Platitudes, Schmatitudes - Just be Present

I've had people ask suggest that my grief is living in the past or living in the future.  All I can say is that when I am experiencing a grief surge, I am fully in the present.  I feel the hole and the pain left behind by the loss.

It's funny how people just cannot handle pain - their own or another's.  When my husband was in the hospital, someone told me "this too shall pass".   Seriously, am I supposed to live in the future or the moment.  Because at that moment everything sucked.  So I guess I'm supposed to live in the moment unless it's too uncomfortable for someone else, then I should live in the future.  Another person blithely said "Oh, he'll be fine".   When he died a few days later, she avoided me like the plague.

What I've gotten to see this past year, is how people use platitudes to avoid being present for someone else's pain.  I know they mean well enough, but really it's just a way to minimize or avoid the raw emotions.  I was actually very grateful for the people who said "I don't know what to say.  I don't know what you're dealing with".  It was honest, it was real.  And they didn't try to put a bandaid on a gaping wound.  They recognized and acknowledged the pain.  Some of them were the best listeners.  Because what I've need is to just keep talking about my feelings.  It's the only way I know to let them flow through me.  I talk.  I write.  I cry.  There have been a couple of times where the feelings have gotten bottled up in me.  Emotional constipation.  And every time that happens, I end up in physical distress.  My IBS flares up, I have migraines, my rib went out.  So I have to talk and talk and talk.

Shortly after Jim died, a few people said "he's in a better place".  For someone experiencing the loss of a loved one, that is at the top of the list of wrong things to say.  Not just for me, but for others I've talked to going through their own grieving process.  Because at that stage, I didn't fucking care.   Good for him and fuck him.  He's in a better place and I'm left here dealing with a mountain of shit he left behind.  Grief is selfish.I had a part of my heart and soul forcibly ripped from me and it hurts.  It hurts more that you know until you experience it for yourself.

Someone I love and care about told me the other day that I need to let it go.  Well I am, just maybe not in a way he understands.  For me letting go is a process.  There is no magic "letting go" fairy.  Poof - it's gone.  There's the pain of holding onto something that makes me willing to let go.  Then there's the pain of the letting go - feeling something being removed from me with no anesthetic.  Finally there's the pain of the empty space once I let go.  Grief has been a non-stop process of letting the feelings surface.  Writing about them, talking about them, crying about them.  I let them wash through me.  Like I said, sometimes I get stuck, but I've done my best to walk the line between avoiding the feelings and wallowing in them.  Overall, I think I've done pretty good.  Sometimes the grief brings me to my knees, or I end up curled up on the floor sobbing my guts out.  And then I get back up and try to focus on what's in front of me.

I give myself points for not drinking this year and not ending up in a mental institution.  I'm grateful to the many people who have shared from their hearts their experiences with loss and let me babble endlessly.  The people who have read my writing and told me how I've touched them, that what I've written has stricken a chord in them.  I'm grateful for the people who have told me I'm strong, courageous and brave.  When I feel weak and afraid, I cling to those reassurances, I believe I can make it through.  I'm grateful for the people that tell me they admire my authenticity.  At this point, I don't have much of a choice, I don't have energy to keep up a front.  It heals my rawness that this too is embraced and loved.  I'm grateful to the many people with endless patience, that have told me and keep telling me that there's no right or wrong way to grieve, that we all have our own path and hold my hand  and give me balance.  I'm grateful for the many, many people who have patiently let me talk and given me the gift of listening.  Through this whole process, the greatest gift I've received is unconditional love.  The quantity and quality continues to astound me.

So thank you all.  The next several weeks are going to be difficult.  A time of reliving an awful period.  A time of reflecting on the journey thus far.  I'm feeling the grief settle into a new place.  I think it will always be with me, but it's settling.  Thank you for letting me share this journey with you.  xoxo