Pulling Together

I began writing Cry Laugh Heal in December 2010 to start an online discussion about grief and resilience, in particular to talk about the many ways we process it and how we can arrive at the realization that we can find strength and a different kind of future through our pain.

 

My husband died in 2003 and I found that grief was not a topic most people wanted to talk about.  What a surprise right?  Of course, it was a subject I could go on and on about but in general it really makes people feel very uncomfortable and they would much rather talk about anything else. 

 

I decided that by going online I could help myself and hopefully others as we tried to figure out what loss feels like and how we can somehow go on with other lives without that loved one being with us.

 

It is a difficult path but when you reach out to others it can make a difference in your outlook on what to do next.  Psychologists often cite isolation as one of the many dangers of grieving.  I am not totally self-reliant and, as far as I know, no one else is either.  It's a wondrous thing that we need each other.  Truly it is.  Loneliness is not a sign of weakness.  We as humans are hard wired to connect with each other and loneliness is a signal that we need to bring people into our lives.

 

Being vulnerable can be scary but I have found through an honest discussion of my grief feelings that it has given me a sense of renewal; a feeling that I can go forward as I continue to process and extend my hand to others because we are all in this blessed life together.

 

Yesterday, a wonderful friend sent me a link to a post from another widow who through her writing was extending her hand to others and letting them know that she can still can be taken back to those feelings and memories many, many years after her husband's death.

 

I am sharing below the touching post today from Carol Joynt (www.caroljoynt.com) and thank her for opening up and sharing her vulnerability:

 

01/27/2014

This Is A Rough Week

 

I write this for lots of reasons but in particular for a woman I met last night who just lost her father.

We sat next to each other at dinner. We talked about death and grief for  quite a while. And that's what this is about. Death and grief and healing and moving on.  She's worried about her mother, now left without her soul mate after 34 years of marriage. 

 

That's why it's  a rough week for me. At this time 17 years ago, my husband of 20 years was spiraling toward his death, which came on the morning of  February 1. I held his hand as he died.

 

Yes, 17 is a lot of time. But, then again, it isn't. No matter how many years pass, these few weeks of winter, with their tell-tale signs, bring back the three weeks he was on life support at the Washington Hospital Center. I shuttled back and forth between home and the waiting room, usually in a daze, when I wasn't sleeping on the waiting room floor, or crying, or begging God and doctors. Outside was ice and cold and an overall bleak landscape. As now. So it comes back in memories stirred by January.

 

The loss of a loved one is awful in duplicate, triplicate and  a compound of that. I wouldn't wish my loss on anyone. But you do move on. The pain does become less sharp. I mean, what's the option? 

She asked me what I miss. I miss being loved, having the best friend, the reliable other, the person who had my back,  who believed in me when I didn't, who made me laugh when I couldn't, who was a handyman and a bon vivant and was happy just staying home, the three of us. I thrived on his view of the world and his sense of humor. The fact he loved me as much as he did was the cliché: wind beneath my wings. These aren't small values. 

 

Every day since is uphill. But you do it. Me and every other woman and man who has  lost their soul mate.

 

So, if I'm not all smiley this week, or if I seem inappropriately morose, it's not you. It's me. A brief pause in the past. And then, forward.

 

Soul Talking

Just because someone isn't with you doesn't mean you can't talk to them.......right?

People have imaginary conversations all the time.  In the shower.  While shaving or putting on your make-up.  In the kitchen.  Taking a walk.  Jogging.

It's not weird.  At least, I don't think it's weird.  I think of it as collecting or organizing your thoughts to make sure you explain yourself exactly the way you want.  Or sometimes it's venting your emotions to the only person who might really get what you're feeling.

So what if the person is no longer here on Earth? 

It doesn't matter to me because I truly believe with all my heart that those people we have lost to Heaven or whatever you want to call it, can hear us talking to them.

Today is All Souls Day and I bet your loved ones can't wait for you start yakking away.  Go ahead and try it.  I bet it will make you feel better.  Usually I'm at home when I have my talks, but sometimes I'm in the car when I go on about what is happening in my life to my husband, my grandmother, and many other friends and relatives whose souls are peacefully resting in the great beyond.

 

I am not alone in my talking to departed loved ones.  Yesterday a great friend sent me the below story by Mary Schmich, a wonderful writer and columnist for The Chicago Tribune.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!!!!!! 

This is a Week To Speak To Our Departed Souls

By Mary Schmich

Chicago Tribune

 

October 30, 2013

 

 

I talk to the dead.

 

Whenever I'm startled by the shapes and colors in the sky, I talk to my brother Bill, an artist who loved to paint the clouds.

 

Some days I talk to my friend Steve, usually along the lines of, "Where the bleep are you, Daley, when I and a whole lot of other people need to talk to you about the idiocy of politics?"

 

Every now and then, while having tea in one of the dainty china cups I inherited from my Aunt Mary Louise, I feel moved to say aloud, "I'm sorry I didn't come visit you more."

 

I often talk to my mother, just to say her name.

 

To some people this will seem kooky, though the rest of you understand. You talk to the dead too. And if there’s any week when we’re licensed--practically commanded--to commune with the dearly departed, this is it.

 

There’s Halloween (Oct. 31). All Saints’ Day (Nov. 1). All Souls’ Day (Nov. 2). And, spanning the first two days of November, there’s the celebration known as el Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.

 

Each day, in its own way, prompts us to connect with lives that, to steal a poet's line, have slipped the surly bonds of Earth.

 

In our culture, Halloween is the one that makes the biggest bang. With its candy corn, Batman outfits, naughty nurse costumes, ghosts, goblins and periodontally challenged pumpkins, it's a day when pop culture meets the pseudo-occult.

 

I prefer the other days, not on religious grounds, though they're rooted in religion, but because they encourage a more genuine reflection on death and the relationships that we retain with people who are gone.

 

In many places, the days of saints and souls matter as much as or more than Halloween. From New Orleans to Mexico to France, they're the days for rituals that connect the living to the dead.

 

Clean up the family graves. Build a little altar to the deceased. Picnic in the cemetery. Pray that souls in purgatory be released. Party with a transcendental purpose.

 

As a kid, growing up Catholic, I was particularly fond of All Souls Day. It seemed less celebrity-driven than the day dedicated to the saints, more about the little people.

 

But that wasn't why I liked it. I liked it for the word "soul."

 

What was a soul? At the age of 7, I knew exactly.

 

A soul was a little dog bone planted in the center of a person's chest. When you were born, the dog bone was as white as snow and as smooth as polished stone. When you committed small sins (hitting your brothers, saying bad words), little stains like ink marks appeared on the white dog bone. A big sin (murder) turned the whole bone black.

 

Confession could clean the dog bone, but wherever it had been stained by sin it would remain forevermore rough and porous, like pumice.

 

I have no idea where the vision of the soul as a dog bone came from. From something a nun said? From the primal recess of my child's mind?

 

At any rate, on All Souls Day, I imagined all the dog bones of the departed rising, winged, from the Earth and fluttering free for a while, an image that has endeared the day to me ever since.

 

For Catholics and members of some other faiths, these days have specific, profound meanings. But even for people without those faiths, this week is a good excuse to pause, here in the first chill and fading light of autumn, to feel your connection with your departed people.

 

I no longer know what a soul looks like, but in the past few years as more of the souls I've loved have vanished from view, I have a keener sense of what one is, and that they're still here.

 

A trick of the mind? Could be. I just know that I feel those souls around me, and I like it, and I like the occasion of this week to think about it.

 

It's not all about the candy corn.

Can You Hug Too Much?

Hugs......They're so healing!

We hug when we see someone we really like and haven't seen in a while; we hug when it's time to say good-bye.

We hug to show we care; we hug to let the other person know we are on their team.

We hug to send a special message to another person that they are not alone.  They have a friend; someone who cares what happens to them.

We hug to comfort.  We hug to love.

We hug because we are human and part of a larger community.

We are here to hug.  Each other.  All the time.

I saw the below message on Facebook and I'm am not sure where it came from but thought it was a great idea to get people to think about hugging.

A hug always makes me feel better!  Give one first and see what happens!

 

Hugging is good medicine.

It transfers energy and gives the person hugged an emotional lift.

You need four hugs a day for survival,

Eight for maintenance,

And twelve for growth.

Scientists say that hugging is a form of communication because it can say things you don’t have words for.

And the nicest thing about a hug is that you usually can’t give one without getting one.

Over You -- Miranda Lambert

 

Miranda Lambert

 

We like to think that the people we love will remain with us forever.

 

No one wants to think of a time or be faced with a time when a loved one gets sick, is in an accident or worse and will no longer be here. 

 

But unfortunately, sadly and even tragically, life does not work the way we want, as hard as we always try to will it to work our way.

 

The reason why I am drawn to the haunting song, "Over You," sung here by award-winning country music singer Miranda Lambert, who also co-wrote this song with her husband, Blake Shelton, is the line, "But you went away.  How dare you?  I miss you."

 

I don't care how many stages of grief you go through and which way you go through them, those words are universal in their sentiment.  I don't think of the words in an angry way; just more of a human plea to the person to come back because it's lonely without them.