Word.

Did you know that Walt Disney recently tried to trademark “Day of the Dead” for one of their upcoming Pixar movies? Seriously! Death might be “black and white”, but the whole trademarking of holidays, commonly used slogans, etc…that’s an ethical gray area for me. I mean, does everything have to be “owned” by a big corporation?! Disney is infamous for raking people over the coals with trademark lawsuits.

I work in advertising, as a designer. I have a great job that allows me to be creative. I understand the importance of protecting creative ideas. But I’ll let you in on a little secret, I’m not a big fan of consumerism and marketing, and I actually hate selling stuff. That’s a big part of what we do in advertising. Of course, it doesn’t always feel that way from the inside. If you watch Mad Men, you know that there is a lot of skill, strategy, and thought that goes into creating a message, and that the “creatives” at an agency live to come up with the right line, the perfect font/photo/and layout combination, a comprehensive piece of communication so meaningful that it lives on beyond the campaign. They – we – are passionate about it.

House rules

Before I started a blog, I read a lot of other blogs about loss. I noticed that many of them had a “shelf-life”, so to speak. The writer eventually must have felt that expressing their grief in a blog, had run its course. I took it to mean that they had moved on to processing their grief differently, that they were healing, and were finally able to let grief move into the background…no longer hogging center stage. Some people probably also just got sick and tired of writing about grief! I’ve been starting to feel like a broken record, myself.

In fact, just this morning, armed with an extremely ambitious to-do list, I thought, “Hey! I might be done writing about grief”. Not that I am done grieving, but I am starting to feel that perhaps writing about it isn’t helping me move forward any more. And really, I feel like I keep saying the same damn thing, just in a slightly different way. See? Didn’t I already say that?

The best of times, and the worst of times.

When you spend most of your life living far away from family, phone calls carry a different weight. Like a dog that understands its owner’s root habits (better than the person themselves), when you live on another continent, or in a state several hours ahead in the time zone, you become very attuned to your family’s “calling habits”. You just sense it intuitively – don’t even need the “Caller ID” to know – oh, that’s mom calling.

So, when my phone rang in January of last year, and I got “the” call, my heart just sank, and my legs starting shaking before I even picked up the phone.

It was the worst phone call of my life. My dad had all of us on the phone, and told us he had decided to stop his kidney-dialysis treatment. This meant that he would die, possibly even in a day, or two.

Sweet! Everything was going gangbusters, now I’m back in the slammer.

There will be days when you feel trapped in your cage of grief, and every stinkin’ emotion is there with you, like a gang of degenerate hoodlums, just waiting to mess up your face, topple your day, threaten your future. These guys are smokin’, they’re missing teeth, breathing their rancid breathe in your face, and they aren’t going anywhere fast.

Just ride it out. Ride. it. out. Feel the waves of nausea and panic. Lay down on the cold cell floor and play possum. Or scream. Go ahead, bang those fists ’til they are bloody, ‘cuz no one is going to post bail. That’s right. Accept it.

No one can rescue you from grief. It’s yours. Your own. But some days, it owns you. And there’s no way around it, under it, or over it. You just have to get through it. Sit, cry, scream, through the shit-storm.

I know it’s a healing process. I know I will have better days! I’ve already had them.

But today, I’m back in the slammer, and I don’t know why I am here. All I did was try to have fun, live life, get back to normal. Is that a crime?

Composting

Some people take action right away…they sell the house, the car, they get rid of the stuff. Some do it because they have to, for financial reasons. Others because they need to get rid of the reminders – not the memories – the triggers.

Around here, not a lot of change has been visible to the naked eye. I’m maintaining. And I’m doing it pretty well. Things could have gone differently. I could have run through the neighborhood naked, screaming at the top of my lungs, with my dog chasing me, scratching me, biting my ass. Because that is, at times, how I have felt. Turned inside-out, for all to see, raging and raw. Or I could have kept the shades drawn all year….allowing the garden to take over, covering the whole house in spiky tangled vines. I’ve felt that way, too. That’s right, stay away kids, that’s the crazy widow’s house!

But one thing about grief is that when it isn’t slamming you over the head with emotion, it’s taking place on the most subtle of levels. I’m talking shades of shades of shades of gray. Too faint for the eye to see. Yep, a lot of grief takes place inside the closet. At the heart level, the cellular level, deep dark earthworm level.

And that’s good stuff. Right? I mean, worms are cool. They are good stuff. They do good stuff, below the surface.