Doing

As I said in my last post, I recently lost someone who meant the world to me.  And I had also mentioned how this isn’t my first rodeo.  But even if you’ve been through the grieving process a hundred times or more, it’s still going to be new.  It’s still going to be a new loss.  It’s going to affect you in different ways, sometimes unpredictable ways, and that can be a really good thing… or a really bad thing. 

There’s always some things that hit you harder than others, but different each time.  This most recent loss has just really thrown me for a loop.  She was part of my normal and my normal has to shift again. 
One thing that’s hitting me really hard is that we had plans. 
Lots of plans. 
We were going to do this.
And as soon as this other thing happened we were going to do this thing.
And then we were going to do this.
And then someday we were going to do that. 

Just as soon as I can get to it. 

A few of those things were things we’d do together.  But mostly they were just personal goals. 
Projects… ventures… ideas..
Things we planned and worked towards, but didn’t get to the doing part as quickly as we’d like. 
Her fibro and recent surgeries had been her very valid reasons for putting things off a bit more.
I have a teen, a toddler, and a husband.  Life gets busy sometimes. 
But now she can’t do any of it.  Not the joint ventures or the personal ones. 
She won’t figure out for sure where she was going to move to, because she didn’t get there. 
She won’t know if that new idea would pan out, because it hadn’t had time to be created. 

It’s easy to talk about doing.  It really is. 
I think a lot of what holds us back is fear of failure.  Honey badger might not give a shit… but it kind of does.  Failure sucks, whether you think of it as each rung on the ladder to success or not, it stings every single time.  It can make you feel defeated and each time can make you hesitate to put yourself out there that next time.  That can apply to a million different things too. 
We hold ourselves back.  We make excuses, and we justify those excuses. 

Yes, I have a husband and kids and a house to take care of; bills to pay, meals to plan and prepare, schedules to keep with appointments and routines. 

But when a friend writes me because they need to vent or they need some advice… I don’t even hesitate to listen.  It doesn’t matter what I was planning on doing for that next chunk of time, I found the time.  I made the time.  They matter to me and so I didn’t hesitate. 
So why do I hesitate to make time for myself?
Why does it feel so selfish? 

I should be doing this.  I should be cleaning that. 
I think being a stay at home mom contributes in that I’m always at home, but I’m also always at work.  There’s no feeling of coming home after work that day.  So my to do list is always in my face and that makes it really difficult to relax.  And with kids it’s very easy to get sidetracked.  And with a family it’s very easy to put yourself on the back burner. 
But what advice do we give other people?  A lot of times when people ask me for advice I just ask them that question.  If they’re a parent, “What if that was your kid, grown up, asking you what to do.  What would you tell them to do?” Because it’s often the thing you know is the right thing to do, or at least what you truly believe to be the right thing to do, even if it’s not what you want to hear or do.
If they don’t have kids, their spouse or their best friend; someone that they want nothing but the best for. 
Then you know what you truly feel you need to do. 
I would tell my friends that you cannot serve from an empty vessel.  That it’s not selfish to take care of yourself, it’s necessary.  You cannot do the things you need to do for those you care for if you have nothing left in you to give. 
You can only run so long on fumes.  Eventually you’re going to break down. 

If we can so easily make the time for those we care for, we need to do that for ourselves too. 
We find the time to peruse social media.  We find the time to play a game or two on our phones and crush some candy, dashing through diners, playing god, and tossing words back and forth with friends.  And I think the issue, at least with me, is in large part because I can do those things because they don’t take up long periods of time.  They’re short bursts when I find a minute for myself. 
Some days I can have hours to get things done while she naps.
But other days she just outright refuses to nap, because… toddlers. 
You can take a toddler to bed, but you cannot make it sleep. 
But then there’s time after she goes to bed.  There’s an hour after the toddler goes to bed where we hang out with the teen for some solo time.  And my husband and I make a point of spending time together each evening, alone.  We don’t have a lot of help nearby, hardly any really, so we don’t get to go out on date nights or anything.  So we feel that time together is important.  But I joke that at least half of it is spent doing parallel play.  He’s writing his music and half the time I’m laughing about memes on the interwebz.  So it’s not that I don’t have the time, it’s that I don’t make it for myself consciously. 

Writing my first blog post was a big deal.  I’ve had that blog up for years without a single post. 
But I’m trying to work on doing instead of talking about doing. 
So I did it. 

And I’d like to keep doing this, at least from time to time.  The goal would be some type of regular basis but for now I’m just content that I did it.  I got the first post up and here goes a second one. 

But I’m going to do the next thing, and the thing after that, too. 

She didn’t get to do those things she planned.  I don’t get to do the things I planned with her, at least not the same way.  And that realization is what is motivating me to start my own doing. 
I’ve planned enough. 

I had done a tarot reading for her just a matter of weeks before she died.  The main theme ended up being about doing instead of planning. 

It was something we had talked about a lot in recent months.  It was something we touched on regularly, but it was really something that dominated our conversations this year.  So I guess if I’m to honor her, it would be to do what she wanted for me. 
She wanted me to write.  I used to write for her and we had been working on getting her site back up to continue that.  I wasn’t going to blog for her again but I had agreed to occasionally guest blog to appease her. 
So write I shall. 
She wanted us to motivate each other to ‘do’ more.  Now it’s just a different way of hearing her cheering for me.  I have no doubt she’ll spend a lot of her visits here to cheer for the people she loved.  She was such a great cheerleader. 
She loved my crafts.  I have dozens on my to do list that I just haven't gotten to yet.  A lot of that is that the toddler likes to play with my craft things so things end up lost before I can use them.
But craft I will.  One thing at a time, starting with the things I have the supplies for already, I will do them.  They will get done.

How do you honor the people you’ve lost?  How do you honor their memories and the impact they made on your life? 

What are the things that you talk about doing that you want to just do? 

Let's make the time.
Let’s do them.  

Another one bites the dust

I remember a lot of funerals.  I’m on a first name basis with a local funeral director just because of how many times I’ve been in his building.  What a difficult job they have, dealing day in and day out with people at their worsts; during the saddest days of people’s lives.  Asking them questions that they may or may not know the answers to, and if you don’t know the answers it makes it even more difficult.

Sometimes I knew the answers.
Sometimes I didn’t.

Sometimes there were funerals with people spilling into the street.
Sometimes there were graveside services.
Sometimes there were military honors and 21 gun salutes.  Taps had never sounded so sad.
Sometimes there were just a handful of close friends and relatives.
Sometimes they were in churches

Sometimes they were memorial services in the funeral homes.

Sometimes there wasn’t a funeral at all.
Sometimes they died of old age. 
Sometimes they died far too young for random reasons.
Drowning
Drug overdoses
Car or atv accidents

Fires

Sepsis

Heart attack

An idiot with a gun

An idiot with a walking stick
I’ve seen a 14 month old in a casket.  A baby I loved.  You never forget that.  Ever. 
Sometimes there was a lot of crying. 
Sometimes there was a lot of laughter.
There’s always one person that says all the wrong things, but well meaning.  So you feel bad when you get so pissed off about it, but you still want to tell them to shove it. 
Tell them to shove it.
Tell them to fuck right off.
And you know what they’ll do?  Get pissed.  But then later on, down the road, they’ll say, “Oh, that’s okay.  I know it was the grief talking.” And then you’re just like, ‘whatever’ and move on. 
But it’s not really the grief talking.  It’s what you want to say.  You’ve never had a better excuse to just say it.  And it’s a very short lived excuse because …
People want you to move on.
They want to see that you’re okay so they don’t worry. 
You’re not okay though. 
You have moments of okay.  You even have moments of better than okay, good, and awesome. 
But you have moments of just… darkness blanketing around you because you remembered that they are gone.  You were telling some story, or listening to some song, or smelled their perfume or aftershave.  It hits you out of nowhere and there goes that rug again, right out from underneath you.
I frequently compare it to getting hit in the chest and having the wind knocked out of you.  Because it can take your breath away and you can feel that pain in your heart.  You learn that heartache isn’t just an emotional thing… you can physically feel it. 
I’ve wondered more than once why it doesn’t kill you.  How can you heart hurt so bad and just keep on beating.  It shouldn’t be possible. 
I had thought I’d felt that pain before so many times.  But when it’s a forever person, it doesn’t get much worse than that. 
We all know that as we grow up we will lose those older than us.  Death is a part of life.  We know this.  We expect to bury our grandparents, and even our parents.  I don’t really consider them forever people because we know from birth that they won’t be.  They will be large and very important parts of our lives, but not our forever people.  Our spouses are our forever people.  Our children are our forever people.  Our best friends are our forever people.  Our siblings can be our forever people but sibling dynamics are odd things so sometimes they aren’t, sometimes they’re just your childhood people. 
I’m not trying to diminish other types of loss, but these losses can be so catastrophic that it alters the course of our entire life. 
And people want you to be okay. 

They put time limits on it.  It’s been weeks, you have to stop crying all the time.  Pick this day and be better by then.  Chin up, feet forward, move on.  Or a thousand variations thereof.  And they mean well, I know they do.  And I let them go because I know that they have no idea what they’re talking about. 
9 times out of 10 it’s someone who has never lost a forever person.  They have no perspective on it. 
And I genuinely hope that they never gain any perspective on it. 
I hope they never have to lose a forever person because every year on the anniversary of the day I learned what that felt like, I still remember it.  “This moment, 5 years ago, was the last moment that I had where I didn’t know what this felt like.  I didn’t even appreciate it because I didn’t know…”
Everything was so different. 
I had had so many losses already.  I had memorial tattoos and people whose deaths really, really affected me in a hundred different ways. 
But nothing like losing a forever person. 

I was the oldest of 7 children.  I still don’t know what to say about it now.  Am I still the oldest of 7 children?  Or was I?  Who knows. 
3 of them have already died. 
1 at 26 years old in his sleep.
1 to suicide at age 30 leaving behind 2 small children.
1 was murdered in her own back yard at 25. 
All younger.  All people that were still supposed to be around when I died. 

But my sister, the one who took her own life, was so integral to my life that it was her death that changed my entire world.  It was the night of her death that I mark as the last moments I didn’t know what this felt like.  We were 16 months apart in age.  Best friends or worst enemies our entire lives.  We could fight like the best of them, but when one of us needed the other it didn’t matter.  We were there.
It was pretty common knowledge in our social circle that you couldn’t say anything shitty about her in front of me, ever, even if it was true, without me getting pissed.  That was a friendship ending mistake on more than one occasion.  I could say whatever I wanted, because she was mine. 
You could not. 

Her loss devastated me.  It completely altered my normal.  I had gotten married just 6 months before she died.  I had moved into my first apartment with my husband 6 mos after she died, had another daughter.  A daughter that will never get to know what a hug from Aunt Rachel feels like. 
I had spent months trying to save her.  Years, or maybe a lifetime, but months of actively trying to help her not kill herself. 

I try to catch my breath, but my forever people just keep on dying. 

Rachel was a forever person.
Maria was a forever person.
Jen was a forever person.  She died in a fire at 21.  She would have loved my kids and she’d have been at every birthday party.  I frequently wonder what her own kids would have been like, had she had the chance to have them.  What kind of mom she’d have made, because it would have been an amazing one.

Gigi was a forever person.  And her death is just destroying me.  Just over 2 weeks ago, unexpectedly.  I know that I left my kids with my husband and drove to Detroit.  I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know it was goodbye until I got there.  I know I gave her her last rites.  I know I said everything I could possibly think of and read her messages from everyone else.  And I know I wasn’t ready.  I’m not even close to ready to lose her, and that choice was taken from me.   I feel like I’ve been thrown back 5 years and I’m exactly where I was then, except this time I don’t have Gigi here to help me through it. 
That familiar hole in my chest. 
The screaming every time I’m alone in my car.  That’s the one place I feel you can get it out.  You scream at the top of your lungs in your car driving down a highway and nobody can hear you so you can really let it out.  Because with grief often comes anger.  And with a traumatic loss, rage.  I screamed at least half the way home from Detroit.  6 hours in the car.  But you can’t scream for that entire time.  Your voice gives you and you run out of breath.  That’s why I get it out.  The first scream might feel silly but then it just pours out.  Until it’s out, you have no more breath left to scream, no more voice.  And then there’s tears, so many tears, until you run out.  I didn’t know until losing my first forever person that you could run out of tears or breath or …. hope.
With Rachel I remember screaming, “WAKE UP” over and over and over.  I knew she couldn’t.  I knew she was dead.  But that’s what my mind wanted to scream and so I let it.  Everything else felt so difficult right then so I didn’t want to make it harder on myself.  If that’s what my mouth wanted to scream, I let it scream.  I was alone in my car, so what does it matter?  With Gigi I still screamed, it was just more like why you?  Why you of all the people?  I needed more time.  I can’t do this again.  I can’t lose another forever person without you.  I don’t know how to do this. 

I don’t want to do this…
But of course we don’t want to. 
We have to.

People check on you, for a while. 
It’s not the funeral that’s the hardest. 
It’s the day after. 
Everyone else goes back to their normal, but your normal is gone. 

I think that some people can really use extra bereavement leave.  But I also think other people do better without it.  Sometimes work is a great distraction for a while. 

I tend to hop from one thing to another; thoughts, projects, etc.  The only thing I’ve learned to do over the years is keep my hands busy so my mind can try to process things.  Sometimes it really feels impossible to wrap your head around it. 

Until that rug get pulled out from underneath you again. 

Sometimes music is cathartic, other times it can just completely gut you. 
Same with writing.

And here I am.. going through it.
Again. 

It feels surreal.  I feel like, I don’t know. 

I know this routine.  It’s so familiar now. 
Like old hat, but not old hat.  I know the routine, yet the losses are different and you’re never ready. 
Either no energy, or a shit ton of it. 
Either you’re starving, or no appetite.
Either you sleep a lot, or not at all. 

Don’t wipe every tear or you’ll rub your eyes raw. 
Stay hydrated to balance out the crying.

But cry. 
Get it out, because holy fuck.  They’re some really big emotions. 
Be patient with yourself.  Fuck everybody else telling you that you need to get over it.  They didn’t lose the person you lost even if you lost the same person.  Each person is someone different to everyone else.  You can lose the same person, without losing the same thing. 
And geez, the amount of people that try to make it a contest. 

I loved them more than you.
They loved me more than you.
I was closer to them than you were.
I knew them longer. 
I spent more time with them. 

The list goes on and on.  I wish it didn’t, but it does. 
There’s ALWAYS that one person. 
I tell that person to fuck right off. 
It’s not a contest. 
You lost someone, you ALL lost that person.  Be kind to each other and try to make it easier for each other.  Think about what the person who died would have wanted you to do?  Would they have wanted you to try to belittle someone they loved?  To make them feel like they were an afterthought compared to you? 
I don’t know about you, but I sure wouldn’t want my loved ones doing that to each other. 

I also think it’s super important to always remember that everyone grieves differently.  It’s a really mindfucking process.  Something that makes you feel better isn’t going to make someone else feel better, it might even make them feel worse. 

I’m only 36 years old. 
I thought I’d make it to at least 70 before I lost this many people. 

Let’s see, the things I tell myself. 
I tell myself to be patient with myself, while not being patient with myself.
I tell myself to live the type of life I know they wanted me to.  To do the things we talked about doing.  To honor them in little ways throughout my life. 
I still talk about people all the time, I don’t shy away from conversation about them.  I love talking about them.  It keeps them alive. 
Some days it’s easier than others to honor them. 

But I guess that’s all we can do, isn’t it? 

There’s 5 stages of grief, or so I hear.  Each one can last different lengths of time and in different orders and such, but I do tend to go through them all. 
Denial
Bargaining
Anger
Depression
Acceptance

I’ll tell you one thing though, especially with the ones gone far too soon…  acceptance is the one I struggle with the most.  The only part I’ve managed to accept thus far is that I can’t do anything about it.  They’re gone and I can’t bring them back. 
I can still talk to them, sometimes I can still hear them. 
But I can’t bring them back. 

And it kills me. 

They take a part of you when they go.  And sometimes I wonder if there will be any of me left. 
But there is. 
I find it at some point, every time. 
Of all the things for me to be a pro at, did it have to be grieving? 

Sometimes it is day to day.  Sometimes it’s one breath to the next. 
One foot in front of the other is how you do it. 
My kids get me to do it.  My husband. 
I do it for them even when I don’t want to do it for me. 
I had seen a quote years ago that I had printed out and keep nearby. 
“Find what you would die for, and live for it.”

And so I do.  I live for what I’d die for. 
I do those things to honor their memories.  It’s so easy to lose that though… but you get it back at some point, when you’re ready.  Eventually it doesn’t make you too sad to do because at some point it starts to make you feel closer to them.  So you do it. 

You honor them by continuing to be the person they loved. 
You keep them alive by continuing to talk about them.  To keep their stories alive. 
It always hurts me when I mention my people and people look at me with pity. 
I was telling a fun story.  Don’t make it sad.  Let me still enjoy my stories with them.  Let me still laugh about them, because the person I lost is who I laughed at them the hardest with.  Let me be sad when I’m sad, but let me be happy when I’m happy. 
And don’t ever pity me for losing them.  Because to lose them means I got to have them. 
I have been so lucky to have loved so many, so much.  To have had them love me and be such an integral part of my life that their loss hurts so much… that’s an honor.  That’s a privilege and that is not something to pity. 

Death is a part of life and grief is one of the hardest.
And I don’t even know why I’m going to post this except that maybe someone who has lost a forever person will read it and they will be able to relate to some or all of it… and they will realize they’re not alone.  That it’s okay because someone else gets it. 

And if not, that’s okay too. 

Because I would rather you not get it.