What is it about grief that can at times make me feels so isolated? That no one could possibly begin to understand what this horrid loss is like? Unless of course, you have had a loss. The thing is that no one is me, right? I am me, and it's my loss, and it's my experience, and it's my pain. People can sympathize with me but they still don't feel it, like I feel it! So therefore that's where the isolation comes in.
I went to visit my Grandmother today. Since today is the 4th Angelversary of my Grandpa's passing. I wanted to see her and spend some time with her, so she wasn't alone on this day. The kids were crazy like they usually were, when I used to go to her house to visit. But hopefully we made her day a little better.
There is a scrapbook on her coffee table that my siblings and I made for her and my Grandpa to look through on days when he was having a "good" day. We thought that maybe she and him would enjoy looking at the silly pictures of us kids and our parents at the cabin in Minnesota. A place that they spent their summers when my dad and uncle were younger. Then later where we kids spent ours too. It was in that scrapbook that I ran across a picture I had forgotten about. It was Pete and I and my Grandmother and Grandpa sitting at a table inside one of our favorite spots in MN. Can I tell you how strange it was to look at that picture. My Grandpa's smile jumped off the page, and how interesting it was that Pete and him were sitting across the table from each other. But It was me that thought, "here I sit with my Grandmother on her couch in 2012 and both of these strong and vibrant men are dead. Both of them! One in his mid 80's the other in his mid 30's. It's these moments that take my breath and leave me looking around going... "Wait..What?" There we sat two Widows on the couch. One 90 and one 33.
On the way home from my Grandmothers I wanted to do something fun for the kids since they did a pretty good job playing so well together. Dumb me, thinking that this was a good idea. Aryanna ended up being horrible and ungrateful which made me crazy mad. I told her I wouldn't buy her a cake pop again. I used the rest of my starbucks gift card to do something nice for A and P and it went all kinds of crazy. I know it's just a few bucks but to me it felt like more that just a few bucks. It was something that I had been saving and I used it to share it with them. I drove home with my ear buds in my ears and the music on my ipod turned up.
Who is to say whether I would have been so upset if I wasn't upset before hand. I just didn't realize that I was so upset, and how much that picture had shaken me. It was on the drive home that I started in on Pete in my head. Thinking things like. "Why did you leave me here to raise her by myself?" and " Why did you leave me when I was pregnant?" and " Don't you remember me sitting in the rocking chair holding our brand new baby sobbing and crying for you to come home to me?" Why did you do this?"
I know on so many levels that he didn't choose to leave. He had to leave. It's the process. Its realizing the hell I went through and still, having these hurtful and stupid moments where I am still looking around going Why aren't' you here with me. I can't do this without you. I don't' know how to get through to Aryanna the way you did. It's the constant worry about money, the cleaning the house and picking up after the kids and fighting with them and getting Aryanna off to school and doing all of those things that other mothers do, but adding on to it a whole other level. I look around and say "What is going on here?" While I have changed so much and I am not the woman I was, and in so many ways is such a good thing. There are moments where I want the life I once had, just for a moment. And yet even though I say that I don't want that life either. I want this one. (You know how I have so often said that I am crazy this is a fine example) Cause this is where I am, not there. It's the grief that makes me feel like I am all alone. I wonder does my grandmother feel like she is alone in her grief? The loss of a mate can't be compared to anything else. Does it hurt worse at 90? She had 60 or so years of marriage with my Grandpa. While I had only 6.
I was sitting in the rocking chair in my room after I had gotten the kids in the house. The two big ones in time out and the little one on my lap. I leaned my head back and let the tears roll down my cheeks. The anger, the loss, the helpless all rising up and out of me. Did I fail him? And Why don't I miss him? Right now I am just mad at him. So many times over these two years I have heard about how strong I was and brave I was. It was in these tears that I finally cried for the fear that I never felt. There wasn't time. All I could think at the time was of the horrid and heart breaking anxiety and of the love of my life gone. I loved him more than breath. He was my breath. How I cried for him. And how I kept going, was only God. Its the tears of all the anger towards him. I had a baby alone! I raised a baby and two toddles alone! And I never thought of a future without Pete. I never thought of ever finding happy again. I was nothing, but an empty shell of a woman who once was. Maybe that's why I am so angry now. Why I am so angry on a regular basis. Cause I never knew it was there. and I never allowed myself to feel it. It wasn't safe, there wasn't time. I had to keep going. Get the kids up, take them to school, make lunch, make dinner, feed the baby. It was me. There wasn't another physical being in this house to give me a break the way a husband could.
While I am still frustrated with Aryanna, and I still feel isolated in my grief. At least I know that it is only temporary.. What "Brookes Place" refers to as a "grief burst." Thats exactly what I had today. I also know that these are all part of this crazy process. It still feels stupid, and these moments pick me up and slam me into a wall backwards. I know though if I was being rational, that this is how I heal. How, with each burst I stitch another piece of my heart back together. In some ways it feels like I am pulling farther away from Pete. But its realizing that I have to in order to move forward. Not that I am pushing him out, or cutting him out of my life. Or even that I am leaving him behind. I am bringing the beauty of who he was with me. I could never leave him behind. He is a part of me, he makes up a part of who I once was. With his life, his love for me and the kids along with the man that he was, while he was here. I can carefully stitch all of that and my life lessons into my heart, to make up a new, whole, and loving heart.
I went to visit my Grandmother today. Since today is the 4th Angelversary of my Grandpa's passing. I wanted to see her and spend some time with her, so she wasn't alone on this day. The kids were crazy like they usually were, when I used to go to her house to visit. But hopefully we made her day a little better.
There is a scrapbook on her coffee table that my siblings and I made for her and my Grandpa to look through on days when he was having a "good" day. We thought that maybe she and him would enjoy looking at the silly pictures of us kids and our parents at the cabin in Minnesota. A place that they spent their summers when my dad and uncle were younger. Then later where we kids spent ours too. It was in that scrapbook that I ran across a picture I had forgotten about. It was Pete and I and my Grandmother and Grandpa sitting at a table inside one of our favorite spots in MN. Can I tell you how strange it was to look at that picture. My Grandpa's smile jumped off the page, and how interesting it was that Pete and him were sitting across the table from each other. But It was me that thought, "here I sit with my Grandmother on her couch in 2012 and both of these strong and vibrant men are dead. Both of them! One in his mid 80's the other in his mid 30's. It's these moments that take my breath and leave me looking around going... "Wait..What?" There we sat two Widows on the couch. One 90 and one 33.
On the way home from my Grandmothers I wanted to do something fun for the kids since they did a pretty good job playing so well together. Dumb me, thinking that this was a good idea. Aryanna ended up being horrible and ungrateful which made me crazy mad. I told her I wouldn't buy her a cake pop again. I used the rest of my starbucks gift card to do something nice for A and P and it went all kinds of crazy. I know it's just a few bucks but to me it felt like more that just a few bucks. It was something that I had been saving and I used it to share it with them. I drove home with my ear buds in my ears and the music on my ipod turned up.
Who is to say whether I would have been so upset if I wasn't upset before hand. I just didn't realize that I was so upset, and how much that picture had shaken me. It was on the drive home that I started in on Pete in my head. Thinking things like. "Why did you leave me here to raise her by myself?" and " Why did you leave me when I was pregnant?" and " Don't you remember me sitting in the rocking chair holding our brand new baby sobbing and crying for you to come home to me?" Why did you do this?"
I know on so many levels that he didn't choose to leave. He had to leave. It's the process. Its realizing the hell I went through and still, having these hurtful and stupid moments where I am still looking around going Why aren't' you here with me. I can't do this without you. I don't' know how to get through to Aryanna the way you did. It's the constant worry about money, the cleaning the house and picking up after the kids and fighting with them and getting Aryanna off to school and doing all of those things that other mothers do, but adding on to it a whole other level. I look around and say "What is going on here?" While I have changed so much and I am not the woman I was, and in so many ways is such a good thing. There are moments where I want the life I once had, just for a moment. And yet even though I say that I don't want that life either. I want this one. (You know how I have so often said that I am crazy this is a fine example) Cause this is where I am, not there. It's the grief that makes me feel like I am all alone. I wonder does my grandmother feel like she is alone in her grief? The loss of a mate can't be compared to anything else. Does it hurt worse at 90? She had 60 or so years of marriage with my Grandpa. While I had only 6.
I was sitting in the rocking chair in my room after I had gotten the kids in the house. The two big ones in time out and the little one on my lap. I leaned my head back and let the tears roll down my cheeks. The anger, the loss, the helpless all rising up and out of me. Did I fail him? And Why don't I miss him? Right now I am just mad at him. So many times over these two years I have heard about how strong I was and brave I was. It was in these tears that I finally cried for the fear that I never felt. There wasn't time. All I could think at the time was of the horrid and heart breaking anxiety and of the love of my life gone. I loved him more than breath. He was my breath. How I cried for him. And how I kept going, was only God. Its the tears of all the anger towards him. I had a baby alone! I raised a baby and two toddles alone! And I never thought of a future without Pete. I never thought of ever finding happy again. I was nothing, but an empty shell of a woman who once was. Maybe that's why I am so angry now. Why I am so angry on a regular basis. Cause I never knew it was there. and I never allowed myself to feel it. It wasn't safe, there wasn't time. I had to keep going. Get the kids up, take them to school, make lunch, make dinner, feed the baby. It was me. There wasn't another physical being in this house to give me a break the way a husband could.
While I am still frustrated with Aryanna, and I still feel isolated in my grief. At least I know that it is only temporary.. What "Brookes Place" refers to as a "grief burst." Thats exactly what I had today. I also know that these are all part of this crazy process. It still feels stupid, and these moments pick me up and slam me into a wall backwards. I know though if I was being rational, that this is how I heal. How, with each burst I stitch another piece of my heart back together. In some ways it feels like I am pulling farther away from Pete. But its realizing that I have to in order to move forward. Not that I am pushing him out, or cutting him out of my life. Or even that I am leaving him behind. I am bringing the beauty of who he was with me. I could never leave him behind. He is a part of me, he makes up a part of who I once was. With his life, his love for me and the kids along with the man that he was, while he was here. I can carefully stitch all of that and my life lessons into my heart, to make up a new, whole, and loving heart.
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