Grief is …
cold, grief is cold.
strange, wandering into a strange place
where none of the paths go where you want to go.
hungry, grief is hungry, empty, aching.
foreign, dropped into an odd land
where everyone speaks a foreign language
their words roll past you and none make sense.
pain, bits of you hurt for no particular reason.
vague, grief is vague and slithery
and you can’t seem to get much done.
tired, grief is tiring.
Grief … what I am noticing, July 2014
It’s hard to concentrate on other things
It’s easy to do stupid things (e.g. lose things)
It has physical symptoms … the pain in my gut cold and cramped as I drove back to the Hospice
These are unpredictable
It’s one thing to know that anger is a part of grief,
but experiencing it is confusing and deeply confronting
… both my own anger and her anger towards me
When you are angry you don’t like the person very much
If you can find safe ways to name & accept the anger, then it drains away
It can be hard to sleep
Grief exposes old patterns and habits & core aspects of personality … for me this comes out as my need to organize & be in the loop, and my need to find things to achieve
Grief overwhelms the brain, crowded it out, hard to think of anything else
hard to write
when I was able to rest I couldn’t think
dreams are full, crowded with faces, , funerals …
nothing memorable or coherent but I remember waking feeling as though I’d been working hard in my sleep
blankness
time gets muddled, hard to put things in chronological order
wanting to talk to people but not wanting to bother either
recoiling when people are overly emotional, or say how terrible that must be for me, especially people I don’t know
guarded with people, holding myself back
very aware of how other people walk around me or try to connect with me or are too wrapped up in their own lives to bother reaching out to me
hard to deal with noise, recoil from it
busy-busy-ness, caught up in the task mode of what to do next and trying to function, make lists, but brain dragging through silt
cold, grief is cold.
strange, wandering into a strange place
where none of the paths go where you want to go.
hungry, grief is hungry, empty, aching.
foreign, dropped into an odd land
where everyone speaks a foreign language
their words roll past you and none make sense.
pain, bits of you hurt for no particular reason.
vague, grief is vague and slithery
and you can’t seem to get much done.
tired, grief is tiring.
Grief … what I am noticing, July 2014
It’s hard to concentrate on other things
It’s easy to do stupid things (e.g. lose things)
It has physical symptoms … the pain in my gut cold and cramped as I drove back to the Hospice
These are unpredictable
It’s one thing to know that anger is a part of grief,
but experiencing it is confusing and deeply confronting
… both my own anger and her anger towards me
When you are angry you don’t like the person very much
If you can find safe ways to name & accept the anger, then it drains away
It can be hard to sleep
Grief exposes old patterns and habits & core aspects of personality … for me this comes out as my need to organize & be in the loop, and my need to find things to achieve
Grief overwhelms the brain, crowded it out, hard to think of anything else
hard to write
when I was able to rest I couldn’t think
dreams are full, crowded with faces, , funerals …
nothing memorable or coherent but I remember waking feeling as though I’d been working hard in my sleep
blankness
time gets muddled, hard to put things in chronological order
wanting to talk to people but not wanting to bother either
recoiling when people are overly emotional, or say how terrible that must be for me, especially people I don’t know
guarded with people, holding myself back
very aware of how other people walk around me or try to connect with me or are too wrapped up in their own lives to bother reaching out to me
hard to deal with noise, recoil from it
busy-busy-ness, caught up in the task mode of what to do next and trying to function, make lists, but brain dragging through silt