Grief

I’ve been slowly working through the grieving process with the death of my father and have come across a few interesting things I didn’t know about myself and others I didn’t realize were as prominent as I had originally thought.


- I actually have a max capacity! I didn’t learn this until recently I’ve known at times I’ve been close but never actually hit that point until a few months ago. My brain and body would just shut down, I would find myself minutes later staring into space and unable to move my limbs.

- There is a bit of time before and after a traumatic event that you actually forget, almost like the pain of childbirth and maybe for the same reasons, I will have conversations with people about things going on right around the time my father passed and I’ll have no recollection of what I did or how I did it.

- With that it seems that you go numb for a bit as well. We have a very close family friend that’s suffering through prostate cancer, I’ve spoken with him, his wife and our family about the matter and where other are very moved by the ordeal I find myself almost blasé about it. It’s not that I don’t care or that I feel the experience isn’t worthy of an emotion, at the moment though I can’t seem to dig down and find it.

- And you become a little selfish, I don’t know how many times recently I’ve looked at my husband and told him “I just can’t”. I probably could muster up the strength to do whatever it is that was asked but I don’t want to.

- I am impatient about the time it takes to grieve, I told my boss a few weeks ago that if someone could give me a timeframe and tell me things would stop hurting so much (not necessarily get better, just stop hurting) it would help. He smiled at me and went back to his typing, we both know each person is different but the unknown horizon really bothers me sometimes.

Most of this is coming to a head because a coworker that had been ill for sometime passed away yesterday. Last year when everything started I felt so horrible for his family and after numerous late night phone calls I would cry on my husbands shoulder, sharing the burden of their fear and pain. Today though I can’t seem to place my feelings, I’ve been sitting at my desk on autopilot running through a few emails and checking on some projects but….I don’t know. I wonder how long autopilot works before things start falling through the cracks, how long can someone be an observer in their own life? Is this really a good or bad thing? I’ve asked many people this question and can’t seem to get a straight answer, a lot say “Give it time” a few stare at you blankly because they have not experienced the same feelings and a small number have told me “get off your butt and do something, it’ll make you feel better” After time, blank stares and running my butt off I can tell you no one really has any better answer than where I started.

But last week I had a few days where I didn’t give my dad anything more than a passing thought and when I realized it I didn’t feel bad about it. I took a deep breath, felt around the wound and realized it hurt less – not better but definitely less. And maybe that’s what the real answer is. There isn’t a date on the calendar that will designate the end of grieving for me, and the loss of someone else won’t sting more or less than the initial shock but maybe after a time I’ll realize that I do feel small things and if I work a little at it, it will move itself into the large ones as well.