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Posts tagged ‘Grief process’

Aug 6

Reflections, Part 5

What I Wore

If there is one thing my sister Beth and I agreed on, it was that Joyce got all the cute clothes. We took the issue to my mother when we were adults, and her response was that Joyce had the personality for cute and bold, and we were pretty and feminine with our clothes types, and so, while Beth could sew and make herself originals, I got pretty from my mother.

To be fair to my mother, she was right. Joyce got the doggie dress that Beth and I wouldn’t have known what to do with. Joyce, on the other hand, would react when someone said that her doggie dress was cute, and then she’d extend the dress to its fullness that revealed a wiener dog. She took delight in the surprise. No, her two older sisters would have failed miserably with that task. Mom just got clothes, and she understood that her two oldest daughters didn’t have the personalities for what Joyce could pull off.  

My mother’s side of the family was filled with women who could sew for themselves, and they all sat at machines and sewed their clothes. But cousin Gwen said it best: “Your mother sews circles around all of us.” She did. While my aunt could create tiny things with personality, my mother created what I came to call dresses with personality, or “dressenality.” She sewed lasting creations that would get stored in memory. I knew when I got it and when I first wore it, and it became hard to grow out of clothes. Well, that’s one good thing about adulthood. Unless I grow, I can wear it for… forever.

A trip to the fabric store was all about the right pattern and the right fabric to go with the wonderful new dress. It worked like this: first look at all the pattern books, find what I wanted, and then, and only then, could I move to the fabric. Rows, and rows of wonderful fabric. If I wanted stripes or pleats in the dress, the dress requirements were much different. Florals? Would it look right? Mom always understood. Sometimes I’d buy fabric and wait for the right dress or top to show itself.  

In first grade, it was the fall colors of the flowers, and the yellow trim, the pleated skirt, and the joy that dress brought me. It was mine, and I loved wearing it. When I was seven, Beth wanted to make the dress. Mom let her. It was a purple twirly dress with long sleeves and a Peter Pan collar. It also had a sash that tied into an incredible bow. I wore it for a “daddy–daughter” night. I also wore it for my school picture that year. Growing out of the purple dress was a sad thing.

As a teen it was the pantsuit. Dark pink pants, a seersucker top that was multicolored, and white slingback shoes that I purchased while working for my father. Working meant I could buy clothes, and I did buy fabric. Why wear what others might be wearing?

When I wasn’t living at home, I’d buy clothes from specialty shops that catered to petite-sized women. They were nice, and I had my sentimental favorite. But, once again, it was what my mother would create for me that made me happy. It was the gift of a skirt and top. The print was on this electric blue background, and the flowers were rich reds, greens, yellows, and purples. The neckline was scalloped, and I had a red belt to dress it up. It was Jon’s favorite. When we moved to Germany, and then to The Netherlands, I thought the sewing would stop. It didn’t. On a home visit, I went shopping at Vivian’s Fabrics. She had to clean out and send it all off to loving homes. Her grandchildren were the recipients of much of the stash. So was I. The last vestiges of my mother: a blue dress that is pure style. I love it. Hopefully, I’ll have it forever. I wear it on special occasions.

With all the happy memories of clothes, how I got them, and where I wore them, I had to tell myself that the one that hurt I could part with.

August 28, 2016. It was the day that turned out to be the worst day of my life. What I wore is burned into my memory. After I showered, I chose to put on a skirt with a black, brown, and white print, and a light tan tank top. Because of the minor stroke I’d had in 2014, there we days when wearing anything with a sleeve wasn’t possible. This was one of those days. It was hot and humid outside.

I wore this as I walked down the stairs to have the final conversation with Jon. I wore this as I binged on Law and Order, and I wore this on that fateful walk into my kitchen—the place I never made it to. I greeted the police in this outfit. I wore it to phone the two sides of the family.

The memory of what I wore on this awful day was pounding in my mind. I was already dealing with trauma: this was the cherry on top. An outfit of a skirt and top had been put into the trauma caldron. NO, not clothes. Gail’s rule number one about clothes is that they are sacred and can’t be damaged. This skirt and top had become tainted.

I tried to wear them separately and together, and even though I wanted to keep them, I finally knew that I’d have to send them off to a home where they could be loved.

When I think back on this series of events now, I realize that it is more complex than just parting with clothes. This is about how we handle parting with something, and also recognizing that there is damage to our souls, and coming to terms with setting it free. This is about doing the deep grief work that is often overlooked in the process of getting to the new place. This is the place where new outcomes and life paths become real.

Jon and I were together for twenty-two years and married for eighteen of them. When you’re with someone that long, it is vital to sort it all out.

At the beginning of the process, all I thought about was that I would never marry again. It just hurt to think about doing that or being in another marriage. By about year three or four, I realized that I needed to take the relationship apart to examine it with no restrictions on what I would not look at. I remember being here at my desk and seeing the sun hit the window on the other side of the street. I started to think that if I didn’t take it all apart, I wouldn’t be able to move forward in a healthy way. Like the skirt outfit and dress that had to go (I sent the pretty dress I wore to his cremation to the secondhand place as well), I needed to be honest about my marriage. I needed to give it a real look under the microscope.

The first big thing I had to come to terms with was that I was dealing with compassion fatigue. While I understood this earlier in the process, I had not allowed myself to step back, pull it out, and dissect it for what it was: trauma. If I ever got to a point in time where I’d want to explore something new, this was a biggie on the road to figuring out a part of my marriage that I needed to see clearly.

The fact of the matter is that many grief journeys omit this step. This isn’t about speaking ill of the dead—though some of that might need to happen. It is about giving the relationship an honest critique, and understanding what made it good, and where the bad points were.

Breakups happen in marriages and long-term friendships. We’d be wise to look under the hood to see where we went right and where we went wrong. In most situations there are always two sides. Being able to look at something and accept the responsibility for our part of the “wrong” is difficult and painful. It is brutal work that needs to happen, and the payoff is worth the pain we go through to get there. This work is not for wimps. Ultimately, when we get through the hard stuff, it brings clarity to everything. Examination also means that we won’t leap into another relationship before we’ve done whatever work we need to do on ourselves to fix what we can.

I think that many people confuse grieving with crying many tears and being ready to move on. NO, the tears and the mess are only a part of the process.

What if the grief process is also a call for a life redo? What if the life we build after a death or loss of a partnership is one that takes us on a new path? What if we’re on a life journey, and this is just one significant stop in the process?

Jul 16

Reflections, Part 2

Read Part 1 here.

The Healing Journey

In July of 2023, I got sick. I wound up in the emergency room of the local hospital, and my kidneys were shutting down. They were at twenty percent function. I was disoriented, scared, and really not understanding how bad it was. At one point in the process leading up to my hospitalization, I became so confused that I couldn’t figure out how to get out of the bed. I couldn’t even think to turn the light on. That is sick, and that is scary. I found out after things settled that this is common for people facing this type of shutdown. Back to the narrative. A friend finally convinced me to call the doctor, who came and had me admitted, and by then it wasn’t good at all.

I was in the hospital for a week, and then a taxi took me home. I was disoriented coming out of the place because the hospital I was in was new, and I hadn’t seen it before. With low vision, this is a real issue.

I walked into my house, sat down my bag, walked to the sofa, and let out the tears. I sobbed, and then listened as my body and mind told me it was time to heal. It was time to do the work that led to healing all of it. All the trauma I’d stuffed. I had some therapy of my own to do, and it was time to find the therapist who would travel with me as I called the people to the encampment of the battleground. Funny how it works. It took another ten months to get to May of 2024, and to begin the intense work of cleaning out my mind and moving forward.

The healing process is an interesting thing. I’ve seen people who come to me and aren’t ready to do the work, and so they run away rather than to what can help. Others believe that grief and loss can be worked through in six easy sessions, and that there is a magic formula that the therapist can dispense. The fact is that this is a soul journey. It is a journey of the mind, the heart, and the spirit, if you will. It leads us to someplace else, and that someplace is the place of wonder and, ultimately, healing, such as it is.

On August 29, 2016, I sat at my dining table and looked at the lights that had been installed so that I would be able to see in my home. I wondered just how I, a woman with low vision, would be able to survive in a country where my limited Dutch would only get me so far. The only thing I knew at that time was that I couldn’t and shouldn’t make any major life decisions for a year. That is something my father had told me, and it was wise counsel.

And so, the journey of healing and discovery began that day, and in many ways it will never end. We may work through our grief and loss: we’re changed by it all.

The social system here set me up with someone to clean the house. At first, my then church came with meals until I realized I needed to cook for myself. If I needed to not work because I was compromised, I needed to do something for myself. I needed to let the process of grieving take place.

On Friday the thirteenth of January 2017, my mother died of a heart attack. We’d giggled, grown together, and experienced the death of my younger sister Joyce together. My mother was also an eight on the Enneagram. We understood this shared experience in life, and she taught me things despite not knowing about her beloved number. She just did life well in many ways. Because of where I was in the process of grieving Jon, I didn’t see and get fully the fact that my siblings telling me not to fly over for the memorial service was really bad advice. I’ve regretted that, and would do that one differently if I could.

By June of 2017, I felt ready to plan a trip to the US to see family and a friend. What I didn’t know then was that the trip would change the course of my life.

In late July of 2017, I flew to Salt Lake City to see some friends of Jon’s and attend a conference called Sunstone. At the conference I ran into people who were not Mormon, and it flipped a switch. I felt, and knew, that I had to check this other church out.

I then went to Oregon to visit another friend, and travelled on to California to see my family and visit the beach.

Staying at my brother’s place first and then moving on to my sister’s place was interesting. At the time I didn’t know it would be the last time I’d see both of them alive.

We made some good memories, and my sister and sister-in-law insisted I take my mother’s green quilt home. Now, they know of my love affair with blue. That green quilt would cause me to do a total room makeover. I painted the room blue, purchased a new bed that was blue and that the quilt would fit on, and realized that I had the piece of my mother that loved green. It has turned out to be one of the things I enjoy seeing, and it serves as a link to her and the love she had for me.

That trip also created a memory of my sis that I could never have done without her help. She got me on the flight with five boxes for less than the price of five extra boxes. I stood there at the airline counter, shut my mouth, and watched in amazement as she talked to the guy. I know when to shut my mouth. So, that quilt and other things came with me to be with me here in my new life.

The trip to the US changed my ability to sleep. In that first year, everything sleepwise changed. I didn’t sleep at normal hours, and family would question me as I called in the wee hours of my Netherlands morning. “Gail, what are you doing?” Well, when I can’t sleep, I call you.

Planning for the anniversary of his death had taught me that if I thought about it in advance, I could maybe, just maybe, control the tears and what would happen. It worked well for year one and failed for year two. What I really learned was that with the body, what we’re grieving will push its way to the surface and force itself on us in ugly ways. The life lesson: let go and don’t try to control what needs to happen. Healthy grief lets grief drive the process so it can heal. Even if grief must be put off because of life that must be done, it will surface, and when it does, embrace it!

What I’ve learned about the first two years of loss are that the tears change in quality and quantity. Looking back eight years, I can see all of the journey better now. How different it was and now is. In letting it all go, I freed myself to trust the grief process in ways that opened my heart and mind to healing, and because of that, I was carried to where I am now. July of 2023 had to happen so that I could write this in July of 2026. I see that now, and that is one of the huge things this journey has gifted me with. Wow, what an amazing place I’ve gotten to!

May 14

Crossing Styx (Revisit)

This post was originally published on October 4, 2023.

I remember a moment in my office when I realized that the journey of grief was about the past and the future. A new life could spring forth. It was the thought that I could plan how my life beyond would look. I got that idea from a book I’d read on grief. The trouble with that type of thinking is that it feels certain, and life is not anywhere near certain. The illusion of control is what would vanish during the next years of my life. While I can plan for some things, where I was led was, in ways, completely unexpected.

I sat looking out the window at the other houses, and I thought I knew where I was headed. I could have drawn up a plan of sorts. Wrong. While we can think about what we want, it is an illusion. Once again, certainty called me out.

There is something about this process that, if we allow it to do so, leads to wonderful and mystical surprises. Around each bend, things that we can’t imagine for ourselves appear, and disappear. Life has a way of doing that to us. Call it what you want: listening to your inner voice, your own knowing; or just letting go, and letting it happen. If we’re able to engage beyond our control, delightful things happen.

In my case I listen, and I have been doing the listening since early childhood. Whatever it is for you, it affects our footsteps as we walk on our path exiting out of the loss we’ve had to face. That day in my office a few years ago has come and gone, and it has proven me wrong. I had no way of making the connection that leads to a transition, because when you’re in it you can’t see it. When you’re in whatever you’re in, you don’t know what you’ve been sucked into.

The real work of grief and loss is found in the liminal spaces, and the times when we can enter back into that “funeral bubble” where life stops for us and we pause to collect the new understandings. We see old relationships in new ways and call them out for what they were. We allow their existence to come to new places within us. It took me somewhere between three and four years to get to this point in the process. Some of it is good, and some of it can be heart crushing. Like a river surging forward, it affects how we understand ourselves, as we leave a sheltered space to travel to a new destination within our personal knowing. Once again, we board a new boat. We’ve been on this boat since the loss happened. We don’t know we’re there because, their nature, death and other losses are traumatic.

During the past few weeks, I’ve begun researching for a book. The research involves reading memoirs involving grief journeys, and I’ve been taken to sadness, visiting old haunts, and a new understanding of where I was, what I could have done better, and ultimately seeing that I’m at yet another place on the river. While my eyes are wide open, I’m scared, and I have questions for myself. Can I navigate this? What is my new soul work? I think this is that space beyond grief where you know you’re someplace else, and once again you find yourself looking back, and this time knowing how you got to this new shore. For me this new place is an intersection that has involved the spiritual, my sexuality, and coming to terms with where I was in my young adult life. It is scary.

I’ve arrived in this liminal place with new skills, and yet, it’s so fresh to me that I wonder if I’m ready for it all. Arriving at a new point in time is more of a recognition than anything else. It is humbling. Once again, I faced a new set of demons down, and moved myself to the new beyond.

In realizing I’m on a new shore, I pause to shed fresh tears. This new set of questions is so different from that August 2016 day when I cried and wondered how I’d do any of this.

I think that in the beginning of the grief process, our knowing and certainty get ripped from us. While we’re busy having ourselves torn apart in the first days, months, and two years, we can’t fully understand the stirrings within. We get grabbed and taken to an underground we didn’t know was present. The underground is a dicey place for several reasons: 1) you don’t know you’re there; 2) you’re still moving along to someplace; and 3) the more inner work you do, the more you discover. The catch to all of this is that we’re underground, and we don’t realize it.

If I could go back and advise the woman of the past—the one that was scared and questioning the “how” of it all—I’d tell her to trust her footsteps. I’d tell her to honor the trauma that the suicide brought into her life, and to understand that this new journey of learning will bring a new calm, along with new acceptance of the essential things. I’d also let her know that grief is like the River Styx.

In a weird way, the living are the ones crossing the River Styx. We cross an underground river to make a grounded connection. Each living journey is unique to itself, and what we begin our crossing with is not what we’ll emerge with. We enter an underground that will propel us to a new, above-ground life. The living work of grief is to cross the River Styx to find ourselves alive in new ways, and on a new shore. At some point in time, we noticed that whatever needed to happen spit us out on this new shore. We’ve lived through our hard work to discover life post whatever tossed us into the boat and sent us shooting onto the waters of darkness. In places the current was strong, and we survived the journey.

There is no way of knowing that the living also traverse the waters of Styx. Maybe this is why grief, and the journey out from it, is so elusive for so many. We fail to understand that where we are is not anything that anyone can warn us about. We are underground, yet seeing light. Our support systems are what provide the lanterns that shine in this underground of Styx. In this place the light dances, dims, and shines brighter until suddenly we’re out!

The work of grief is dark. Grief challenges us to look deep within ourselves, admitting all things and standing as a witness to our own life, and the life of the deceased. We must honor the truth of each life. Like in Speaker For The Dead by Orson Scott Card, we must recognize the truth of our life, and the lives of those gone from us. We find our truth while traveling in the darkness of the River Styx. The work of grief requires this.

I pause with this realization of the journey well-traveled: WOWZA!!!! I dig my feet into the warm sand on the new shore. This is the afterlife! Post Styx. Goodbye, Styx, and thank you for the boat that served me so well.