choose? Where does one begin? As I stare at all of it, I am totally debilitated, frozen in a state of unrest. I'm sure it will eventually kill me. And there are moments I hope that it does and I hope it comes soon. Wanting to die is a normal part of grieving. I cannot think about tomorrow.
My mind works to keep every memory alive, even the one's that bombard me in screaming color, griping me around the neck choking out any consumption of oxygen. I play back every minute of the entire shocking ordeal, I play back every horrendous gross negligent act by people I trusted, people who should have known better, people who didn't care. People who have no business doing open heart surgery without the equipment they need! Greed is not caring or empathetic. Greed has no heart. Greed has only one motive. There will come a day when I will write about it all. There will come a day when I will share every last detail. . . when those who knew better are held accountable. No human being should ever have to go through what Glade went through.
And then there is the continual thought process that wants me to go back and fix everything. . . as if I could. Oh, If only I could. I go over ever detail, lying in my bed completely alone. I sort it out and then sort it out all over again. There is human error and then there is gross negligence. There is no mistaking severe. . . gross. . . negligence. And then there are those vivid scenes that grip me in my sleep and I am awake, remembering every haunting detail. I don't have time to list every emotion that storms in and rampages through me leaving nothing in tact, but my body feels the horrific tension of it all and it aches along with my heart. There is no peace, no means to relax, no exit. I am continually tense. Stress has declared itself a permanent resident. There is the sound of silence somewhere far away, too far away. I cannot hear it. Inside me there are only sounds of human suffering. I can only hear weeping. The intensity rises and falls with my chest.
I feel like I'm going about my life outside myself. People around me are less present than normal. And when they speak, I have to listen harder than usual. Grief is all consuming. There are all different kinds of people telling me all different kinds of things. Verbigeration, verbig, verbig, verbigeration! Some work to rush me through it and they want to tell me exactly how I should feel, exactly what I should and should not express, what I should be going through, what I should be thinking, just how they presume it ought to go, and whether or not I'm on the proper grieving schedule. People love to judge how you are doing with your grief.
Then there are those who don't want to hear about it at all. It's a mental attitude that echoes, "What???" "Your not over it yet?" They don't understand life altering. They have no conception of what real pain is. And they don't know. . . me. They don't know where I come from, what I've been through, who I am, and most of all where I was going.
Nothing in life brings more pain than losing what matters most! A house cannot exist without a foundation.
Every person grieves differently. Some people think my grieving should be like their grieving. There are a lot of married people who never become one. I was not one of them. Now the best half of me has been ripped away and unmercifully (for lack of a better word) murdered. Gone is my voice, my eyes, my ears, my heart, my mind, my reasoning, my sense of purpose, my saneness, my stability, my foundation, my sure footing, my plans, my goals, my happiness, my joy. I feel like I've lost my everything. I feel so lost without Glade.
People tell me I have my family. There is not a day that goes by that I'm not grateful I have my family. Short little analogy: Telling me I still have my head and my body when my arms and legs have been cut off does not make the pain of losing my arms and legs go away! Telling me to just be grateful I have my head and my body does not stop the bleeding or mend the devastating wounds that gape open wide and need immense healing! Losing your arms and legs is a monumental life altering loss that takes a life time to adjust to.
All in all I believe most people are uncomfortable with death. Grief is messy and depressing, people hate depressing, people are not quite sure what to do with death and depression or how to get it to go away and one thing is for certain, they want it to go away and go away quickly. Quick is not something conducive to grief! There is absolutely nothing quick about grief! And no matter what everyone thinks they know about grief there is so much more NO ONE knows about grief. Then there are all the details no one wants to tell you about grief. I believe there is a quick and dirty list you wish you had known about grief before you knew anything about grief. I am compiling it. And it doesn't matter how much you know, knowing doesn't change any emotion or any circumstance. And knowing does not bring back life! Every human is different. Every relationship is different, therefore every experience with grief is completely different. Oh, there are similarities and then there are those details so incredibly personal you never speak about them. Your lips never utter the truth aloud to another living soul. It's too painful. Instead you commiserate over them and your heart and head try to make sense of it enduring the pain in silence. Then there is the worst, dealing with people who think they know everything there is to know about grief or better yet, people who want to compare war stories, you know, my grief is worse than your grief kind of thing. It all makes me tired, hurt, sad and angry.
Grief has too many arms and legs! The mind of grief has a will of its own! Grief is needy and demanding.
Grief brings an intense loneliness. The chore of being all alone with your thoughts all day and all night, day in and day out is horrifically painful and incredibly heavy. People get tired of hearing about it. Sooner or later you are forced to go inside yourself and suffer alone. Grief is extremely personal and it doesn't fit any mold nor does it fit all of the cliches that are continually expounded upon by people who know absolutely nothing about grief or think they know everything about grief. And even those who do know a great deal about grief, don't know a single thing about MY grief. And there are people who say things about grief that simply aren't true. I had an individual tell me I just needed to change my focus. I sat there in a state of shock. Change my focus??? I wanted to strike back, and then I did the noble thing, I was kind and I withheld my tongue, which, by the way, knowingly would have given a sermon beginning with "Do you know how incredibly stupid you sound right now?"
I never hold people in contempt for anything they say to me that sounds absurd. They don't know any better. They honestly mean well and that is the gesture I hold onto. I totally understand because I think back now on all the ridiculous things I've said and even all the times I said nothing to someone who just lost their everything. I understand not knowing what to say to someone who has just had their foundation ripped out from underneath them. I get it! Some days I don't even know what to say to myself and I'm the one going through it. I do think the one thing people should do is lower their expectations and give more genuine complements, like, "Wow, you are an amazing person. I don't know how you're doing this ---at all ---I can't even imagine." There is a common phrase, a thought, a kind generality that you can say to anyone who is suffering with grief. It goes like this. . . "I have absolutely no clue what you are going through, but I know from what others have told me that it is incredibly painful ---the absolute worst! My heart aches for you and I am so very sorry and wish with all my being, there was something I could do to fix it all!" If you are uncomfortable with that then do the very best thing, that is, just hug them and cry with them.
Death is redefining me. I no longer care what people think. I look back on my life and take into account the time I spent worrying about what other people think --- how incredibly stupid! That is no longer a concern. Getting through the day, that is now my concern. Halle-freaking-lujah! I am done with that! Finally the realization has struck, it no longer matters what anyone thinks. What matters is what I think! Who cares what you think, my husband is dead. I now have a life sustaining reason to never care ever again what anyone thinks. Gone are the days of manipulation. "Oh, what you're mad at me because I didn't think, say, do, or act the way you thought I should. Sucks to be you!" I have learned a vitally important truth. . . Those who really love and care about me will be at my side, they will stick out the worst of it with me, regardless of any circumstance. I know who those people are because they are the ones who are still right here mopping up the aftermath with me! Those who don't really care quickly dissipate! Yes, those kinds of people fall away fast. I am now in survival mode. I don't have time to worry about what those kind of people think.
Perhaps I'm in the angry stage of grief right now.
Here's a random thread that goes through my mind. . . no one who has a loved one die should ever have to send a single thank you card. That tradition is just absolutely absurd and insanely cruel! And when it comes to death that is the last thing that should be expected of anyone. The sheer number of thank you cards I need to send is overwhelming. Over a thousand people came to pay their love and respect to Glade. Flowers, cards filled with money, gifts of meaningful expressions, it's overwhelming. I am just now slowly opening things. Everything regarding death has to be taken in slowly. I buried my main reason for living. I planned and executed a funeral in a state of complete and utter shock! There is a fog that covers it all. I faintly remember sitting on a bench. I'm still thinking maybe this is just a poorly written script and I can change the ending. Everything is raw in me. Not sending a thank you card has nothing to do with gratitude. There have been so many saving acts of kindness it is overwhelming! There is no end of gratitude in me that keeps my heart alive and pumping. All of the kind deeds done to me and my family have been the knots in the end of our ropes! I see the love and the support and can barely comprehend it. It sustains me. I just can't face the fact though, that it's real. And trying to compile words on a card is impossible right now. I tried to start. It was mentally torturing and the amount of tears it produced was not worth it. Every stroke of the pen is a reminder he's dead. From here on out every time someone loses a loved one and I will send my expressions of sorrow with a gift, I will attach the following disclaimer, "Please send NO thank you card. . . that's my second gift to you ---save a stamp, I know you are grateful!"
With death, there is no such thing as closure. NO, you do not get over it!!! There is no timeline for grieving. You don't move through it, you move around in it. . . over and over and around and around. The goal is to try and find a place where you can rest within it! You will grieve in some form forever. FOREVER! There is no rushing through it. It doesn't fit anyones schedule. I didn't move in with grief! Grief moved in with me ---and it moved in without an invitation! It will stay with me forever. Grief is a vagabond inside my home. It just wanders from room to room. Grief is stubborn! Grief is like a bad renter you can't get rid of. Yes, grief is going to live with me until I die! And it's going to take me a life time to get accustomed to it. The work now becomes a transition of how to live with it, what room to put it in, how to make it stay there, and how to get along together and find some measure of peace. This is a work that will take me the rest of my days and there are going to be blocks of time that no matter how much ground I've covered the rawness of it all will come back and raise it's ugly head once again! I now know this! This is fact not fiction!
News flash: You can appear to be fine and NOT be fine. Grievers turn into Fakers. In some form at some time you have to pretend your ok. Every emotion is here to stay and now I attempt to go on about my life keeping it hidden so I can look normal. Guilt and Anger are married to each other. They like to fight! Screaming is normal. Even anger aimed at God is normal. Grief doesn't come in 5 neat stages. Grief isn't linear. You don't go through one stage right after another. No, instead you jump randomly through each stage only to continue jumping, randomly landing in and out of each one, never knowing in what stage you are going to land in next. The cycle continues till hell freezes over or so I hear. Then there are those who tell me, "Oh it will get better." People are liars. I don't think it really gets better. In fact I know for a fact it is NEVER going to get better. I just think people learn to live life numb and in constant pain and they tell themselves that feels better. Who wants better, when I had the best!
Grief has made me question my life, my purpose for living, my faith, my goals, my beliefs, my sheer existence, my everything. I don't know who I am or where I'm going or even why I should go at all. And however bad you think grief hurts. It hurts a million times worse! The pain is searingly real! It is physical, it is mental, it is spiritual, it is social, it is heavy, it is excruciating. There are days I wonder how much longer I can stand it.
You grieve the past, the present and the future. You grieve them individually, you grieve them collectively, you grieve them continually. You can't compare grief or compare losses. Time does not heal all wounds. And being surrounded by people doesn't take away the loneliness --- no, not at all.
With grief comes shock! There are so many layers of shock within a single strand of grief. Just when I think I've risen to the top layer, I find a million more layers. Every day I wake up expecting that possibly I am coming out of the shock of it all. And everyday I say to myself a thousand times, the man I love and planned my whole life around is dead, what do I do now? Then I realize, I'm still in shock! Even the physical symptoms still present themselves over and over again.
I read the other day, “Every journey begins with a single step. No matter how distant or near the destination. That first step is not optional. To fail to begin is to fail the entire journey.” After reading that I tried to contemplate steps and a journey? Questions flood into me. Where am I going and why am I even going there? Take a first step? To where? Which way do I go? How do I move my feet? Do I have any feet? My legs feel like they have been cut out from underneath me. What do I walk on? Glade was my solid ground! He was the sky above me and the earth beneath me! He was my compass, my map, my world, my entire reason for the journey. Death has unearthed me. And I dare not move.
On July 31st, 2014, I walked through two doors. They were not the doors I would have chosen to walk through. No, my insurance chose for me, a thing we Americans should riot to change! Insurance companies should not have the right to tell people where they have to go to receive medical attention. Competition is a good thing and should be present above all else in the health care industry! After entering those doors, I walked down a long hallway, I sat down in a waiting room. Little did I know I was sitting there waiting for my whole world to shatter!
“In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as, “Delusion of Reprieve.” The condemned, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute.” And so it is with death, every day my mind is struck with some delusion of reprieve. And that somewhere, somehow I will discover my husband is not dead. At any moment my life will return to that state of sheer and utter joy and happiness where each and every day just existed plainly, outstanding in the throngs of everything ordinary! How I wish I had ordinary back! Ordinary just may be all that is beautiful in life. People should treasure ORDINARY!
How I wish I could go back to an dull uneventful average ordinary day. The kind I use to complain about.
I wish I could hear his footsteps climb the stairs inside the garage after the sun went down.
I can hear the door open and close.
I can hear the rustling of bags along with the blessed sounds of human life.
And like always, I stand at the kitchen sink and wait for those familiar words in those familiar tones, “Hi Honey, I'm Home! I'm Home! I'm Home!”
Delusion of reprieve! Somehow this is not my life now! This horrible state I am in is not mine. And by some miraculous means I'll be reprieved of it surely! Please God, let me be reprieved from this empty state of aloneness, this condemned sentence called death, this state of sheer hell!
The bloom on the rose has curled under. The frozen morning air has taken it's toll on each frail remaining bud, they hang listless and shriveled. The purple Astor has grown weary and the Black Eyed Susan's are completely spent. Winter's bitter wind has accosted it's victims. The days grow darker. Death thrives in winter. Every tree fights to hold onto its last leaf, but trees are all too submissive when it comes to nature and her harsh demands. Why can't they hold on longer? I need them to hold on longer, but instead they let go, and stand naked in the bitter cold. Winter with her death march moves through me. The green must die along with the golden reds and brilliant yellows. Vibrant colors are not permitted in winter's cold and barren landscape. There is no color in death. I fear spring will never find me. I fear I am destined to remain frozen.
Today I wore blisters on my hands working in the yard. It felt good to cut back the burning bush. I cut it back hard, in a strict attempt to bring it under control. Then I realized, God is doing the same to me. I feel it. . . His hands. . . He is cutting me back, cutting me back hard. . . perhaps too hard. In winter, death is imminent. I feel it, parts of me are dying.
And so my day comes to a close. Thoughts that wound up on paper will possibly mutate and change with some form of new growth within me as it comes, but for now, the night is waiting for our lonely ritual.
I had a dear friend tell me the other day to try and think of one thing each day I am grateful for. At the end of each day it is easy to see that thing I am clearly thankful for. I'm thankful the day is over. I'm grateful I survived! I"m grateful I'm one day closer to seeing the person I loved with all my heart. I'm grateful I'm going to fight to sleep and then somewhere in the morning's light, I'm going to rise up and try as I may to go at it all again.
The positive in life is in the rising! Tomorrow, at some point, I will rise in some small fashion! And I will fight the same fight all over again, attempt to conquer the same thoughts, the same random thoughts that are now my constant companions.
I read it somewhere, I read all about the very thing that I am doing now death has buried me in the deepest emotional grave ever. I am mining UP! In everything I have ever read about grief I stumbled upon the most perfect analogy. It is the very thing I am doing and now I know why it's so hard. I am mining UP! How incredibly descriptive. I am not digging my way in, I am digging my way UP and hopefully OUT! I am digging to find light and air! I'm suffocating! I need to breath and I need to find a place where I can do more than just survive. I gotta say though, I think I've been handed a pencil to dig with. Every day I feel little to no progress.
Life hurts a great deal more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. "Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us as we live with death."
Tomorrow it's suppose to rain. In my house it rains everyday. And death has taught me some things can never be fully understood until they visit us personally.
Death is so very personal!
Loss hurts more when what you lost mattered most. Those are my thoughts today.
