This Grieving Stuff is Hard

It’s no secret that I’ve had lots of losses in recent years. Big ones, like the deaths of parents, husband, sister, and other family members, as well as friends, but also smaller ones like beloved pets and places where I lived that I loved.

As someone who’s worked closely with death and dying, supporting patients and families through the process when I was part of pastoral services at a hospital and later at hospice, I thought I knew all about grief. I’d had years of education and training for the job, which led to more years doing that job, which eventually led to my book, The Many Faces of Grief: Stories of Love, Loss and Hope.

The last few chapters of the book focus on my grief journey, and I really thought I had the whole thing wrapped up. I’d grieved all those losses and worked through the intense pain of having so many holes in my life where people used to reside.

More recently I’ve struggled with the myriad of health issues, the major one being chronic pain that stays with me 24/7 and hovers always at a level 3 or 4 with frequent bad times where it soars above that. Not knowing how to deal with the constant pain, while trying not to let it drag me into despair, I started seeing a therapist. One I found after researching counselors who deal with chronic pain and aging.

At our first session the other day, she pointed out that I’m grieving the loss of good health and all the activities I was involved in before head and face pain hit, limiting so many things. She asked me to tell her what my life was like before this complicated trigeminal neuralgia started back in January 2016. By the time I mentioned the place in the country and playing farmer, time at the art center running drama camps, directing plays, playing on stage, connecting with lots of creative people who became close friends, as well as the amount of writing I could do in a day, I was more than a bit overwhelmed.

I’d never tossed all those things together in one bowl before. Only looking at them individually while spending some time with my feelings of sadness and emptiness because they’re gone.

At the end of the session I realized that there is a lot she can help me with, and we’ll continue for a while. Going in, I’d not decided for sure if this would be a one-off, but the second appointment is in two weeks.

Before I left, she loaned me a book, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief, and I started reading it this morning instead of the fiction I usually have open in my ereader while eating breakfast.

The author, David Kessler, has written many books about loss and grief, and co-authored On Grief and Grieving and Life Lessons with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. He uses experiences of other people who have found meaning after the loss of a child to show how making the death be more than simply an end to a life, but something with importance afterward; like Candace Lightner who started MADD in 1980 after her daughter was killed by a drunk driver. By launching the organization, Lightner made a difference in many people’s lives. She found a way for something positive to come out of that tragic loss.

I’m only a couple of chapters into the book and don’t see how anything positive can come from any experience with this kind of daily pain, so maybe that’s what the therapist can help me with.

I’m hoping.

Now, moving on to something fun.

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The following are snippets from the comics. Remember the strips that came in the newspaper every day? I’d read them first, then the editorials, before going back to the front page. These are some tips for writers that I put together for a post I wrote eons ago for The Blood Red Pencil blog. Still fun to read them today.

From ONE BIG HAPPY

RUTHIE: This is my story about a beautiful princess who doesn’t want to be a princess anymore. So she goes to a dancing school.

JOE: Ha! Hee, Hee. That’s so dumb, Ruthie. Everybody knows they can’t dance.

RUTHIE: Princesses?

JOE: No. Schools.

From PEANUTS:

SNOOPY writes: “I will always wait for you,” she said. “I’m not going anyplace,” he said.” “If you don’t go anyplace, I can’t wait for you,” she said.

LUCY: That’s the dumbest thing I ever read.

SNOOPY: I’ll add some footnotes.

From GET FUZZY

BUCKY KAT: Can I read you my new ghost story?

SATCHEL: What’s it about?

BUCKY KAT: A guy goes into a haunted house and ends up becoming a ghost himself.

Satchel acts all scared in that way he has of driving Kat nuts.

BUCKY KAT: Ahem. Dave went into the scary house. Before he knew what was happening, he became a ghost himself.

SATCHEL: Is that it?

BUCKY KAT: What more do you want? Satchel, the guy turns into a ghost.

SATCHEL: You just might want to make it a bit… longer.

Bucky Kat writes for a moment then reads: He became a greenish ghost.