Right then, let’s continue onward examining these stages and assessing where I’m at. I think I covered SHOCK enough yesterday…
EMOTIONAL RELEASE
My experiences are more akin to waves. Massive, unrelenting crashing waves of pain that completely overwhelm me and leave me without breath. There can be waves washing over with greater and greater force, or sometimes a sneaker wave just unexpectedly attacks and knocks me flat. My spine liquefies and my physical being bends over, collapsing. These moments are always to do with the acute horror of no longer having Dad in my life. Sometimes it is the juxtaposition between remembering how things were and how we expected them to be and the dark reality before me. I become aware of that infinite fracture within me of unfathomable pain. It is limitless.
DEPRESSION
Depression and I are well acquainted, but interestingly I would not describe myself as depressed right now. Grief is different. I would describe this instead as a complete cut off from your life source. A severing of the cord that ties me to the very source of the universe. This leads to the question – if the fires that used to burn within you go out, what propels you forward? Why would you read a book, or listen to music, or tend to a garden? There are those brief moments of doubt that come suddenly, too – the awareness of the enormity of the task and the feeling that one cannot go on.
PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS OF DISTRESS
My personal experience is chest pain, stomach disorders, loss of smell and taste, and an inability to breathe in deeply. A quaver at the end every time I try threatens to explode into hyperventilation.
ANXIETY
Yes. The hyperventilation has been a new tool added to my anxiety arsenal. But in the dulling of the senses and disassociation, there is also a “why worry, the worst has already happened anyways”, almost a laissez faire attitude toward risk. In that sense things that prompted anxiety in the past no longer do so.
HOSTILITY
No, no hostility here. In my case, it’s echoes of HELPLESSNESS. A screaming into the void from the helplessness of how everything went down. Dad’s final six months, and even worse, last month, were terribly unfair and unlucky, and it is deeply saddening that he had a raw deal in his final month. July was like falling into a bottomless pit, and you constantly are fighting, trying to cling to the sides, trying to grab onto anything like a branch or root, and having them snap off in your hands, and continuing to fall. We repeatedly could not, would not, catch one break. There is, without question, the strongest sense that he deserved better. However, there is no hostility. I’ve not any fight left in me to be mad. Only infinite tears.
GUILT
I’ve always lived my life as carpe diem, no regrets, and this is how I always was with Dad over my lifetime. Right until the end I did everything physically and spiritually possible, with the clearest heart and most sincere intentions to the best I could. I even spiritually sent an SOS, begging my grandparents to send him back if they saw him coming toward. I have no regrets. I’d give this one a N/A.
HESITANCY TO RENEW NORMAL ACTIVITIES
More than that, it’s just that bizarre feeling that you’re fundamentally broken inside but you can go on, detached from life, without anyone at work realizing how broken and disconnected you truly are. It’s surreal. I am able to fake it and operate at about 60-70% capacity, but with nothing left after the work day for anything but sitting and staring.
HEALING OF MEMORIES
This comes naturally, and refocus largely happened from finding ways to celebrate Dad’s life. The Celebration of Life ceremony was part of that, but my life will find meaning finding celebrating in other ways, too. I will never be rid of the trauma flashbacks, although in time they may grow less. They join the ones that already visit me from previous traumas.
Of note, Dad also provided some guidance on finding ways to heal and honour him within a box beside his desk in his study…
ACCEPTANCE OF ONE’S NEW ROLE IN LIFE
This one I find cringe. Shed the cloak of grief and take on the robe of peace and renewal? Are you kidding me?
I will say that this, though. My own personal Breaking needs to cycle through the seasons. Ashes and void need to meet each holiday and season we shared. I don’t expect there will be any attempts at rebuilding a semblance of a life of meaning until the first cycle is complete. Everything has changed in the breaking, and what is built, although impossible to conceive of right now, will be entirely new. I am under no illusions – the way I’ve joyfully lived my life for five decades is no more.