grief – Terri LaBonte- Reinventing Myself in Retirement

More Cat Chat

I just returned from another trip to Pennsylvania. This time, since I did not stay in my cousin’s house, as it is now empty (of inanimate objects and CATS!) Instead, I stayed with some friends of hers, Cathy and Jim. Cathy and Jim have been wonderful in supporting me through this grief and administrative process. I call them my “guardian angels on the ground,” because they have done so much that can only be done actually on site. I can never thank them enough. Having to make a second trip in less than two months, on top of the expenses associated with the cremation and funeral, was more of a financial stretch than was completely comfortable for me. It was a relief not to have to pay for a hotel. Besides, they were great, comforting company.

They also have cats. I went from living in a house with three cats to living in a house with five cats. It was much easier in my new friends’ house than in my cousin’s house, despite the increase in feline population. For one thing, there was more space so the cat per square foot ratio was probably lower. Besides, one of the cats lived solely in the garage. Also, my friends’ house was considerably better maintained to ensure a more equitable balance between human and cat comfort. My cousin’s house was all about the cats. Still, my new found cat allergy raised its furry little head. My sinuses were raging at me and are still not too happy. Despite my level of physical discomfort, I do have to say I enjoyed these cats. I still don’t want a cat, but I better understand the appeal.

The cats are called Abigail Cynthia Louise (Cathy takes naming her cats very seriously), Harmony Grace, Jackson Bean, Jerry, and Joey. They each have their own personality .I did not get to know Joey too well, as he is the one that lives in the garage. I only saw him once during my stay, although I was aware of his presence every time I stepped out into the garage to go to the refrigerator. I will let you guess which of my senses revealed his existence to me. I’ll just say he is a litter box free spirit.

I saw Jerry frequently. It would have been hard not to see him, as he takes up a fair amount of real estate wherever he is. He is solidly built, plus covered in long hair which increases his bulk. I have never seen a completely black cat as fluffy as Jerry. Cathy and Jim call him Jer-Bear, which is fitting. I am sure there are black bear cubs not quite as large as he is. Jerry is a hand-me-down cat from Cathy and Jim’s daughter. I cannot say a word. I did the same thing to my parents. I kept a cat named Macavity for over a year in my first apartment. The problem was that the apartment complex did not permit pets. When I got busted, Macavity went to live with my parents and their two basset hounds in a 27-foot travel trailer. Macavity was not best pleased. In fact, he pretty much lived on my mother’s bed. The basset hounds were either too short or too stupid to get to him there, Maybe both. So I get how Cathy and Jim became Jerry’s foster parents, despite already being beset with many cats of their own. Jerry is a catish cat. He tolerated me and would even deign to allow me to pet him, but he wasn’t making any overtures on his own.

I only saw Abigail Cynthia Louise once or twice. She lives in Cathy and Jim’s bedroom, as she is not really able to fend for herself or hold her own with the other cats. Poor Abby is a geriatric cat, which kind of makes her my soul mate in an uncomfortable sort of way. She is visibly more worn and ricketier than the other cats. The vet says that Abby suffers from feline senility. She has an active internal world, to which she reacts randomly, frequently, and loudly. There is very little that is as unsettling as Abby’s strange, pitiful yowling when she cries out in reaction to something we cannot see or hear. It is kind of heartbreaking. I guess it can also be sleep depriving. I did not hear her at night, but Cathy says she will often begin to cry for no apparent reason in the wee hours. It is a sound that cannot be ignored; it demands response. It can also be disturbing when it happens during the day. Jim works from home. He works from the bedroom. His coworkers know Abby’s voice. It is a good thing Abby has people who love her and take care of her so well. I hope, in my uncomfortable soul mate sort of way, that I have someone who takes such good care of me when I reach Abby’s stage of life.

Harmony Grace and I got along just fine, since I am over the age of reason. Apparently, Harmony is not a fan of children and gets a kick out of terrorizing Cathy and Jim’s grandkids. This is clearly a problem, since there are a number of young grandchildren frequenting the home. “Harmony Grace” is a bit of a misnomer in that sense. Her relationship with children is neither harmonious nor graceful. She is a sweet-looking, petite, perfectly formed, beautiful cat. Looks, as well as names, can be deceiving. However, as I said, since I am well past the childhood phase, Harmony Grace was fine with me. She was sociable and curious enough to investigate me when I arrived. Later, while she did not rush to my side, she was more than happy to permit me to sit beside her and pet her when I plopped myself onto her sofa to watch television.

Yes, I could see the appeal of all these cats. However, it was Jackson Bean who won the feline space in my heart. Jack was a dogish kind of cat. He immediately fell in love with me with the devotion of a Labrador retriever. He ran to the front door to greet me whenever I arrived at the house. He faithfully followed me around from room to room. He sidled up to me any time I was in the house, aggressively butting his head under my hand to insist that I pet him. He jumped onto a dining chair next to me each morning to watch companionably while I ate breakfast. He enjoyed lying beside me on the couch while I stroked him. The last night I was there, I sat on the sofa rubbing his neck and shoulders. After leaning into the massage for a while, he twisted his body over and inched his way closer to me, exposing his underside. I have never met a cat who enjoyed a belly rub, so I did not take his maneuver as an invitation. However, Jackson then butted my hand with his head and pushed my fingers towards his chest with a soft furry paw. I began rubbing him around the neck and chest area. The animal went into a pleasure coma. He went completely limp except for his two front legs, which were jutting off the edge of the sofa. As he continued to enjoy the experience, those two legs tightened until they were so rigid, they did not even look like they were part of the same cat body. He curled his paws into a hook-like shape. Those two appendages looked like furry crochet needles. I went to bed thinking that Jackson was a very weird, but very satisfying feline. The experience even made me wonder if I should try for a second career as a lion tamer.

I really do not know why I just wrote 1300 words about cats. Maybe I am becoming a cat lady. Or… in the midst of all the chaos, conflict, and grief that accompanied my two trips to Pennsylvania, maybe it just feels safer to talk about cats than anything else.

So, what do you think? Am I becoming a cat lady? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Meow!

Terri/Dorry 😊

All Souls’ Day

I think God is doing marvelous things all the time. I also think we often don’t even notice them. Recently, I had one of those rare, perfect moments of clarity when I absolutely noticed.

My life coach had been encouraging me to find a way to “actively grieve.” He explained that it might be healthy for me to pick a day to just concentrate on allowing myself to feel the difficult emotions related to my brother’s death. He suggested that it is easy to hide those emotions away in some toxic part of my heart when I am running around bobbing and weaving through the normal activities of everyday life. The idea had merit. The idea of planned and scheduled grieving appealed to me. Of course. I wanted to try it, but my calendar was pretty full. I wanted to try active grieving but could not figure out how I was going to squeeze it into my already crammed schedule.

Right after this conversation with my life coach, God did one of those marvelous things.

The three local Episcopal parishes were holding an All Souls’ Day evening service at the church in Eustis- about fifteen miles from where I live. My pastor was going to give the sermon. I had been debating about going but decided to attend for two reasons: to support my pastor and to hear what he had to say at an All Souls’ Day sermon. I have a logical and theological conundrum with the idea of praying for the dead. If they are dead, surely their fate is decided and do not need our prayers? I understood the concept from my life as a Roman Catholic because the Roman Church has the doctrine of purgatory. The doctrine of purgatory seems to me to be a scriptural stretch. If I had to guess, I’d say God probably takes care of the “purgatory process” while the person is still breathing. I am not so sure this “purgatory process” is about punishment or even purification in the sense of making us “good enough.” I think it might be more about the person coming to a regretless and joyful feeling of readiness in body and soul to leave this life. I trust that God has some elegant, perfect way of sorting all this out, so I have never worried too much about it. Determining how God works out the whole balance between justice, love, and mercy is way above my pay grade.

At any rate, if one believes that there is an actual place or state of purgatory where people go after they die, as the Roman Catholics do, it makes sense to pray for those people. However, Protestants do not subscribe to the doctrine of purgatory, so I was interested to observe how Episcopalians experience All Souls’ Day.

The main point here is that I went to the service to be supportive and to benefit intellectually. I did not go to the service with the intention of grieving. As improbable and clueless as it sounds, it never occurred to me that I was going to have any sort of personal emotional experience.

When I arrived at the church and perused the Order of Worship, it was clear that the service was more about healing the grief of those of us who are still living than praying for the deceased. There was a candle-lighting service, recitation of the names of the lost, individual anointing for those of us who are mourning, communion, and an opportunity for individuals to talk with clergy afterwards if difficult emotions bubbled up during the service. My pastor’s sermon was about the relationship between sorrow and hope… the gift of learning just how much we need and rely on hope when we experience grief.

The whole thing was a bit “high churchy,” which is usually not my “go to” worship. Even when I was a Roman Catholic, high mass did not speak passionately to me. I can and do appreciate the beauty in observing a formally, poetically crafted liturgy the way one appreciates a painting in a museum. It never felt like an active, experiential worship immersion for me, though. However, the formal, somber tone of the liturgy on All Souls’ Day was absolutely perfect. Maybe for the first time, I experienced “leaning in” to that sort of worship experience. I was no longer looking at the picture on the wall. I followed willingly as the Holy Spirit led me into it.

Actually, everything about the evening was absolutely perfect.

The lighting in the church was very low. Candles provided almost all the illumination. There were only about thirty-five people in the pews, so I did not feel a lot of energy coming from other people. The mood was somber and respectful. It was like my very own interior, homogenous, private experience even though it was a public forum. I was not picking up on other people’s divergent emotions at all, even though I am usually finely attuned to other people’s moods. I noticed that I regularly closed my eyes unconsciously and simply listened, focusing on what I was hearing in an almost meditative way.

Before the service, ushers asked us to print the names of the people we wanted to remember in prayer. In this type of situation, I usually list all my relatives and all Max’s relatives who have passed from this life. This time, I listed only the names of my father, mother, and brother. It was instinctive. It was something I had to do just for me.

When the pastor read the names- Ernest Goodness, Dorothy Goodness, and Ernie Goodness- I felt this intense pain inside of me. It screamed, “You left me. You all went away and left me all alone.” I could almost see them together- happy, without conflict or brokenness- watching me. I needed a hug desperately- I needed touch. As it happened, I ended up kneeling at the communion rail right next to my pastor’s wife. We were shoulder to shoulder. Without my even asking, she reached her arm around me and hugged me. It felt so good.

The sermon, which I expected to enlighten me theologically did nothing of the sort. My pastor did not even really talk about the concept of “praying for the dead.” Instead, he talked about grief. As I listened, I experienced some feelings that have come up inside me regularly. I have struggled to describe them. My pastor’s words helped me to understand. I felt somehow small and innocent, enrobed in a strange kind of purity- like the bedraggled psyche I usually carry around with me was fresh and clean. I also felt lost and alone in the dark- vulnerable. It was a weird combination of despair and hope steeping in a stew of acceptance. It occurred to me that perhaps this emotional state is what it feels like to let go of the past and start exploring the future with a new frame of mind.

Tears oozed out of my eyes periodically throughout the service. The organizers of the event were clearly much more aware of the purpose of the event than I was. They provided boxes of Kleenex at the end of every other pew. Since I was not expecting emotion (improbable, clueless, etc.), I did not come prepared with tissues. I gratefully pulled a generous handful of Kleenex out of one of the boxes as I got in line to light my candle. I used them all throughout the evening. As I walked to the altar to light a candle in memory of my father, mother, and brother, I noticed that one candle lit by someone before me had gone out. I reached over and relit it. I found that action inexplicably satisfying and calming.

As I write this, I am not sure how to stop. This experience has embedded itself in my soul and I doubt I will soon forget it. I think I may be having trouble ending this story because the experience has not ended. It is still living inside me, as, I am sure, my father, mother, and brother are. The experience continues because grief continues. My gratitude to God for giving me this perfect evening continues because my walk with God continues. My confusion and chaos continue, even if a gossamer blanket of grace now covers it, because life and death are confusing and chaotic. Someday, I will join my family where there is no confusion and chaos. Until then, I am clinging to that gossamer blanket of grace.

Have you ever experienced one of those rare moments of clarity when you are sure you have seen God do something marvelous? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a reflective day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

The Cheese Stands Alone

I recently enrolled in an online writing class. The class assignments include a requirement to submit two personal essays during the eight weeks of the course. The instructor and other students critique the pieces the participant submits. The student can elect to either submit two separate essays or to revise the first submission based on the class feedback and submit the “new and improved” version for the second opportunity.

For my first submission, I used an essay based on the blog piece I posted here- Sand, Sea, and Sadness ( Sand, Sea, And Sadness – Terri LaBonte- Reinventing Myself in Retirement )– about my trip to the beach the day after my brother died. There was a lot of feedback from the instructor and the students, which I took under advisement and considered in submitting my second piece- the revision of my first essay. I honestly do not know which version I like better. They are quite different, although they relate to the same event and same family dynamics. It was an interesting exercise.

One piece of feedback that kind of threw me was that the class believed my ending was “too pat” and “too neat and tidy.” The general feeling of the critique-ers was that I suggested that simply remembering the good episode with my brother at day camp allowed me to come to terms with grief and resolve my feelings. If I suggested that, my bad. Of course, one memory and one trip to the beach did not punch my grief ticket. My point in the ending of the blog post was simply that the trip to the beach and the memory allowed me to start the grieving process more elegantly and effectively. I expect that I will be grieving and remembering and processing emotions around my brother’s death for the rest of my life. This is one reason that I have continued to share blog posts about my trip and the misadventures I experienced. The grief process is very much still in my mind and in my heart. Even the blog posts that have a comic framework are a way of working through my feelings about my brother and his death. Maybe I am just not ready yet to relate anything even a little bit profound about this experience. I have not found the profundity of losing my brother in a way I can articulate yet.

However, there is a serious issue related to my brother’s death that I want to share in this blog piece. I am now the last of my birth family standing on this side of the Great Divide. My father died in 1996. My mother died five years ago this past September 2. My brother died on July 28, 2022. My brother’s death was not just about losing my brother. My brother’s death caused a tearing away of the last tangible thread I had to my family of origin, my childhood, the hopes I had for my life that never materialized, my youth. Don’t get me wrong. I have a great life and I am incredibly grateful for everything I have. It is just that my life today is not anything like what I pictured when my world was my parents and my brother and me living on the corner of Cerritos and Perdito in Anaheim, CA. Also, as an adult, I see that the world I knew then was not even the world I thought it was at the time… and now, never can be.

While I was in California, I took a sentimental journey. I drove past the house where I grew up. I drove past the church we attended. I drove past my old elementary, junior high, and high schools. I cruised down the streets where the neighborhood children played late into the evening on extended summer days. I stayed in Hemet, where my brother lived. My mother and father, and later just my mother, lived in Hemet for many years, as well. Everything in Hemet and in Anaheim looked so foreign and far away from any relevance to me. Bars and fences on all the schools. A new addition on the house. The church building looked small and lonely. The storefronts did not look the same as I remembered in either Anaheim or Hemet. Even the mobile home park where my mother lived before she moved to Florida was completely different- new owners, new name, and a new sign. I almost missed it completely as I tooled down the main highway.

Finding yourself the only one left is disorienting. I looked online for some context for what I was feeling and found that my perspective is common, though not discussed very frequently. Society, in general, tends to concentrate more on the grief of widows, widowers, parents, and children. There is an unspoken idea that, somehow, the grief of a sibling is not “that bad.” I do not know about that. I am sure it is more about the emotional relationship than the biological relationship. Besides, as someone once told me, “Comparing is despairing.” Nobody needs to win the misery lottery to suffer with grief. The grief of a sibling is as legitimate as any other. It can be quite complex, as well, because sibling relationships are often fraught with difficult emotions. Spouses choose each other. Parents choose to have children. Children may not choose their parents, but, at the very least, children understand that their parents are necessary to their lives. Friends choose each other. Sibling relationships are the only ones where the parties have absolutely no choice in the creation of the relationship.

When the difficulty of losing a sibling combines with the isolation and disorientation of finding yourself as the cheese standing alone in the world, it can be even more difficult. I found myself struggling with that realization the whole time I was in California. I did a lot of sobbing when I was alone, mourning for everything I saw that was not what I remembered it being. There is a lot I could say about what exactly I was mourning. There is a lot I could say about the regret and guilt. There is a lot I could say about disillusionment. There is a lot I could say about when and how I learned to live as myself instead of simply as the oldest child in the Goodness family. And, certainly, how scared I am that maybe I never did learn that. I am just not sure how to talk about any of that yet. As the people in my writing class pointed out, grief does not resolve so neatly.

This trip was about saying good-bye. Yes, it was about saying good-bye to my brother. But it was also about saying good-bye to the me I used to be, the me I thought I was, and the me I dreamt I would someday be. The good news is that saying good-bye to those “mes” may open the door for greater acceptance and appreciation for who I actually am.

In losing someone close to you, have you ever realized you were losing more than just that person? What was that experience like for you? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a fresh start today!

Terri/Dorry 🙂

Regrets

My mother’s birthday is tomorrow. She died about two years ago. I thought I had been mourning her death in a pretty healthy way, moving through stages of grief appropriately. I felt that I was moving forward towards wholeness. I thought the worst was pretty much behind me.

I think I was wrong.

Those of you who have been traveling with me know that, when my mother died, I experienced a wide variety of emotions. I tried to feel each one instead of pushing it aside so I would not create a dark prison of grief within myself. It has been a difficult, painful process, but also satisfying in that I feel like I’ve mourned with a certain amount of courage and integrity.

The one thing I thought I was spared during my mourning was the problem of regret. When my mother died, I felt fairly satisfied with my role in her last years. I believed I had done my best. I thought I was able to let go of any self-loathing about what I “coulda shoulda” done.

Once again, I think I was wrong.

It seems I do have regrets. Big ones. But I think I have just been too afraid to face them. They are menacing. They are terrifying. They are threatening to start building that prison of grief. It might be time to show them the light of day.

I first became aware of the regrets around Mother’s Day this year. Some of you may remember my story about the day I stopped holding my mom’s hand and vacated the room when family came to visit her roommate (http://www.terrilabonte.com/2019/05/hug-a-mom-today). I think that memory opened the door to my regrets. I have been regretting that day ever since. I’ve been regretting it so much, it hurts. I regret that I didn’t just stay in the room and hold her hand when the other people came. I regret that I didn’t hold her hand more often.

There are other regrets, as well. Sometimes, I even regret things that I was absolutely convinced were the right thing to do when I did them. For instance, I regret not being with my mom when she passed. I was always sure my mom did not want me there when she died. Now, I wonder. It would have been difficult to tell when the time was coming, admittedly. She had been slowly leaving me for so long, it was hard to know when the door was finally going to close. I had been through the “it may be just a few days” phase several times. Apart from staying at the nursing facility full time for several weeks or months, there would have been no way to know the critical moment. During those last few days, which I didn’t know were going to be the last few days, the hospice nurses thought she might be getting close. She died in the very early hours on a Saturday morning. When I saw her on Friday, she drank a whole can of Ensure… after not eating anything for days. My hospice angel said that it seemed that maybe she wasn’t ready to go yet. Less than twelve hours later, she was gone.

In some ways, that chain of events should reassure me that my mother’s intent was to die without me there. On some level, she may have been trying to fool me into believing I could go home because it wasn’t time, even though she knew it was. It doesn’t really matter whether I am right or wrong about the way I interpret her actions. I still regret not being there.

I regret that I was not able to figure out what my mother was trying to say a lot of the time. I tried so hard, but I failed much of the time. I resorted to trying to interpret her nonverbal cues and I will never know how good a job I did of that. I am sad because I don’t know if I advocated for her properly because I wasn’t sure what she wanted or needed.

Then there is the biggest, most shameful regret. I regret that I did not have her at home with me. I regret that she lived in a nursing home. I know there are a lot of good reasons she was there. She was bedridden. She needed extensive wound treatment and medical comfort care. She was incontinent. Her cognitive and communicative abilities were impaired. She needed twenty-four hour a day assistance with activities of daily living. It was good that she had a network of loving people who genuinely cared for her and attended to her needs. I was with her just about every day, but, if she had been at home, it would have been only me with her. She always responded well to the caregivers who visited her room and made her laugh. I’m not sure I was up to making her laugh, much less taking care of all her needs. I don’t think I honestly could have taken care of her at home. Let’s be truthful. It was all I could do to make it through that time when there was a whole team of people caring for her. Still, I regret it bitterly. I feel like I should have been able to care for her at home.

Truth be told, I have hit a rough patch. I am in a bit of a dark place. I have woken up crying several times over the last few nights. In the shower this morning, I couldn’t draw a deep breath. My heart felt ready to explode. There was a dead heaviness in the center of my abdomen. All I wanted to do was scream, as if by pushing sound violently out of myself, I could also dispatch the pain. It is even hard to write this because it hurts so much to realize how much more I wish I was.

As I said, I have been struggling with these feelings of regret for several months now. I work hard to manage them. I’ve found a few strategies that seem to help make things easier to endure.

First, there is prayer. I have found that laying my grief and my regrets at God’s feet is the best way to unburden myself from it. Not only that, but prayer has helped me find other ways of dealing with the regret. For one thing, I know that my mother is in Heaven. Her heart holds no regrets. She experiences only joy and love. She has long since forgiven me for every weakness, failing, and misstep. Secondly, instead of wallowing in my regrets, I try to invest that energy in doing ordinary things with extraordinary love for the people I still encounter in this world. It is sweetly satisfying to use a little of the love I have for my mother to brighten someone else’s life. It is part of her legacy to me.

Still, all my strategies don’t always work. Some days, I run smack into one of those grief prison walls and I just give up. It hurts. Today is one of those days.

Have you experienced feelings of regret after the death of a loved one? How do you manage those feelings? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a regret-free day!

Terri/Dorry ☹

These are flowers I had sent to my church this week in memory of and thanksgiving for my beautiful mother.

The memory flowers at the feet of the Madonna and Child

September 30th

I had an aunt who was born on New Year’s Day. One day, my mother and I were talking about her birthday and my mother commented that she thought it was sad that my aunt’s birthday always got a bit lost in all the holiday hoopla. I replied that I thought it would be neat to be a New Year’s baby. My mother looked at me strangely and said, “You kind of were.”

“Huh? What do you mean?” I asked.

“Do the math,” she replied.

I was born on September 30, 1959. Apparently, my conception was the result of my parents’ private party to ring in the new year. Knowing this seems like too much information.

My birthday is pretty special to me. It is the one day of the year that I give myself license to let things be all about me. For people who see birthdays as a reminder that they are aging, I can see how it can be tempting to forget the whole thing. I psyche myself out of the birthday/aging correlation by scrambling my thinking. I’m celebrating my 30^th anniversary of turning 29 this year. Anyway, I don’t really think birthdays are about marking the number of years in my life. They are about celebrating the unique (all right, weird) conglomeration of attributes, accomplishments, and activities that makes up the wonder that is me. After all, when we celebrate George Washington’s birthday, we aren’t celebrating how old he is. We are celebrating his existence and contribution. I may not be the founder of a nation, but I am the founder of my life. I’m pretty proud of that life.

Last year, my birthday was marked by disorientation and distraction. Coming a few short weeks after my mother’s death, I was still oversaturated with emotion. I was just starting to learn to live in a new world without my mother. I had not really even begun to craft a life that did not include being with her, caring for her, and being mothered by her. I was definitely living gingerly on the fringes of a life, trying to avoid the cracks in the landscape that fractured my old existence during her long illness. I had not begun to repair those cracks. I had not yet patched over the cracks so I could transverse them in the journey of my own life. I was just trying to stay away from the edges so I did not fall into them.

For the first time in my life, I dreaded my birthday last year. I was sure it was going to be a difficult reminder of the other person who was around when I was born 58 years earlier. Instead, it turned out to be a pretty good day. Max made it his mission to indulge me. Even though he always does what he can to make me happy, he made a concerted effort to kick it up a notch on my first birthday after my mother died. He took me to Disney Springs. We shopped and walked and enjoyed a beautiful day. As we wandered around, a beautiful pair of earrings caught my eye in a store window. Max bought them for me, as a spontaneous birthday surprise. “Spontaneous” and “surprise” are not words that typically describe Max, but he was trying everything he could think of to delight me. We had dinner at one of the restaurants specializing in comfort food. We didn’t forget my mother, certainly, but I have to say that the plan for the day was to distract myself from my grief. The plan was pretty successful, all in all.

My strategy of distraction didn’t end with my birthday. For months after my mother’s death, I seemed to be engaging in an endless stream of activity. I joined clubs, volunteered, published a book, began seeing friends regularly, and kept myself busy, busy, busy. Part of my busy-ness stemmed from a genuine desire to expand my life, but I’m sure that a lot of my motivation came from my need to fill the space in my heart that my mother left when she passed. It wasn’t necessarily intentional, but I know I was trying to not feel the ugly disorder of my grief.

My super-sized activity schedule was not necessarily satisfying at first. I was happy to fill my time with something other than sadness, but I didn’t feel particularly connected to the activities. I went through the motions and ticked off the time without grief. I felt pretty triumphant that I kept functioning and wasn’t falling apart. Some of the new endeavors felt successful and others did not. I purposely tried not to make any commitments beyond a few weeks because I felt so alien to everything I was doing and nothing felt momentum-producing. Everything was just something to do to occupy my brain for the moment.

At some point in the months that followed, I noticed that all the activities began to feel more cohesive. They were starting to feel like a part of my life, rather than some life I was just visiting to escape from reality. At some point, activity matured into meaning. I had built a bigger life without even realizing I was doing it. I was still sad, of course, but I could allow myself to feel sad without worrying that I was going to sink into a dark place from which I would not be able to recover. I felt less bereft of a mother and much more aware that I still had a mother living in me and encouraging me from Heaven to grow towards my joy.

I don’t know how it happened. I can’t describe the process or technique of learning to live with grief and joy simultaneously. I am pretty certain I have not yet mastered the skill completely, but I know that I feel calmer and more peaceful. My busyness did turn out to be an instrument of healing, although I was not the one using the instrument. God used my distraction to lead me to where I needed to be. It seems that the distractions I employed to deal with my disorientation primed some part of my personal mechanics to ignite my brain, open my heart, and send my soul searching for a more sumptuous sense of spirituality. All that disconnection and hollowness in my busyness of last year has ripened into a richer, fuller, life.

If my birthday last year was marked by distraction, I think the watchword this year is engagement. I’m reveling in all the new activities and situations I’ve experienced over the past year. I’m celebrating the journey of life instead of being afraid of it. I’m also doing something I’ve always wanted to do for my birthday this year. Max and I are going on a bus tour to New England. I’ve always wanted to go see that part of the country and peep at the autumn leaves.

So I think I’ve turned a corner in my grief. Well, maybe not anything as sharp and definitive as a corner…. But I have definitely made a “slight right turn,” as the GPS calls it when you are approaching a gentle fork in the road and need to veer one way or another. I do believe I am veering right. And I think my mother is happy about it.

What will you be celebrating on your next birthday? What life achievements, personal progress, or happy events will you remember with joy? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a joyful day!

Terri/Dorry 🙂

REMEMBER: You can order your copy of Changing My Mind: Reinventing Myself In Retirement by visiting: https://secure.mybookorders.com/orderpage/2076

Good Grief

It has now been a year since my mother died. I’ve tried to be healthy in my mourning. I’ve seen a bereavement counselor a few times. I’ve tried to focus on the wonderful gift that my mother was. In general, I’ve done very well. I’ve been sad, but functional. I’ve been mournful, but also hopeful. I feel that I honor and celebrate my mother every day by the way I live my life. Still, there is a facet of my grief has been stubborn and uncooperative. It holds on relentlessly. On the other hand, the grief isn’t nearly as sharp or as devastating as I thought it would be.

During the months of my mother’s illness, part of my daily terror had to do with how I could possibly withstand the shattering blow that I would doubtlessly experience when she died. I was so sad and in so much pain while she was still alive, I couldn’t see how I would be able to handle her death. I read the hospice information about anticipatory grief. I think I might have been the poster child for the condition. The research said that many people traveling with a loved one during a long illness do experience the grief of loss long before the final ending. They may experience the exact same grief cycle as most people do when a loved one actually dies. I absolutely understood that and I knew I was experiencing it. The bitch of the matter, though, is that experiencing anticipatory grief in no way guarantees that the mourner will be any less shattered when the death does occur. I dreaded and resented having to experience the rawness of grief in duplicate.

When it finally happened, I found that my grief, though profound and prominent, did not feel as raw and septic as I feared it would. I think there are many reasons for that.

At first, I thought the reason that my mom’s death did not devastate me more was because of the long road we traveled together during her illness. I started grieving long before she left me alone in this world. After her stroke, her decline was so treacherous and unforgiving, I lost her step by step and piece by piece. As her brain gradually crumbled in the last year of her life, my heart crumbled along with it. By the time she died, my heart wasn’t shattered because there was nothing left of it to shatter.

It was also hard not to feel some relief that my mother was finally whole and healthy and happy again in God’s dwelling place. The foundation of my life is a belief system that encourages me to rejoice that my mother is living more abundantly in Heaven and is waiting there for me to join her. I do find some joy in that notion. That belief does take some of the pain out of the grief now, but it still does not prevent me from missing my mom every day in this life.

I think I also came to understand, in my mother’s last days, that I wasn’t losing everything I thought I was losing. A blog reader once left a comment that said, during the end of life, everything burns away except love. This was absolutely my experience. In my mother’s illness, there were many times when she would look past me or away from me as if I wasn’t there. There were also occasions, though, when she would look into my eyes with such intensity and meaning that I could feel her loving me to my very soul. That love, maybe the biggest and best part of her, will never die. She loved me with a love that I can never lose.

I am sure that all of these reasons played a part in my milder mourning experience. There is something else, though. I had a model for grieving. My mother gave me that.

When my father died, everyone worried about my mother. She was always an emotional person who loved extravagantly. She felt with the people she loved. She rejoiced easily and cried easily. People sometimes took that heart on her sleeve as a mark of fragility. Not so. When my father died, she did everything she could to mourn in a healthy way. She cherished her memories of my father. She continued doing activities they enjoyed together. She helped herself and her children heal by loving us and letting us love her. She joined an online support group for widows and widowers. She kept working at a job she enjoyed with people who uplifted her. She mourned him deeply and permanently. I don’t think there was a Thanksgiving after his death when my mother didn’t cry when we gave thanks for the people we loved who were no longer with us. Still, in the midst of that mourning, there was a renaissance. My mother moved towards a life of her own crafting. She set her own priorities. She pursued her own interests. She indulged her gift for happiness. She set out on a path of continual learning and grew in every way. She reveled in her independence. She turned her grief into something good.

In my mourning for my mother, I think I have been experiencing my own renaissance- almost without even realizing it. Without thinking too much about it, I find that my experience with my mother’s end of life journey has prompted me to nurture my own life. I’ve identified several attributes in my own personality that may be holding me back from experiencing as much joy as possible in life. Almost unconsciously, I’ve been examining those personal barriers and experimenting with strategies for knocking them out of my way.

Good grief may be the last gift my mom gave me.

What have you learned through the process of grieving a loved one? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a blessed day!

Terri/Dorry 🙂

The Stealthfulness Of Grief

Nobody tells you how sneaky grief is.

For the first five months or so after my mom’s stroke, I rode the emotional roller coaster all the time. It was understandable. So much was happening and changing on an hourly basis. Of course my emotional reactions fluctuated.

After about five months, my mother’s condition plateaued. She was not improving, but neither was she undergoing stressful medical procedures. I got her settled in the nursing facility. I resolved the financial side of things. I sold her mobile home. Once her status quo seemed to be pretty stable, I thought I might be able to begin to stabilize myself and start learning to cope with my own feelings.

For the most part, I thought I was doing pretty well. I was figuring out how to accept the new reality. I was even starting to carve out a “mini life” for myself. I was regularly spending some time without being engulfed in my mother’s condition and care. None of it was easy. I certainly can’t say I was truly “okay,” but I felt I was gradually repairing my shattered psyche. Both my mother and I seem to be living in the now with a little more good grace and good cheer. Our relationship is certainly not what it was in the pre-stroke days, but we are starting to find our footing in our new one. We both seem to be recognizing each other again and are acting more like ourselves. Things are far from “okay,” but, for right now, they are better than I can expect. So there is every reason for me to put on my big girl panties and get on with life.

Still, every now and again, I am just floored by sadness. There isn’t even necessarily a reason or a trigger I can identify. I’m fine… and then I’m not.

The other day, I was walking up to the door of the nursing facility. I was carrying my purse, a case containing a portable DVD player that I bring to show my mom home movies, and a milkshake. I don’t quite know how it happened, but I tripped on a warped place in the pavement. I might have been trying a new technique for long-jumping, except that I think you are supposed to land on your butt when long jumping, not forward onto your face. It was as if I really believed I was Tinker Bell and had sprouted wings. News flash- I had not.

Luckily, I didn’t really hurt myself. As I lay on the sidewalk, stunned, all I could think about was the milkshake that was now spilled all over the cement and the DVD player that might have been much more disabled by the fall than I was. For some reason, that milkshake spill just demoralized me beyond almost anything I’ve experienced in life. I felt so defeated that I kind of just wanted to lie there and hope the world would end. It was a weird sensation of knowing that I was reacting beyond all rational thought but not caring.

I knew the reaction wasn’t really about the milkshake. It wasn’t about the DVD player (which, remarkably, was unharmed by its flight). It wasn’t even about the fall. It was the same old grief and stress that I thought I was conquering. The reaction was about the fact that my mother is so compromised and I can’t fix it. I thought I was coming to terms with that reality, but the sadness came crashing back out of nowhere.

A very nice gardener guy helped me to my feet. I stared at the mess I had left in my wake. The gardener guy asked if I was all right and I said, “yes, but the milkshake is all over the ground and it is ruined. Besides, there will be bees and people might slip on it.” The gardener guy looked at me strangely and mumbled some sort of embarrassed response. Still a little in shock, I made my way into the facility and into my mother’s room, where I greeted her sans milkshake. I burst into tears when I saw her, apologizing profusely for the lack of ice cream. I think I kind of alarmed her. She kept telling me to go home but I wouldn’t. I didn’t want the fall to win.

When I did leave the nursing home, still feeling unspeakably sad, I noticed the milkshake mess was mysteriously gone. I am sure that my nice gardener guy cleaned it up for me. Thank you, nice gardener guy.

I read somewhere that sometimes you don’t have to get over things; you just have to get through them. Maybe the “getting through them” isn’t always by a straight path.

Has grief ever “snuck up” on you? How do you cope? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a thoughtful day!

Terri 🙂