grief

Eating for Comfort

November 9, 2012

“What you don’t let begin can never end.” – Geneen Roth

I watched myself do it. That in itself was a revelation.

I had just spent 8 days either being frantic with worry, supporting my husband and his Mom as they processed their grief, holding down the supporting role, doing some work from home or trying to suppress my need to organise and plan. By the 9th day, when they were with the funeral director, and I was on my own for an hour, I had hit overwhelm.

And that is when I watched myself do it.

The tension had built in me until I could hardly breathe, and I felt compelled to go into the nearest shop. Making a beeline to the fridge, I found one of my favourite little gluten free cakes. Mostly made of ground almonds and cinnamon, and dusted with icing sugar, it is usually a treat and a complete delight to eat. Delight, however, was not what I was looking for.

Barely waiting to get outside the door, I had the package opened and the cake eaten before I had gone ten steps.

I felt better. There was the moment of numbness. There was the moment of relief. There was the moment, the briefest moment, where I felt a little release. The tension and pain lifted for a moment and I could actually breathe again.

Normally the next moment would have been filled with regret, self loathing, frustration or disgust.

But something deep inside of me seems to have shifted. Even while the cake was being eaten, there was a small part of me standing outside myself, understanding what was going on. I could see my small self needing love and comfort and peace, and looking for it in the only way she knew how at the time. The extreme situation had called for an extreme reaction, and food was easier and more acceptable than a temper tantrum or tears right there in the street. I knew all of that, and I was able to see myself with love.

I’m not sure if this calm watcher will last or whether it will move deep enough to help me choose the right kind of nourishment in times of extreme need. What I do know is that the more I look at the world and the more I see the narrative behind the action, the more convinced I am that the power to change ourselves and our world lies in the stories we tell.

Healing begins when we tell a different story.

Brave, collecting emotions, grief

Talking About Grief

October 30, 2012

There are not yet words for what we are swimming through. Things are happening we cannot say or even percieve, because no one admits they are happening. This is where the limitations of human conciousness show up: we need words in order to make things real. If we don’t talk about something, it’s as though it’s not happening. And yet it is happening.” – Christina Baldwin. Storycatcher

No one ever talks about how exhausted the process of bereavement makes you. They talk about how sad they are and the stages of grief and all of that technical stuff. They talk about baggage and processing and funerals and details. You always know how someone died and when they died and when and where they will be ‘put to rest.’ But at a time of loss, it is not the dead that need that rest.

We have had a profound loss in our family. That is why I am not here with the story I had hoped to give. I haven’t had a chance to record it, but more than that, I have simply been too tired. I have fallen asleep in three different chairs today and in the middle of three different conversations. It’s as if the body simply can only take so much emotion and can only go so deep for so long before it decides it has had enough and shuts down.

We have talked for several days now, in that strange gap in your life that death opens. We have used words to remember, to understand, to question, to wonder and to share memories. It’s as if we must get it all out there; get it all said in order to cement it into our minds and our experience. I have heard some stories three or four times already. These tales have already begun to take on the status of family legend. The mythology is being created around me as I sit as witness. It is sacred and strange all at once.

But the fatigue remains, and although proper sleep alludes us, we have begun to sit together more quietly and to turn to distractions to fill the silence of our tired selves. Our minds turn from telling the stories to storing them. New files are created from this unusually massive download in our cells, and we struggle to string a full sentence together.

It is a ritual and a ceremony that is so personal and yet so universal. Birth and death are the things we all truly have in common.

But it is the stories we tell about those things and the time in between them that creates our experience.

Sending love to you and your loved ones tonight. Hold them tight. Tell your stories now while everyone is there to hear them.

emotions, grief, love, Musings

Missing You ~

March 27, 2011

“People come and go in your life but they never leave your dreams. Once they are in your subconscious, they are immortal.” – Patricia Hampl

I’m full of thought today. Memories have been swamping me, leaving me feeling a little breathless. I’m not sure what has triggered them all, but I know that these days in March always leave me a little sad. I lost people dear to me over a span of days in subsequent Marches some years ago, and the anniversary of those losses has never gone away. Does it ever? Can you ever get through an anniversary without thinking about it? I doubt it.

My dreams have also been filled with old, old friends, some of whom I haven’t seen in at least a decade. Why are they all stopping here now? Why are they so fully with me that I want to ring them up to make sure their voices sound the same? Echoes and memories and 17-year-old versions of us are giving me shivers up and down my back as I let them in. They are so close I can almost smell them.

Big stuff must be surfacing.

In 2006 I wrote a poem about a friend who we lost one March a lifetime ago. It has been one of the voices in my head so I need to put it here. I ask you again ~ do anniversaries ever get easier?

For M ~

When you died
we were twenty.
Two souls –
three days apart.
Salt and pepper
light and dark
girl and boy.

It doesn’t get easier –

It gets harder
because some days
I don’t think of you at all
and then when I do
I remember.

Where is the line?
The one that you crossed.
The one between
sadness and darkness?
Why couldn’t you see
the way back?

I miss you.

There is a hole inside of me
where you used to be
It is surrounded by questions
that you can’t answer.

You’ve missed a lot
you know.
I’ve danced alone at two weddings
and you’re an uncle now.
I’m an aunt, too.
Or do you know that already?

Please
come back.
Explain it all to me.

Two souls.
Three days apart.
One will be twenty forever
and one never will be again.

xoox

Older Posts

Eating for Comfort

“What you don’t let begin can never end.” – Geneen Roth

Talking About Grief

Missing You ~

“People come and go in your life but they never leave your dreams. Once they are in your subconscious, they are immortal.” – Patricia Hampl

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