Now Is Powerful

Photo By Patti Raab

When I was in my twenties, I felt as though I had all the time in the world to do whatever it was I wanted to do.  I think that feeling was the luxury of youth.  I had no sense of needing to get things done urgently because if it didn't happen today I was confident that I would get another chance tomorrow.  There would always be tomorrow for a do-over, if you will.

"See you tomorrow!"

"Oh, I'll tell you about that later."

"Yeah we have to find a date and then we'll do it.  I'll get back to you."

But now I try very hard to stay in the present, to appreciate the gift of life, and say and do what should be taken care of today because nine years ago today my wonderful husband died and I saw that you don't always get a tomorrow.

I saw how quickly life can twirl you around and yank off your blindfold, leaving you stumbling, confused and guessing about the scary unknown.

How did I keep it together (some of the time), raise a child and work a full-time job?

By taking baby steps in the beginning and slowly developing a well of inner strength that came through the kind help of family, friends, neighbors, praying a lot, meditating a lot, crying, laughing, reaching out for help from a fantastic support group, learning to make peace, accepting some of the bad stuff and writing for Cry, Laugh, Heal.

 

You, my dear readers, are truly a gift I never thought I would have and I thank you, thank you for coming to Cry, Laugh Heal!

 

Being in present time, to be what is called "fully present" sounds cliche but it really isn't.  I have found that when I concentrate on staying in the present it is truly a good thing.  I don't always succeed but the results are definitely worth the effort.

 

For me, staying in the present means I am with the person that I am with.  I am listening to them and the words they are saying to me, the thoughts and emotions they are trying to convey to me. 

 

I am not typing on my computer keyboard as they are talking to me, I am not watching television as they talk to me and I am not writing a check or a note as they try to talk to me.  I am focused on our conversation and I am really, really trying not to think ahead about my reply.

 

I am mentally focused in the moment of what is happening between me and the other person.

 

I am trying not to let my mind run ahead or go backwards in time because then I might miss the beauty of what is happening to me right now.

 

Now is a beautiful thing and a thing to take care of. 

 

Now is when you get to say and do what you intend to do so that later on you don't have regrets about how you forgot to say something or you should have done something.

 

Now is powerful.

 

Whatever it is, do it today.  Don't put it off.  Do it now.

 

It's Not What You Think

  

 

 

 

To show you how little I knew about loss, I thought that the first year after my husband's death was going to be the hardest time that I would ever have to experience.  My thinking was something along the lines of  "If I can get the first year under my belt, then each year after that will become easier to handle."  Right?

Guess what? Not. Always. True.

Grief is always full of surprises and just when you think you have it under control, you don't.

The first year was so raw with emotion for me and such a blur of just getting through the 365 days of it, that the whole idea of my husband's death, the finality of it, didn't really and truly sink in at all. I thought about it, cried about it, read about it and even went to a support group for it but it still was a concept that danced all over the place and didn't settle in.

But the second year was different.  For me, the second year was harder than the first because it painfully confirmed for me over and over again that he wasn't coming back.  Ever.  That this was it and it's not like he's gone on a very long trip.  And then the second year also forced me to stop playing all those mind games with myself and face up to my new life. 

But what happened to me may not happen to you.

I know it sounds like a cliche, but it's still so true: everyone has their own grief journey to travel and no two journeys are the same.  There is no right way or wrong way to grieve.  There is only your way.

I'm not making this up.  It's really true.  Your reactions and experience with grief may be very different from mine and it's totally okay and normal.  It's normal because our relationships are different, our experiences are different, our emotional DNA is different, our religious beliefs are different and our expectations from life and the person we lost are different.

Unfortunately, no one prepares us for those differences. We may watch someone we know experience grief and we think that person's experience will be ours too.  But that isn't always the case.  I lost a husband.  Someone else may have tragically experienced the death of a child or a wife or a friend or a parent.

As much as we may want one and search for one, life does not provide us with a guide book on how we should grieve.  We all process pain and loss differently. 

We grieve because we love.  It is because we love that we grieve.  We care and we emotionally connect to other people and when that person is taken away, it is a shock that can take a long time to process.  On the surface, you are handling things, you take care of daily responsibilities and you go through life automatically.

 

But underneath, you may be a mess.

By the third and fourth year of grief, you think it's going to be so much better and sometimes it is.  I have two friends, they live in completely different cities, they don't know each other, they are different ages and both have lost spouses.  The woman has children and grandchildren and lost her husband suddenly in a tragic car accident.  The man has no children and nursed his wife through a lengthy illness until she died.

 

Both have told me they are surprised by the fact that they continue to grieve during their fourth year of loss.  They are active, positive people trying to change and rebuild their lives because both of them socialize, take classes and work.  They meet a lot of people but nothing has ever clicked.

So they forge forward, as I and others do, together, trusting that time will heal us as we journey to renewal and new opportunities.

It's what we know and we keep doing it until it gets better. 

 

 

The Fear of Tears

Earlier this week, my son and I were reminiscing about our journey through the college and high school years that occurred immediately after his father's/my husband's death and in the midst of talking we started laughing about a period of time that was once quite painful.

What's up with that?

It surprised us that this happened and I thought I would share this experience with my wonderful readers because it might help someone to know that there is always hope and that things can turn themselves around when you least expect it.  If our conversation helps someone else who has lost a parent or a husband, then that would be great!  After all, we're in this together and if we can extend a helping hand to others, then we can gain strength through sharing and feel less alone. 

My son and I could have taken different paths after our loss, paths that would have been more self-destructive than the ones we are currently on.  I could have lost myself in my work and socialized to the point where my son and I spent little time together.  But I saw that we both were so vulnerable and needed stability.  My son was talking about how angry he was after his dad died.  I said I knew he was angry and that is why I tried to get him to talk about how he felt even if it didn't make any sense.  I just wanted him to talk and vent and to get the anger out of his system so he could move on.  But looking back, I think that's a tall order for a thirteen-year-old boy.

My son said he didn't want to tell me how angry he was because then he would have to explain why he was angry and at the time none of it made sense.  He didn't know why he was angry, he just knew that he was.  He said he wanted to say a lot of negative and mean things all the time about his dad but he didn't want to say them to me because he thought he would hurt my feelings.

I said that I thought that was so ironic that he didn't want to hurt my feelings because he was hurting my feelings in another way that he didn't realize.  I was going through a very teary time of it and my son couldn't stand it when I cried.  Sometimes I cried when I first woke up, sometimes I cried in the car, sometimes I cried in church and sometimes I cried at work.

Crying was my way of grieving and it was helping me.  I couldn't stop the crying.  I had no control over it.  But he couldn't stand it.  Really.  He just hated it.  He had a  sixth sense for when I was going to start and he would just walk away from me or he would say in a very exasperated tone, "Stop crying" or "Oh God, you're going to cry again."  Many times he would turn around from me and say, "Just tell me when you're finished."  It sounds so cold but it wasn't.  We were both trying to find our way out of it and our ways were not compatible.

Now, eight years later, as we talked about this awful time, I started laughing and said to him, "How could you have been so worried about hurting my feelings by telling me mean things about Daddy yet you would abruptly tell me to stop crying?"

He started laughing too and said, "I don't know.  That's how I felt."  We just kept laughing as we talked.  It sounds silly but it felt so good.

There is something about the passage of time coupled with the repetition of working through your loss and pain that eventually puts you in a different place.  The healing definitely does not happen overnight.

But you have to give yourself permission to grieve and to let it wash over you.  Expressing your pain and grief is a necessary and healthy part of being a human being.  I think the pushing through the pain helps to temper the raw emotions involved with a loss and and brings about unexpected healing.

As an old commercial used to say, "We've come a long way, Baby!"