Tag: grief

Spring

Spring is slowly arriving in the Pacific Northwest. Tulips, daffodils and now some poppies have been spotted. The fruit trees put on their Easter finery and color has replaced grey. I sit and watch the hummingbirds consume mass quantities from the feeder and act like kids on a sugar high, chasing each other, dive bombing, never seeming to stop having fun. Sometimes I think I would like to come back as a bird. I would love to fly high, gliding with the wind. The ocean of my mind is calm right now and I tiptoe around grateful for the peace. I feel lucky that I have spring to remind me of new beginnings, how so much is possible. I know the queen mum is at peace and as I breathe into this moment, so am I.

Mourning

I had a grief attack yesterday. One moment I’m mopping the floor the next I see the queen mum’s pained face in front of me and that month before she died hits me between the eyes. I am surrounded in sadness. I feel so alone. Lonely, lost, lousy, little, loser, lonesome. L words rumble through my head. Tears create puddles on my face. I am all of those L words. I scream and cry, letting it all out.  I try to find kinder  L words to replace the one’s I feel. Laughter, living, lovely, looking, light, loose, lucky. Life. Soon maybe I will.

dream

I peaked into my mothers’ bedroom and listened as she quietly snored, I found the noise comforting. I couldn’t see her just a bundle under the covers, she would often stay in bed as long as possible. And then I remembered  my mother isn’t in bed, she doesn’t have her apartment anymore, she is dead. I started crying, and then I woke up.

Letting Go

My father once said to me that I was like an old dog with a bone, I just wouldn’t let go. I guess he was right. Thirty years ago I fell in love with a man who broke up with me after three years together. Now I see our relationship was based on drugs, we spent many days high on some great LSD that we would chew every morning and see where it took us. The sex was good and I foolishly thought we were communicating with our lovemaking. He had been in Vietnam and wouldn’t discuss it with me. I believed  I could understand what he went through but time has taught me that isn’t so. I used to worry that when the LSD ran out so would we and in some ways that was true it just took a couple of years and different drugs to figure that out. Even after we broke up I still loved him and I guess I still held hope. I kept all the love letters he had written and pictures of him and occasionally would take them out and look at them. Feeling the love.
After my mother died we started communicating and he was very sympathetic and supportive. He had married the woman who would call him up late at night while we were together. He always denied there was anything between them and decided it was time to explain why he broke up with me, I am so glad he did. In reading his version of what happened those many years ago and comparing it to what I remember I realize how little we really knew  each other, how the trust was never there, how the support a relationship needs to survive did not exist. I threw away those love letters and got rid of his pictures and finally let go of that bone.

Boxes of love

I am still sifting through boxes of pictures, letters, cards, newspaper clippings that belonged to the queen mum. She kept every card her kids ever sent her. She kept a list of Christmas cards that she received and a list of cards she sent. In the past few years the list had gotten smaller and as I looked at her address book I noticed the scratched out names of friends that are gone. She kept everything that had anything to do with my brother Sean who died in 2000, his death broke her heart. So now I struggle with throwing away the pictures of the memorial gathering and remembrance book that his friends signed,  the newspaper articles about his life, his obituary notice. It isn’t just his obits she kept but the one for her mother, her  father, her  two brothers with rosary cards in their honor. Who would I save these for? Who wants to know? Who would see these pieces of paper as treasures, touch stones to their past. History. As I throw these things away I feel I am not only throwing away my mother’s life but a part of my own. I am grateful we have memories, you don’t have to throw them away.

Here’s my application

I just turned 65 years old and I am looking for a job. I applied for unemployment but they are giving me grief. I hate bureaucracy. I don’t like being told what to do. So I have to sign these papers agreeing that I am ready and willing and able to work right now. I need to be able to lift 50lbs and stand or sit for eight hours and always have a smile on my face. They don’t mention if I am allowed to cry while I’m smiling. I still cry a lot, I never know when it is going to happen. It reminds me of the weather here in the Pacific Northwest, one moment it’s sunny the next cloudy and overcast. Just like me.

Tuesday

I am working on getting rid of stuff that belonged to the queen mum today. It always makes me emotional and today angry. I believe what happened at the nursing home has traumatized me, and I still wear my grief like a second skin.  Today I am looking through the stuff that was in her desk. Everything we could never find so we bought another was in that  drawer. Now I have 4 staplers, 3 measuring tapes, 6 pairs of scissors and more pens that I want to count, and push pins and rubber bands and on and on it goes. I have had a couple of people give me suggestions on getting a  job. Like I don’t know to look in the newspaper, I hate it when someones suggests the obvious to me.  In my heart I know these suggestions come from a place of love and yet it makes me mad because neither one of them has worked a low paying job in forty years.  They have no idea what it is like being an itinerant worker these days. I was so surprised how  cruel women can be in the workplace. I still have no idea why they didn’t like me and  decided to make my working life miserable, no sisterhood working there. And don’t get me started about ageism in the workplace. I see another box to go through, it looks like kitchen stuff, oh good just want I need  another potato peeler.

Thursday

It is one of those rainy grey days. I stay home in comfy clothes and begin again to throw the queen mum’s life away. Yesterday marked two months since she died. The last couple of weeks have been hard, lots of crying and sadness. I stopped looking through boxes, I needed a break from the daily reminder that she is gone. I feel so alone. I don’t know where I belong. I don’t know what to do. Who am I now? What do I need? Feeling closer to the end then the beginning, working on making peace with that. Reinventing, revitalizing, remembering.  Today I tossed  away fifteen years of calendars that Grace used as a diary, noting birthdays, telephone calls, parties, fights and bills paid. For a moment I want to stop and read what she wrote for every day of every month of every year.  I resist and drop them in the garbage bag.  I sift through a box of video tapes that cause my nose to itch from the faint moldy smell held in the box and wonder if anybody still uses VHS. I think that is enough for today.

Waiting

I walked into the holistic health office and 4 young people smile at me, their faces full of joy. I try to smile back. I wish I could put on the big fat I can take it smile, but it’s just not there. Mourning sucks all the joy out and fills the empty spaces with sadness. I honor my grief because when the mourning quiets down I know I will be better for it. I will find my joy.