Wednesday's Woe - The Temporariness of Grief's Reprieve… ~Tommy and Angie Prince

Wednesday's Woe

The Temporariness of Grief's Reprieve…

~Tommy and Angie Prince

It has been 6 3/4 years… What is any different in our grief over the loss of our beloved nineteen-year-old daughter?

~Wings of Hope-Living Forward

Not much really. Yes, we can function a little better. And yet, we are forever different.

And we do have breaks away from the heaviness of our grief, but there will never be any such thing as any end to our grief!


We can catch temporary breaks away from our grief, like Angie and I do when we keep our grand-daughter Ellie. But… the next day, you can count on it; the grief will come back with a vengeance. Our tears will start flowing before we even realize the particulars of what our grief is about… 

~Wings of Hope-Living Forward

Early on in our grief, when we found we had at least enough attention-span to watch a movie, we would experience a momentary break away from grief once the movie started, but as soon as the music came on signaling the end of the movie, we both would start weeping. We could not face going back into a reality where our child was not…

~Wings of Hope-Living Forward

The difference between now and then? 

~Out of the Ashes 

The reprieves can be a little longer now…

~grieving mothers ~Sharon Lee Hoover and ~Jill Compton

but still they are just temporary reprieves from our life-long grief ...










Graphic of swing, thanks to ~Angels at My Door

Thursday's Therapy - "The first days of grief are not the worst" ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Thursday's Therapy

The first days of grief are not the worst

~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Anne Morrow Lindbergh: The first days of grief are not the worst

Contrary to the general assumption, the first days of grief are not the worst. The immediate reaction is usually shock and numbing disbelief. One has undergone an amputation. After shock comes acute early grief which is a kind of "condensed presence" -- almost a form of possession. One still feels the lost limb down to the nerve endings. It is as if the intensity of grief fused the distance between you and the dead.

Or perhaps, in reality, part of one dies. Like Orpheus, one tries to follow the dead on the beginning of their journey. But one cannot, like Orpheus, go all the way, and after a long journey one comes back. If one is lucky, one is reborn. Some people die and are reborn many times in their lives. For others the ground is too barren and the time too short for rebirth. Part of the process is the growth of a new relationship with the dead, that "véritable ami mort*" Saint-Exupéry speaks of. Like all gestation, it is a slow dark wordless process. While it is taking place one is painfully vulnerable. One must guard and protect the new life growing within-- like a child.

One must grieve, and one must go through periods of numbness that are harder to bear than grief. One must refuse the easy escapes offered by habit and human tradition. The first and most common offerings of family and friends are always distractions ("Take her out"--"Get her away" --"Change the scene"--"Bring in people to cheer her up"--"Don't let her sit and mourn" [when it is mourning one needs]). On the other hand, there is the temptation to self-pity or

glorification of grief. "I will instruct my sorrows to be proud," Constance cries in a magnificent speech in Shakespeare's King John. Despite her words, there is not aristocracy of grief. Grief is a great leveler. There is no highroad out.

Courage is a first step, but simply to bear the blow bravely is not enough. Stoicism is courageous, but it is only a halfway house on the long road. It is a shield, permissible for a short time only. In the end, one has to discard shields and remain open and vulnerable. Otherwise, scar tissue will seal off the wound and no growth will follow. To grow, to be reborn, one must remain vulnerable-- open to love but also hideously open to the possibility of more suffering.

Contorted 3 Oil Painting graciously permitted by Crawfurd Adamson http://crawfurdadamson.com/

--Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001 ), Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead (1932). She and her husband, the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, suffered the kidnapping and murder of their first child, not yet two, under the glare of worldwide publicity in 1932.

*true friend who is dead

http://www.consolatio.com/2005/05/the_first_days_.html