This thread really resonates with me. Thanks for sharing the quote, @ECBG. (❤️) I remember reading it quite a while back when @YorkieonmyPillow (❤️) posted it on a grief thread. I've had what feels like a lion's share of losses, starting when I was 11 years old. I think it's hard for kids to work these things out, and I'm not sure I ever did. Too many to list... I know I'm not alone in experiencing so many jarring farewells.
There's no clear, established outline for the "appropriate way" we're supposed to handle it. There will be similarities, there will be variations. In my case, I can fall into dangerous life-threatening depression, and I have done so many times. I have my faith and I've had (and have) excellent therapists... life-savers... literally. Even so, those waves will come, hit me with a force indescribable. Each loved one possesses a part of my heart, and when we say farewell it feels like another part of my heart has vanished for good.
A friend sent this a few years ago:
"... when I was reading Bringing Up the Bodies, the second volume of Hillary Mantel's stunningly good trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, I ran across this passage which speaks to the pain of grief more eloquently than I can:
”You think you might die of grief – but the pulse, obdurate, keeps its rhythm. You think you cannot keep breathing, but your rib cage has other ideas, rising and falling, emitting sighs.
“You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, your higher power takes out your heart of flesh and gives you one of stone.”
I am grateful for this necessary grace that carries me through the heaviest stages of grief and which returns with additional balm for the unexpected recurrences..." ("Surviving Grief," Ronni Bennett)
We manage to survive as we traverse the stages of grief, and there's nothing definitive to dictate the number or duration or "correctness" of the stages. Those "unexpected recurrences" can arrive with power that can take your breath away. It's all a part of the fabric of our soul, and as much as it's shared it's also personal. Deeply, individually personal. If someone tries to tell us our feelings are wrong, or that we don't handle grief well or "correctly," unless they are an experienced, qualified, trained grief counselor who knows us personally and deeply... they are the ones who are wrong. My heart goes out to each of you. We are anonymous yet known, strangers yet friends, and different yet alike in so many ways.❤️
Few things reveal your intellect and your generosity of spirit—the parallel powers of your heart and mind—better than how you give feedback.~Maria Popova
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