I saw a grief counselor today at The Centre for Living With Dying. What prompted me to call, finally, is that yesterday I expressed myself inappropriately at work, which made me realize I need a safe place to process all the pain and anger I’m sitting on as I go through life’s daily routines. The woman I met with is the minister who performed our marriage ceremony. Talking with her was the closest I’ve felt to being where I want to be since leaving Texas.
One thing that became clear is that the grief of my father-in-law’s death compounds the previous grief of leaving behind a dear community by moving to California. That community, the handful of friends, was my bedrock. They are still my friends, sure, but the physical displacement is what hurts.
I also realized something else. I lamented to the counselor how I’m not taking actions that I know might be comforting or helpful, such as making art or exercising. The realization dawned that I’m resisting because I want to feel poorly. It’s a way of making room for grief in a culture that relentlessly strives, in a life that requires returning to work and chores and bills, and where few people want to hear of one’s pain. I’ve been feeling ill in body and spirit. I want to be sick. Leave me alone and let me rest; let the process happen.
But I haven’t allowed this, haven’t given myself permission; instead I’ve countered with self-critique: What’s wrong with me that I don’t do what would be “good” for me? I haven’t even granted myself the luxury of unexamined experience. I live so much in my mind that I have abandoned my heart. The unexamined life, Socrates said, is not worth living. I agree, to a point. An overly examined life, however, is clouded by second-guessing and self-conscious narrative.
So for now, in the moment, I give myself permission and space to feel like crud and to live my life without self-critique. I’ll feel better when I feel better. My body and spirit will let me know. It’s happened before.
Interesting post. Thanks for writing it.
having lost my dad last month… i know your pain
When I was devastated after the death of my roommate from brain cancer some friends recommended that I go on anti-depressents. I couldn’t believe the suggestion. Of course I felt bad, sad, depressed! That is how one is supposed to feel when one loses someone one loves. I wanted to feel every bit of the pain. I wanted to lie in bed all day and cry. And I did. And when I was ready to move on I did that too. I think the first 3 or 4 months are the hardest, but it took close to a year for the grief to finish coursing through my body and being.
yeah, it is funny how everyone wants an immediate bounceback from grief. i know i have wanted that.
you’re so smart to seek out help at the centre, for allowing yourself the space to grieve, and not beating yourself up for not being more “active” in your recovery.
sending hugs and love your way. xoxoox
I am your mother’s first cousin. The sadness which most people associate with a death, of a friend, relative, or, eventually, as they see the coming of their own death, is associated with either a dispair that this life situation we are in, is all that they see as reality; or, that they are uncertain as to what “the next life” is all about, and really don’t believe that it exists.
Some, however, take the view that death is a doorway into a better situation, a condition which is outside of the boundaries of time, three-dimensional space, and the decision-making which we all have to do, each waking moment of our lives. The essence of the “conditon beyond the doorway”, as I term it, is that the identity of the individual still exists, in the form of the totality of the information content acquired/experienced during the “normal lifetime”. Does this “conditon beyond the doorway” really exist? I think so, based on inferences and induction from about forty experiences which have been “unusual” and “irreproducible”. For those who have a set of “good experiences”, the “condition beyond the doorway” will be good. And, somehow in a way I cannot now understand, there will be communication with others there, of like goodness and happiness.
I look forward to chatting about such things with you over a coffee in the future….