Good Mourning Grief

A blog about my adventures as a grief warrior

Tag: #grief (Page 3 of 9)

Candle Lighting Day 2022

December 11, 2022 /

I am to light a candle today

In honor of, in remembrance of you

As if somehow not lighting it

I would forget you.

I have lit a candle every day,

Over two thousand days.

I light this candle,

In honor of you, of us

Of our life together.

I light this candle,

As an offering of hope

That you may see it and know

I am thinking of you.

I light this candle because

You are loved.

The flicker reminding me

How you enjoyed dancing through life,

Taking in all its’ pleasures.

I light this candle because it is like the brilliance of you,

How your smile shined, and your laugh lit up the room.

I light this candle because the moment

Reminds me that its scent, the smoke flickering

Is carried into the heavens, to you,

As a sort of spiritual connection.

I light this candle because its glow is warm, like your hug.

I light this candle because I am your mom

And I want to do something for you,

So, I light it.

Not just on candle lighting day

But every day.

The Necklace

November 20, 2022 /

I have been purging the many bins we put in storage when we moved.  These were items we did not use but one day might. They are items once loved, but not anymore or gifts we received and keep although we don’t need or want any longer. It is easier to store than to purge. Then there are the bins that contain the kids’ baby stuff. It’s these bins that get me. Especially Zane’s.

I was the mother who scrapbooked their entire life. One book for the school years for each child, another of life in general. I had a photo album for each of random pictures they might enjoy.  The intent was to give it to them to share with their mates and their children.

I giggle when I go through Payton’s.  I put aside mementos to share with her. I pack up precious dresses that she once wore, for her (future) baby.  It is melancholy but a sweet melancholy.  She is here to share these memories with me and to hold the physical reminders in her hands.

With Zane’s, each quote, I read of the things he used to say to me, I begin to cry. In a calendar of his 4th year, I had recorded on Mother’s Day that Zane hugged me.  He said, “this is your first gift Mimi, do you like it?” And then the following month, I said to him I was wondering what to get his father for Father’s Day.  And he answered, “what about a hug? You liked yours”.  Each of these quotes, each picture, I am flooded with what was happening at that time. All the joy and wonder of his wee life. His favorite camp shirt, his teddy bears, his beloved mickey mouse jacket.

He would not take that jacket off; it was his favorite.  The soft brushed cotton now feels like silk with all the years of wear.  It is still in great shape.  I hold it up.  Was he really this small once?  And as I bring it in to hug it, I can feel him and from deep inside me escapes a wail of pain and the flood gates open wide.

As I am bent over the bin in tears, something shiny catches the corner of my eye.  It is a silver box.  I put the jacket down, wipe my face with the back of my hand and reach in to pick it up. I open it and find a necklace.  It is a silver heart with turquoise insert. I recognize it. The memory of Zane comes alive, and I am sitting next to him.  He is showing me this necklace.  He is in his early teens.  I asked who’s it for.  He says, “I’m not sure.  I thought it was for my girlfriend but that’s not it.” I said it was pretty and anyone would enjoy it.  He smiled.

I never knew what happened to that necklace. He never said.  And I don’t know how it ended up in a bin of his baby things. Did Zane know that there would come a day that I would be missing him as I went through his baby things, to find this piece which would bring me comfort in that moment?  I am sure he did not. But he did know then that he was meant to buy that necklace and he did. He knew not who it was for but that it was for someone, and he was comfortable buying it knowing only that. He believed the answer would reveal itself in due time. That was all he knew. And it was good enough. 

Sitting alone, holding this piece of jewelry, I smiled.  Maybe it was for me.  We just didn’t know it at that time. Maybe the Universe gave Zane an intuitive push to buy and hide the necklace in his baby things. Maybe Zane did, thinking someday, the two of us would find it when we were going through his things together. The Universe knew better. I put it on and smiled.  “Thanks Zaney, for showing your love in so many magical ways.”

Letting Love Ease Grief

November 13, 2022 /

I’m not sure who dictates how much goes onto one person’s plate, but I wish they’d recalculate. This year has been brutal on our family.  The loss of Dan, my cancer, the loss of Kim, the life and death health struggles of close friends, and now two more friends want to check out.

We heard of their desire back in the spring. Both suffer major health ailments and life is no longer the quality they hope for. After much conversation, we convinced them to investigate moving back to Calgary into an assisted living community and enjoy our health care support as well as the love of their family and friends here.  They liked that idea. I was relieved. We found a place and made plans to fly them out to see it. These are lifetime friends who, when we are together, none of us remember that our health is crappy, and we are in pain.  There is laughter and shared memories and time flies in their company.  Their friendship is therapeutic. This was a good solution for however many days or years they have left here. Then we got a call from their son. Assisted death is back on the table.  Why?

A cat scan showed two more tumors in our friend. He is done. He is too tired to struggle for the slim chance that he may last a couple more years. His life has been a good one and he wishes to go out on his own. She feels the same way about her health, although hers is better.  I think it is that she does not want to be here without him.  They are two peas in a pod and have never been separated.

There is a part of me that gets this and then there is the selfish side of me that screams, NO. I don’t want anymore loss in my life. Especially when it is chosen. I don’t want to have to be at another funeral and taking care of estates and personal wills (we are the executors) and selling their home. I am sick. I don’t have enough energy to get out of bed lately.  I can’t do this. Grief steps in and blinds me. It zaps the energy and the understanding that I have friends who are suffering and want to end it.

Grief is a personal journey, and can be at times, a selfish journey. When it is loud, it consumes us to think only of ourselves; that life is unfair, we are hard done by and why me.  It is at this time, that we must stop and let love come in. Love takes grief into its arms and holds it.  It whispers, “everything will be ok.  We got this.” It opens our eyes to a larger understanding and stirs up empathy within our hearts to listen and not judge. Love can calm grief.

So, I sit in my chair, and I listen to love. I think of the many wonderful memories I will always have. I feel gratitude that I have these friends and I ask for strength to be with them when they carry out their wishes. I feel my grief lessen and the energy I will need peeks over the distant horizon of my own anguish. I tell grief that I am aware it does not leave and thank it for momentarily letting love ease its sharp edges.

The Cloak of Grief is Anger

October 2, 2022 /

There is always supposed to be more time. I’ll see you soon. I’ll make that appointment. We will get to that tomorrow.  And then tomorrow never comes. Or it comes with a death sentence, and you are left having a list of things to be done before ‘times up’ and it leaves no room for what you wanted to do.

Our friend has brain cancer. And not a great prognosis even with his kick-ass 200% positivity. So, we, the recovery team as he calls us, are left to resolve a hundred things on his behalf and put into place care for now and for after. His two children, each with their own families and work commitments want to be with their dad and feel their grief. But the task list takes them away from that.  And replaces it with grief’s cloak. Anger.

Anger comes when your soul wants one thing, your heart needs one thing and life dictates another. I watch his children, worried about the unknown and scared for their father. They have stepped up.  Big time. Life doesn’t seem fair to them now.  And it isn’t. “We have so much to still share with Dad”. That won’t happen.  And they know this but between doctors and surgery and treatment and accommodations and paperwork, there is no time to feel this. Time. The elusive, non-refundable gift has been given to them, with an expiry date.

We sit with his children and the long list of what needs to be done.  We organize who can do what and pull in friends to support this. We talk with our friend about dying, about last wishes and we, together make a plan.  It brings a bit of relief to everyone. It gives us some control, some hope that we may be able to share a life, however short, that is filled with love and time together.

We now will go about implementing our strategy, with a plan b to create as we understand nothing goes according to the original ideals. We find comfort in the awareness that we are in this together and we have each other to lean on. All these things help. Yesterday, my friend told me his son said something profound. It was a short sentence that summed up our entire life.  It identified our anger. He said, “Dad, I’m just sad.”

Keys to Grief

September 18, 2022 /

Grief comes in many forms and many levels of intensity. Grief is a result of loss and there are losses almost daily that we accept, sometimes without even recognizing it. Until they accumulate and you are not feeling well or can’t focus and not understanding why. Such was this week.

We drove to British Columbia to see friends who are not aging well. In our conversation with them I heard the loss of hope in my friend as he talked about not having the capacity to be the person he once was. No one likes bad change. And his physical issues are not good. But as we spoke, I realized that sometimes we have expectations to be the person we were decades ago, or days ago, from what life has handed us. Adaptation is key to happiness.

We came home to news that another close friend had stumbled and thinking it was a stroke, his children took him to the hospital.  What they found was a large cancerous tumor in his brain. He underwent surgery the next day and the doctors have told us there will be a long road to recovery and a much shorter life expectancy than we had thought would be his life plan. Hope is key to resiliency.

Over cocktails, another friend told me she was diagnosed with cancer and will be having her toe amputated in hopes that it has not spread. We shared feelings about the realism of aging and how everything happens for a reason. God only knows what the reasons are this week. Trust is key to strength.

What I do know is that my plate is full. I am connected, by heart and soul to these friends. So, when falling to sleep is not happening and my body hurts, I know that I am grieving for the loss.  The loss of what was and the loss of what is coming.

It is an unsettling feeling, empty of promise with no clear predictions. Such is life. Such is love. Such is loss. And what I know now is that grief is also a part of life and love and loss. Acceptance is key to courage.  

Road Signs that Increase Grief

September 11, 2022 /

In May when we visited friends in Kelowna, I told my husband that it was my last time driving there. I wasn’t sure if I hated the drive because of the construction detour or the fact we brought our dog who howled the entire 7 hours. Well, we are back, driving west to see our friends.  This time, there was no detour, and we left the dog behind, and I figured out why I hate travelling by car. It’s the road signs.  Specifically, two types of road signs.

The first sign are the crosses. The sign that someone else lost a loved one to a highway crash. Someone else walks this journey beside me. Even though I know not of them, I sigh, whispering “I am so sorry” under my breath.  I can’t enjoy the majestic scenery my husband reminds me of.  We are in God’s Country.  And where was God then?

The second, and more personal, are the dozens of road signs stating, “Passing Lane 2KM”. You wait for these expanded areas to pass slower moving vehicles safely.  Here, you are not as likely to have an oncoming vehicle in your lane.  It is this sign that was at Zane’s crash site.  It haunts me to this day; 2 km and my boy would have been safe.  2km was all he had to travel before the divided highway would have kept him apart from the other driver crossing the centre line. 2km and he may have survived. Every time we drive by one of these signs, I can feel my heart explode and my hands grip the wheel tighter and my jaw clenches. I am a ball of angry bitter tension by the time we reach our destination.  These road signs kill me emotionally.

It’s true that our life is all about bittersweet.  When I see a feather or balloon, a sweet sign from Zane, I am elated. Connected. When I see a bitter sign, like one of these road signs, I am reminded of my truth. The ugly truth. A grief warrior’s life is a yin and yang of bitter and sweet. It is part of grief. I must remember this. The bitter signs are just that.  They are signs of what happened. They are part of the story but not the whole story.  And I can choose which signs I want to focus on, the ones that elate me or those that crush me.

Our trip home I will experiment with this concept. I will search for the sweet signs that I know are also there. I will watch the skies and the countryside and the mountains for clues that Zane is with me. This is an exercise in choosing how I look at life and I wish to see it with my boy, riding next to me, past the signs that repeat he is not physically here.

Goals For Our Grief

September 4, 2022 /

With September, comes the rush of more work, school, and busier times. We know this. Summer leaves behind the long days of less. It is a time to plan as well. I recently read, for mothers especially, that September can be a quiet but impactful opportunity to look at your life. And to plan your goals.

January is when we make new year resolutions; it is a time where we are exhausted and needing to rest and perhaps why so many of our goals fail. If we choose to look at what we want, what we need, in September, our perspective might be different. If we use this month to focus on what goals would support our grief, perhaps the upcoming months won’t be as harsh. September goals are about self care.

What would you like to see this upcoming year for just you. Between now, when the leaves begin to change colors and next year’s summer heat? What would you like to bring into your life and what would you like to remove? When we are grieving, the answers seem obvious. I want my child back. I don’t want to feel like this. I want to have peace, maybe a little joy. We feel it’s impossible. This thinking stops us from healing.

Grief will never leave and because of that we must look at how we live with it. What do we do to include it as the big part of our lives it will always be. Our goals need to include our grief.

In the quiet morning hours, before the drama of life unfolds, what if we sat with a journal and meditated about what we need this year to live with our grief. What would that look like for you? Would it include more time alone or more time with friends? Would it include a trip or a move or just more walks? What would you like to incorporate or remove or change with the upcoming holidays. What do you need that would support your grief? Start writing your thoughts.

September goals are the secret wishes of your heart. They do not need to be shared, no one knows we have made them.  They are between you and God. Quiet prayers of what we have discovered through journalling to try. Just try. 

And what if these feelings were heard by the Universe? What then? Could we find the energy to chase these desires? Would we accept, if what we dreamed about, approached us? We must be open to such happenings. We must do the work to bring to life the ideas we have recorded in our journal.

Identifying and working towards the goals of what is needed to build a life around grief is good mourning. Only by searching our hearts for new ways or modified ways to integrate our grief, will we then know what may bring us comfort.

“On Life After Death”

August 21, 2022 /

Our beloved Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, through her books, has supported our mourning by talking about death, identifying the stages of grief, and offering us strategies to cope. My recent read, “On Life After Death” she deepens possible healing by reassuring us there is no death.

Her book reads like a conversation.  I can imagine myself in her living room. A cup of tea is poured. There are cookies set on a plate. She sits down and in a soothing voice she begins to talk, “…the death of the human body is identical to what happens when the butterfly emerges from its cocoon.”

This book is about the three stages of what happens to us when we die. It is based on the vast experience and the commonalities across the globe, she has had with patients who have had near-death experiences. Her examples cannot be explained by science. A little girl tells her father she liked when she ‘had died’ because the place was so full of light and the feeling of love and that her brother was there.  She says to her dad, “the problem is I don’t have a brother.” And her dad confesses that she indeed had a brother who passed months before she was born, and they had not told her.  A female patient, blinded in an explosion, when out of her physical body, could see the whole accident and describe the people who dashed in to save her, but when brought back to life, she was totally blind. Example after example the good doctor discovers at the time of death, each patient was acutely aware of what was happening as they watched from above in perfect physical condition. And each patient then saw a path, a bright light and felt a love that was pure bliss.

Her words are comforting.  She insists that our loved ones do not die alone. Those we love that have gone before are waiting to greet us. There is no pain as they transition from cocoon to butterfly. She tells us, “…it is no longer a matter of belief, but rather a matter of knowing.”

I relished in this suggestion. There is no death. There is this life, in this cocoon, that we must make the most of. At the end of this stage, the next life we maintain our identity and our personal energy pattern, taking up no space and able to be many places. Our loved ones are here, connecting with us, guiding us. They are the butterfly.

To Zane, on the Fourth Anniversary

August 7, 2022 /

Dear Zane,

It has been four years today,

an indescribable hell

trying to live in this realm

knowing you live in the other

It has been four years of ugly rituals

like crying every morning

and screaming every day in the car

It has been four years of not believing, believing

And then not believing again

It has been four years of mockery

watching my friends’ kids do, be, experience

what was to be for you

It has been four years of anger

Not able to comfort your sister

Or any of us from this pain…

It has also been four years of honoring you,

asserting you are still here,

friends and family include you

in our daily lives

which brings some peace

as a mother’s greatest fear is 

there will come a time

when life goes on without you.

It has been four years learning

that the diminutive conciliation

of holding your hand

are unexpected symbols,

enigmatic Instagram posts

feathers on our path

dragonfly on the window

bubbles and balloons

signs that I cling to

as oxygen, for my own survival

There is also the Universe’s gift,

the subconscious reality through nighttime slumber

where I can feel your hug, hear your laugh 

our moonlight conversations,

when morning arrives,

my broken heart holds tight to

giving the energy I need to walk another day

It has been four years today, my sweet boy

and if I have understood only one thing

It is that my love for you is endless

as are the tears I cry.

The Physical Damage of Grief

July 31, 2022 /

At my annual doctor’s appointment, I was expecting the usual battery of tests and probes to be told I am ok. Living with chronic physical pain, I am used to “everything looks great” even though I don’t feel that way. But this year was different. When your doctor pulls up the stool, closer to you, and starts the conversation with “we have to count on diagnostic tests and when they fail us, we are all in pain…” What the hell?

According to this year’s blood and x-ray parade, it is confirmed I can add lupus, severe osteoarthritis and a cancer scare to my list of health ailments. Dear God. It is almost laughable. How do I go from ‘perfectly healthy’ to ‘this is worrisome’ in one year?  I call my trusted herbalist to chat with her about these new findings and part of her advice is to review what am I doing to address the anger of my grief. Wow.

I came home stunned.  I randomly opened my journal to a page in December 2020 that read:

You have no idea

How much energy it takes

To keep the screams inside me

From escaping

My soul is in constant pain.

Can grief cause a major illness? We know it effects our memory, our heart hurts, we are emotionally stripped but major physical ailments. Isn’t this just about growing old? It sent me down a web search rabbit hole and here we have it.  

Research says that the emotions of anger, resentment, hostility, and grief unexpressed can harbor and change our health at a cellular level.  There is a definite connection between life-threatening health conditions and trauma experienced two years or more prior.

When we are grieving, our health practitioners, family and friends say we must take care of ourselves. How many of us listen, truly listen to this advice?  How many have a daily regime in place to address the anger and resentment of our grief so that it does not fester inside our bodies to create more issues? For 3 years, I have been dealing well with grief. Or so I thought.  I had not taken seriously enough the fact that anger is a part of grief that necessitates attention.

If this year’s check up has illuminated one thing, it is this. We need to be very cognizant of the length of time that grief has accompanied us. The longer the emotions related to grief are with us, and ignored, the more dangerous they become. The internal screams need to be released. For the sake of our physical health.

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