Hierarchy of Emotions

Thank god no one asked me to be thankful this past weekend.

If someone had actually asked me to express thanks, something like this might have come spewing out: I don’t care if it’s f*ing thanksgiving. My husband died this past year, so did my dad, and I don’t feel “thankful”.

That is really how I felt; the overriding sentiment was not one of gratitude, despite the many good things I do have. Overall, am I a thankful person? Yes. Aren’t we all? Everybody claims to be – on Facebook, in particular. Thankful for family, friends, jobs, a home, a pet, a pair of boots, a turkey on the table, blah blah blah. It’s easy to throw the thanks around when you haven’t just lost something precious. Why do people feel the need to trumpet how thankful they are? Why not just be thankful and shut up about it? Facebook. Sometimes I think it’s just a place for people to brag.

Holiday Creep

Of course there is currently much talk about the holidays, and how to cope with them after experiencing loss. I understand the good intentions behind discussing, thinking, and preparing for the upcoming season. And that it might not be a bad idea to have a “plan” in place….

Me and my husband – we were our own little unit. A self-sufficient satellite station. We both grew up with families that were low-key about the holidays, wonderful families with virtually no drama or expectations about where we spent our Thanksgiving, or Christmas, families that also happened to be very far away – mine, across the country, his, on an entirely different continent. So we all actually felt it was more enjoyable for everyone to visit in the off-seasons, without any of the potential holiday travel fiascos.

Survival Tips

Hope. A glimmer.

There might be quite a few Joan Didion quotes working their way into this blog. After her husband died suddenly from heart failure (whilst their daughter was in the hospital, deathly ill) she wrote “The Year of Magical Thinking”. The title itself is one I can aspire to, as I immediately thought, how about more like, “The Year of Messed-Up Thinking”, but I will get back to the title later.

short. not sweet.

I haven’t written for a week or two. Been riding the “waves” of grief. And doesn’t that sound nice? Even the word itself sounds soft. Rolling smoothly along, an easy up and down. And while I understand the analogy, frankly, I find it annoying. It belies the storm. Who, when they think of waves immediately goes to the crashing ones, the drowning ones, the deafening ones? The undertow?

loss busts you open like a broken vase

need I say more about the pieces?

still on hands and knees

nowhere near gluing it all back together.

Tentacles

Oh shit, I can feel the rage coming.

See, that’s what’s so fucking annoying about grief. On the one hand, it’s completely unpredictable – you have no idea when or how it will hit, yet rest assured, even you, will be dragged through EVERY single phase of it at some point. So really, it is completely predictable in an unpredictable way. You will experience despair, you will experience confusion, you will experience numbness, you will experience pain, and you will experience anger. You WILL experience it ALL.