My favorite time is the quiet time. That all too brief spell when freshly fallen snow blankets the world and muffles everything.
A muted world.
I’m a hypocrite, though, and I know there are days when I can’t stand the quiet. Where I rave and fight against the possibility of being left to my thoughts.
But tonight, tonight I embrace this quiet calm. Knowing it won’t last. Knowing this snow is only teasing, and by morning it’ll be an obstacle.
A brief respite to myself.
Now I know we’ve all likely been confronted with feelings or facts we’d rather not acknowledge, so I’ve put together this post for the uninitiated (or anyone new to avoiding the uncertain and uncomfortable).
Keep your hands busy, find a craft or a chore or an errand that NEEDS doing right now. By focusing on these urgent matters those feelings, that reality of the situation, isn’t in the forefront.
Personally I (don’t) enjoy making lists of things, that way there’s a physical reminder of the looming tasks I’ve yet to accomplish. Having this physical reminder keeps me focused on The specific tasks I can avoid, as opposed to the nebulous and/or undefined feelings I’m really trying to avoid.
Below is a typical list of tasks I could perform in lieu of actual emotional work (aka dealing with feelings )
Whatever you do, DO NOT sit with your feelings, talk about them, or write them down.
However, writing them out as a note on your phone while chain smoking on the back porch may be beneficial. Posting it to a quasi-anonymous blog where it’s likely never to be seen by anyone you know could also be considered “productive”.
Congratulations, you’ve passively acknowledged your feelings!
So you remember the ice bucket challenge, right? It was supposed to be a fundraiser thing for ALS or something; instead it became an excuse to dump ice on yourself and film it for Facebook.
Simpler times.
Anyways; I never understood what was “challenging@ about dumping ice over your head. I mean, if anything it’s just a refreshing way to cool off.
I have a better idea.
Instead of dumping perfectly good ice everywhere we put it in a bucket. Then we add a little water, and you hold your hand in the freezing water as long as you can.
Now THATS a challenge. I’m gonna assume you’ve probably never had a reason to purposefully freeze your fingers, but have you ever stuck your hand in a snowbank sans gloves? Or had to stand out in windy, frigid weather with some bit of skin left exposed?
It fucking hurts, but not like anything you’ve felt before.
At first it’s a shock, then you start to feel the stabbing of the cold as your nerves freak out telling your brain “DANGER!”. It might start to ache and throb as the tissues get damaged, the cells literally freezing and expanding.
At a certain point the pain changes, it’s gotten so intense, too intense. With so many neurons sending so many signals of different pains the brain short circuits.
It turns off the pain. Your appendage, now slowly dying in the cold, feels like nothing.
Nothing.
Not better, not ok, but void. A vacuum in the place where something was.
That’s where I’ve been for a while now, but instead of my body it’s my brain. My heart & soul, the place where I’d feel sick over the loss or giddy about <insert things I have enjoyed>.
It’s worse somehow, like emotional constipation so bad it’s all just impacted feelings stuck somewhere deep down; and it ain’t budging.
So yeah. That’s grief some days, at least for me.
Leave me a comment if you’ve ever felt something like this, and how it’s gone for you.
If you’ve spent some time here, read along with the story so far you may have noticed I don’t seem to spend much time with Family.
“Why is that?” You wonder, “With so much loss you’d think the family would come together and support each other. Bloods thicker than water after all…”
Yeah, except when it isn’t.
Except when you spend the anniversaries of your parents deaths mostly alone, keeping busy with as many mundane things as you can find.
When you get a phone call from your mother’s brother on the anniversary of your dads death, a man who only met him a few times over 30 years ago, and he is the Only Person to ask “How’re you doing?”
When you remember the last moments of your dads life, holding his hand surrounded by strangers. Those two other people that share his DNA and a vague resemblance to you, those same two you haven’t seen since that fateful afternoon last August.
Family, the way it’s portrayed by the media as this steadfast harbor in a storm, is a lie.
Family is no more than those people who share a vague genetics connection to me. Who’s concern only extends as far as how I might be of use in their times of need.
Family is a curse. A promised lie I can’t help but fall for each and every time it’s spoken. Like some pathetic dog returning to its master despite their indifference and neglect, when even the dog knows it’d do much better if it just stayed out alone.
It hurts to know it’ll never be. I’ll never have the love and support I see taken for granted by so many.
Que sera sera,
How does it feel to be grieving a year later?
It’s different, but I’m not sure how much so. I know a lot hasn’t happened that I expected, and a lot of things have come up that I never saw coming.
As far as this loss goes, it’s a wound. A year ago I got two huge cuts, one down each side from my armpits to my hips. Normally healing these kinds of things starts with the mourning; with sharing the collective loss with the community and those who knew them. Sharing the loss, the stories and the pain helps to close the wound a bit, it’s not healed but it’s on it’s way.
There was no collective mourning here however, and the day my dad died was the last time I saw anyone blood-related to him.
Skipping this step it feels as if the cuts have scabbed over, maybe even started to grow scar tissue but they’re anything but healthy.
Healing might not be the linear process we’d expect. What seems to be an old wound suddenly starts to warm, and I can feel the swelling from under my skin. There’s infection, something that needs release before the body can stitch everything back together. As painful as the infection becomes the urge to try and force it out is strong.
Thing is, you can’t just force the bad away. You need to get rid of it, for sure, but that takes time. Maybe just some TLC, maybe a round of antibiotics. Only thing I know is when you squeeze a pimple it gets 10x worse. Same goes for Grief.
So the cycle has gone this year, from healing to infection; relief to pain. Right now I’m in the infection stage, that bit where it’s not ready to be drained but you know the pain is there. I was hoping that by writing I could trick myself into purging the pain. No luck there.
Sunday will make it a year from the day my Dad passed, and it’s looking like I’ll be spending it alone.
Let me stop you right there friend, this isn’t your usual blog post about gardening woes. I’m not here writing to complain about my lack luster tomato plants or the squirrels that are digging holes in the garden beds killing what little is thriving (even though that is happening…)
No, I want to burn my garden because it failed on a much bigger scale.
See, last summer I built the raised beds to save my seedlings since the greenhouse wasn’t an option ( The greenhouse is it’s own story for another day…). I had a ridiculous number of cherry tomato plants, but only one beefsteak survived.
Turned out that those big juicy tomatoes were my Dads favorite, so I tended that plant like my life depended on it.
Or his, actually.
I had this hope, this ridiculous dream that I’d bring him that tomato and we’d sit around like old times; that with one bite he would commend me for my gardening skills and reminisce about summers past.
Funny thing about pancreatic cancer is it makes eating excruciating.
The day the tomato had finally ripened I made plans to go visit ASAP. As I drove up to his house I played out all the scenarios of us enjoying this moment, how wonderful this t would be. That despite the pain and nausea he’s be able to taste it’s juices and magically he’d begin to go into remission.
When I got to the house I sliced it up and sprinkled some salt, then put it on the coffee table while we watched some shark week. He told me how beautiful it was, how “a garden fresh tomato is the taste of peak summer”, but he never took a bite.
Eventually I started eating it, grabbing spices hoping someone else would follow suit.
When I left I was the only one to try it. He said he’d take a bite later, that when he ate the pain got worse and he didn’t want to ruin our time together.
I believe he did, and that the tomato failed to be the panacea I had built it up to be.
When he died in August I stopped tending the garden. I wasn’t going to grow anything this year, but At some point I planted tomatoes again. Only beefsteak, but the cherry’s self seeded all around the bed.
I care for it, neglectfully so but still. Green tomatoes are growing, and I hate them.
It’s a duality, like so many others, this perfect example of “life goes on” that inherently reminds me of death. I want to burn it, a huge pyre and pit to replace the green that’s there now, taunting me with the memory of Hope dashed.
I won’t though, there’s flowers coming back. Even a cucumber plant bloomed this week. So, it stays for now.
My mom was a lot of things, but one thing she was above all else was independent. She raised me alone, sure she had friends & family who cares about us and helped where they could but at the end of the day it was just the two of us.
So when it came to household stuff like cleaning or fixing the dryer she had to figure it out. I learned a lot through watching her. Things that I take for grant today, like knowing how to light the pilot on the stove or insulate the windows for winter, that a lot of my friends are clueless about.
For years I’ve attributed these skills & knowledge/ to my time at Home Depot. Sure I learned stuff there but that’s not where I learned the drive to fix. To figure it out because no one else will, and to do so alone because there’s no other option.
Today I hung a clothesline. I’d tried last weekend with my boyfriend but was missing a piece. I had everything ready to go but kept putting it off, waiting for someone else to be around just in case.
Would it have been easier with help? No doubt. Was it impossible to do alone? No, it just required a bit more creativity (and patience…I damn near tore the whole thing down out of frustration more than once)
Ultimately situations like this remind me that I am capable of doing things independently even if I’d rather not. So yeah, thanks mom.
Death season is upon me, while I suppose it’s technically season 2 I didn’t know season 1 was coming so…
Here we are. One year ago I was reeling from my moms unexpected suicide while trying desperately to cling to hope that my dad would survive.
It was a shitty time to say the least. However I can’t say this moment is much better; over the past year I’ve had family disown me & lost a job. Granted that job generally made me miserable, I miss my students.
I miss having an obligation, where someone would notice if I’m not around. where I was held account for my time.
Truthfully I’ve spent most of the past year in Disbelief (dissociation?) that they’re truly gone. I go from numb to paralyzed and back again daily. Some days the realness of it all is so intense I get sick, retching from anxiety like when I was a kid and had to sleep away from home.
August 29th will mark the end of this first (or second?) Death Season, between now & then let’s try to memento mori. Live this life remembering death will come to us all.
Resiliently Ridiculous 