Last night was the first "understanding your grief" workshop I attended. It's a 6 class, 3 month instructed course following Alan D. Wolfelt's Understanding Your Grief 10 Essential Touchstones for finding Hope and Healing Your Heart.
So far, I've cried the entire time. Sniffling and holding back tears during the 90 minute session, I feel like this next chapter of understanding and living with grief will help me. They say around the 6 month mark it becomes real... Yep. It's real.
"..understanding comes when we surrender, surrender our need to compare our grief (it's not a competition); surrender our self-critical judgement (we need to be self-compassionate); and surrender our need to completely understand (we never will)."
Two pages in and i'm already over here like HA, you're funny. I NEED TO KNOW WHY. I do. I need to know why the "picture" of what I saw when I found my wife is not the same "picture" described in the police report. Why was a veil put over my eyes? Did I truly see what I remember seeing? Did I see more? Do I really want to know? Why did she do this? Why didn't she talk to me? Hopefully this workshop will help me identify and understand my grief and affirm that what i'm feeling and is ok. Separating my head from my heart, now that is the challenge. "I don't know" is a phrase i'm turning back to a lot lately. Because, I don't. I don't know what I need or I want. Well I do but, that is Court and no one can give me that. At least I know that. I need to try and separate my logical grief from my heart grief. How the hell do you do that?
The other night I was on the phone with a friend. She mentioned how time was passing and that phrase meant something totally different for her than it did for me. For me that means I'm getting further away from the last time I saw, kissed, held, smelled, laughed with my wife and closer to that impending date, June 10th. That phrase created the most painful out of body experience I've had, or maybe it was an "in-body" experience? I became silent as she forced herself in to make me release what I was bottling up inside (as she always does). I started crying and said my favorite phrase, "I don't know. It just feels different than it has before I've had anxiety and pain in my chest but I've still felt my body, my WHOLE body... this time its like... it's like my body is a shell. I can feel my skeleton but, I can't feel anything on the inside except the pain in my heart. I can't feel my lungs breathing, my stomach turning, my heart beating. It's just pain" It stayed like that for almost an hour.
The difference between heart and head. Learning to grieve and allowing yourself to feel that pain SUCKS for lack of a better term. It's bullshit. It's horrible. No one wants to feel that pain. And then I think of my wife. Was that the kind of pain she was battling with? Was that the pain that would just NOT go away for her? If so, I get it. It's exhausting and it's easy to slip into a rabbit hole of "solutions" that will make that pain go away. Saving yourself is hard. It's exhausting, depleting mentally and physically. It makes you question your sanity. Your purpose (or lack of).
Head and heart. Learn to feel it. Let it go. Keep moving forward. Find the light.
At the end of the workshop, Ann the facilitator read this poem to us (cue the trumpets of noses blowing into tissues). It's a beautiful poem. Its a beautiful, shitty poem.
A shadow of joy flickered; it is me.
I told you I wouldn't leave.
My memories, my thoughts are embedded deep in your heart.
I still love you.
Do not for one moment think that you have been abandoned.
I am in the Light.
In the corner, in the hall, the car, the yard ~
these are the places I stay with you.
My spirit rises every time you pray for me,
but my energy comes closer to you.
Love does not diminish; it grows stronger.
I am the feather that finds you in the yard,
the dimmed light that grows brighter in your mind,
I place our memories for you to see.
We lived in our special way,
a way that now has its focus changed.
I still crave your understanding
and long for the many words of prayer
and good fortune for my soul.
I am in the Light.
As you struggle to adjust without me,I watch silently.
Sometimes I summon up all the strength of my new world
to make you notice me.
Impressed by your grief,
I try to impress my love deeper into your consciousness.
As you should, I call out to the Heavens for help.
You should know that the fountain of youth does exist.
My soul is now healthy.
Your love sends me new found energy.
I am adjusting to this new world.
I am with you and I am in the Light.
Please don't feel bad that you can't see me.
I am with you wherever you go.
I protect you,
just as you protected me so many times.
Talk to me and somehow I will find a way to answer you.
Mother, Father, son or daughter, it makes no difference.
Brother, sister, lover, husband or wife, it makes no difference.
Whatever our connection ~ friend or even foe ~ I see you with my new eyes.
I am learning to help wherever you are, wherever I am needed.
This can be done because I am in the Light.
When you feel despair, reach out to me. I will come.
My love for you truly does transcend from Heaven to Earth.
Finish your life with the enthusiasm and zest that you had
when we were together in the physical sense.
You owe this to me, but more importantly,
you owe it to yourself.
Life continues for both of us.
I am with you because I love you
and I am in the Light.
-- Author Unknown
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