Wednesday's Woe - No Hits, No Errors, but a Whole Lot of Hurt… ~Tommy Prince

Wednesday's Woe

No Hits, No Errors, but a Whole Lot of Hurt…

~Tommy Prince

I was making a WalMart run. Usually I don't like to see anyone I know when I run errands, but especially this particular day because I was shopping for diapers… not for our granddaughter, but for myself…! Yeah, that's what comes with recovering from prostate surgery!

So, what happened was… in the store, I briefly encounter this guy, recognizing him as a guy that I knew from high school (Yeah, I'm living in the same city that I grew up in), and his son played sports with one of our sons as they were growing up, only his son pursued a professional career in athletics and was called up to the major leagues this summer to play catcher for a professional baseball team. I saw this acquaintance briefly and then he was gone; I began remembering some things about him.

I finished shopping and was leaving the store. As I was approaching my car, I spotted him coming to his vehicle that was parked fairly close to mine. I went over to talk to him. I told him ~ "I've only watched two baseball games this year, yet your son played in both of them, and he was even featured in ESPN Sports Center because of the outstanding plays he made as a catcher!"

As we were talking along and catching up with each other, his question comes back to me, "So what all's been going on with you?" and I haven't seen him in over ten years….

Chronologically, my dad has just died, and I've had a radical prostatectomy in the last few weeks, but I find what comes out of my mouth was,

"Our 19-year-old daughter was killed five years ago!"

It overrode everything, and I heard myself saying how horrible it has been for us. Fortunately he was very kind and told me how sorry he was, and that (the death of a child) sounded AWFUL, and that he can't imagine how bad that is.

We talked about whether or not we go to class reunions, and I heard myself say,

"I don't go very often because this is what would happen -- I would say my daughter got killed, and there's nothing like that for a conversation stopper."

We continued to talk along and ended up on an upbeat note.

So, I walk away from the conversation, glad that it went okay, but feeling so vulnerable. Telling about Merry Katherine's death in a spontaneous encounter like that, and for it to be his first time in hearing the news, effectually exposed my deep woundedess.

This encounter happened on Thursday, but it affected me all weekend. I was depressed all weekend. It's like at some level, I think I have my grief over her death at a "manageable" or at least tolerable level, yet such an encounter tends to blow it wide open.

I was surprised at how I was so powerfully impacted by all (that conversation) in such a negative way. It's like I let the wound out, and it was not going away. And to think, this was actually a positive encounter with a caring dad that, at some level anyway, could "get it."

An innocent conversation with an old acquaintance opens up the woundedness, and it takes three days to get it back to a manageable level. Just a brief encounter, yet I'm down for the count for at least 3 days… And who are those people who think we can somehow be "over" our deep loss? It couldn't get much better than what happened in this impromptu meet-up, yet my heart was sent back to square one…

Picture, thanks to The Compassionate Friends, USA

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