grief

Number One Son


In every family there is a child whose designation is that of number one son. Girl or boy. Oldest, middle or youngest. Someone comes to earn this title over years of demonstrating grace under pressure, reliability, common sense and a sense of duty to those tied to him or her by the accident we know as “family”.

I have written a bit before about my father. He has a progressively terminal lung disease that has been stable for the last year but he is nearly eighty-one and his health is failing despite the relatively hopeful prognosis on the lung front from his pulmonary doctor in the spring.

He is a lucky man. He has nearly died at least three times in the last two and a half years. There is really no medical rationale for the fact that he has survived this long. And in my opinion, making the “old” half of old age is an accomplishment for which not all of us will be allowed bragging rights.

I knew it was coming and it still stabbed me a good one. Read Full Article

Resistance is Futile


A writer I met through my blog mentioned in a conversation that her Yoga instructor was always reminding her to not resist (during a pose) but to give in to it.  Anyone who has taken a yoga class or practices it regularly will tell you that the more you resist relaxing into a pose, the harder and more painful that pose will be. I was thinking about this again during my Thursday yoga class. I have been practicing yoga since mid January now and am not a yogina by any means. Every class I am appalled to find yet another errant muscle that has been coasting along with minimal effort for far too long. My hamstrings being a perfect example of style without substance. As I attempted to coerce them into a response other than pain, I put my friend’s yoga instructor’s advice to work – again – and found that I could ease myself just a tad further into position.

“Quit resisting”

My friend uses that line, or something similar, on her children when they are rebelling against things that are good for them in the long run but not so much fun now. Reminds me a little of the Star Trek Next Gen line, “Resistance is futile” because often the things we fight hardest against are not evil Borg attempting to assimilate us, but change that is necessary due to altered circumstances in our lives.  Just the ordinary growth experiences that touch everyone’s lives sooner or later which sounds more innocent than they can sometimes be.

Ironically, during my time on the widow board I was given the very same advice that the yogina gave my friend. “Don’t resist.” Only in this instance it was grief I was being counseled to submit to. Good enough advice in the early months, but many widowed people don’t take it the next logical step which is not resisting your new reality. What they mean when advocating “non-resistance”  is surrender to the ever present undercurrent of sadness. Drowning really. No amount of sorrow however is going to change the fact that forward is the only direction in life. Time runs in one direction and does so with relentless disregard of whether or not a person is coming along willingly or being dragged like Lot’s Wife with both eyes on the past. 

I am going to close with a few passages from the Hip Tranquil Chick:

“while leading a retreat in costa rica last summer, we went to a popular butterfly garden and for the first time i saw a caterpiller emerge from its cocoon into a wet, wobbly butterfly. its next phase was to dry out its wings so it could fly. a truly remarkable sight.

since 1999 when tranquil space began, i have felt like a caterpiller on numerous occasions, struggling to dry my wings and fly. as we embark on this exciting new journey, i return to the image of the wet, wobbly butterfly. change is always scary, sexy, risky, and a constant state despite continual resistance to it.

in buddhism, the concept of impermanence is a gentle reminder that so much of suffering is brought on by resisting change. nothing is our lives is unchanging – our thoughts, emotions, work, relationships. so why the struggle and grasping for continual control? why do we stay in the cocoon?

in college i read that we regret more the things we don’t do than the things we do do. that statement serves as a gentle reminder every time i question emerging from a comfortable cocoon.”

 

 

Sylvia Browne is Coming to Bilk Our Grieving Mothers


For those Edmontonian’s still searching for the perfect Mother’s Day gift, there are still great seats available for the Sylvia Browne show. I first heard that she would be further traumatizing the bereaved from a widow whose son attends the children’s group at Pilgrim’s Hospice with our daughter. She really wanted to go and had registered herself in a contest to win a free ticket. Ms. Browne generally doesn’t sweep the audience à la  John Edwards in search of the perfect cold reading victim. She has people picked out in advance and spends more time spewing her version of the afterlife than purposefully making contact. Although if there were an afterlife in the Christian sense of the word, it probably would recoil from her tentacles, hissing. 

I have seen Ms.Browne on the Montel Williams show. A repellent personality, brusque and quite unsympathetic, I didn’t know whether to be horrified or amused by her dismissive replies to the queries of obliviously distressed loved ones. She told one person that the dead don’t care about what happens to those that they left behind in anything but the most abstract terms. They “forget about us” because they are “in heaven and too happy”. Wow, there’s Christianity and all its virtues at its finest. Tough luck to those left behind ’cause I made it in. See ya. She has thrown some of the more fragile a bone of assurance that the deceased didn’t suffer, but that’s about the extent of the milk of human kindness that runs through her shriveled soul.

She and John Edwards both make me sick with horror for the most part. Playing people’s deepest pain for profit. Believing what I do about our souls and their journeys makes me particularly contemptuous, but hopeful that both of these truly evil people get a good dressing down and a century or more of remedial training before they are set loose down on earth among human beings again.

I understand the need to know that a deceased loved one is safe and happy and to have the chance to exchange unspoken words, but most people could do that as easily for themselves rather than waste their money and expose themselves to charlatans like Browne. I tried to ask the young widow at hospice group if she had tried talking to her husband herself and she assured me that she did all the time, but I think she is still too raw and traumatized to listen and look for his reassurance. I was about as far out as she when I finally was able to see and feel my late husband’s little incursions into our life. Perhaps it will be the same for her. I hope so.