Miscellany

Something not talked or written about much is the challenge of pulling oneself together after grief. And there's no time line allotted to grief, is there? It takes as long as it takes. Often it's delusional. We think we're adjusting nicely after, oh whatever length of time, and bam, it hits again out of the blue, a memory triggered by something small, something large, an old song, a beloved poem, a photo falling out of a book, a bookmark. And it knocks the breath out of the body. 

Another friend died during the past week and I feel a little suspended in time. Well, a lot. Little projects swept aside, a commissioned article I am unable to start, an editing job sitting in my files. I didn't know her very well but enough to like her when our paths crossed. She was outspoken and opinionated on her politics. And like myself, had no time for small talk. So we clicked. If we lived in the same province we would have made the friendship closer. Cancer is taking a lot of us. Frightening. Even for the so-called "clean" livers, the hikers, the vegetarians, the "honour the bodies".

I drank and smoked like a fiend for years. And yet here I am, cleaned up and sober now, and surveying the wreckage of other lives taken far too soon. The ones who would gently lecture me about my "unsustainable" habits, my "out of controlness."

I don't know why I'm jotting down these random thoughts here and now. But I'm happy, in a weird way, that the writing muse has struck me tonight in these ramblings. And maybe it will ignite the unfinished reams of writing around me.

I go through my bloglist now and it's looking mighty slim. I have an RIP section and it startles me as to the number on it. My old blogmates. Some vanish with no reason, some let us know. One sent out a bunch of postcards to us a week before she died with her photo on the front. 

But I wouldn't have missed the ride in blogland for the world and hope to continue and more frequently.

As I picked up my daughter from the airport I was astonished to see 3 RCMP officers on horseback, casually riding by my car as I waited. You will have to embiggen. 

Loss

Losses are painful and all part of living. At times it's the small things that hit the hardest. I check my emails every morning and the one I looked forward to the most is missing. And will be forever. And fresh tears leak. I know that too, will diminish in time. I tracked down this post I made when another died. It helped then and it helps me now. For all those who miss her and those who have suffered more than their share in the past year. I'm thinking also of my dear brother who died last November and I think of, especially, Andrew and Kylie

On those days when you miss someone the most, as though your memories are sharp enough to slice through skin and bone, remember how they loved you.
Remember how they loved you and do that, for yourself.
In their name, in their honour.
Love yourself, as they loved you.
They would like that.
On those days when you miss someone the most,
love yourself harder.

Author : Donna Ashworth

 

Grief

Many of long time readers will know that I went through grief-counselling some years back when my physical health began to suffer and my doctor of the time referred me to this amazing grief therapist. I had lost 8 close friends in the space of 18 months and the symptoms of my grief were not what you'd imagine as in crying all the time or depression. No, I was wound tighter than a drum with my blood pressure soaring through the roof and my tricky kidneys beginning to fail.

I was with the therapist for a 6 months of weekly sessions and he was incredibly understanding. He passed on much wisdom to me. One was when you suffer a severe heart breaking loss it opens up all the other losses in your life once again. Yes.

Well reader, I am there. All the chickens, so to speak, are home to roost now. My missing daughter's birthday was last week and that compounded everything, all the losses.

I tried to track down Peter, my grief therapist today but failed. I will try again. He was, I think, older than I. My siblings appear to be all cheerful and getting on with things so I find I can't/won't attend the weekly Sibling Zooms. I can't handle cheer. A friend dropped off a poinsettia and a fresh caught salmon yesterday and I could barely thank her but cried like a baby after she left. Kindness does me in.

I light a candle for the last photo taken of my brother every day and talk to him, hoping I'm not going right off the ledge.

I have delayed reaction to loss and I am hoping with Grandgirl staying with me by the end of the week I will climb out of this pit as it is affecting my overall health. I'm constantly nauseous and exhausted and not fit as we say out here.

The fact I am writing all of this down is a good sign, n'est pas?

Any shared stories of grief would be appreciated. 

I feel massively alone.

Processing Bad News

I haven't seen this topic written about at all.

But receiving news that is upsetting or awful or tragic or frightening?

How do we process this?

In different ways?

Grief is weird and awful. When someone close to me has died I take ages to process it. When my father died it involved flying to Ireland with delayed overnight at Heathrow and a complete blank of what happened after Heathrow, the journey to see my dead father, the wake, the funeral, the reception at a hotel with the entire family and friends. 

Then over coffee with a few friends in downtown Cork the following day - four days since I left Canada - was where I finally burst into floods of tears and had to be carted off to the nearest washroom and mopped up and comforted for a very long time.

I was only in my twenties when my mother died from a horrific form of cancer and I hit the bottle savagely (giving "bottling it up" a brand new meaning) and it took me years to walk away from that and get the help and counselling I desperately needed.

I bottled up all the deaths of nine close friends in the space of a year and half about six years ago and it was only when my doctor told me I was falling into massive ill health as my blood pressure was through the roof and my kidneys were failing and then asking me what the hell was going on when I told him, after some difficulty articulating it, about all my dead dear ones. He immediately referred me to a grief therapist and I will be forever grateful for what followed. Six months of therapy. I was up to that point in my life completely unaware of how unrecognized depression and darkness and grief can impact someone physically even mortally.

I received really bad news about a family member in the last few days and I am crying freely and often about it which is a massive improvement from the old me. Bottling it all up and tamping it all down.

How do you process bad news or grief?

Blog Buddies

 I've been fortunate in the friendships I have formed over the many years I've been blogging. A few I have met in the flesh and interestingly the friendships are just as solid and connected when that happens. A few stayed with me in my last home. I held wee dinners for some there and the conversations never ran out.

Many have died too. Which took the heart right out of me.

Marcia was a gifted woman, a teacher, a writer, with a tremendous wit. We had personal correspondence and Facebook chivvying and then 9 years ago she reconnected with a man who used to work with her years before. He had lost his wife. And the rest is history. He became the love of her life and they travelled the world together.

She didn't maintain her blog, unfortunately, life was too full I imagine, and there were his and her grandchildren to entertain and visit all over the country.

On Friday, she died. The Big C took her too. 

She was a vibrant soul, one I will always remember.

Marcia: a kindred spirit indeed. You will be missed.

Time Out

Grief takes many forms. I need to lay it out there and I find myself immobilized, staring at walls for gawd knows how long with nothing going on inside my head. Just blank, like white canvas.

I'll write about the trip later. I took copious notes.

But on a ferry going to Blanc Sablon I got the news that a best friend had died.

He had cancer, it was expected, but that doesn't assuage or lessen grief in any way.. He was one of my stalwarts, he was the brother I never had. We could spend loads of time together without getting bored. I valued his advice and his compassion and care.

Of course we had serious disagreements and massive differences in philosophy - he was a practicing Christian, I am an atheist.

But we listened to each other and didn't judge. He was a perfectionist, liked all his ducks in a row and hated surprises. I am completely the opposite.

Our long, long friendship, enriched my life in countless ways. I was at his online funeral yesterday and bawled my eyes out.

The last card he sent me was about a month before he died:

The real price of aging is the dear ones departing leaving us bereft in so many ways. I wrote this on the passing of another dear friend in 2009 which was read at her funeral and it applies to all inconceivable losses.

Death is only for the living:

The bereft left standing there

Embracing the sharp edges

And chilling silence

Of your vanished vitality.

I took this photo of R on a beach around 10 years ago where we had a picnic and I presented him with a bucket and spade to build a sandcastle. 

Farewell dear R - one of a kind. Forever missed. 

 

Time Out

At times I am so overcome with sorrow and compassion for another that the only relief I feel is in a poem.

We can be unaware of our privilege at times. I am lonely very rarely. Many are lonely all the time. A huge hole inside them with the cold wind blowing through and hope a word they read about but have long abandoned as being applicable to their own lives.

I was quite devastated after this visit from someone who broke down in her despair as her last friend ("in the whole world") was moved to palliative care that day.

Her Grief

She wept on me today
With her broken heart
Leaking from her eyes.

Her grief led a procession
Of other losses, other hurts,
Other days, other cruelties

Pouring like a river
Over the bumps and
Potholes of her life

I do not know her
Well enough to
Hold her tightly

But I listened to
Her lament of loneliness
With my heart and hands

And stuffed my own avalanche
Of sorrow deep down
In my own graveyard.

I am posting this not as a "downer" but as a reminder for all of us to recognize our own privilege in the face of such appalling grief.

Neverness

A word that popped into my head today. A word which expressed exactly how I was feeling. A state of Neverness (tm).

I was triggered by a discussion in a support group I attend. The topic was emotions. How feeling them was so important rather than shoving them all under a rug or ignoring them or biting the lip and bravely soldiering on as they will continue to pop up and wave at us for attention. A very interesting hour indeed.

And after leaving, I was in my car and playing some John O'Conor as I like to do now and again, he is a magnificent pianist. I was playing the Meeting of the Waters - one of my favourite pieces of all time and one I have attempted so many times on the piano myself. I couldn't find his interpretation on YouTube but I did find Phil Coulter's which isn't as emotional to my ear but you'll get the gist of what a lovely piece it is.


And this flood of emotion just completely took me over. Right out of the blue. I had to pull the car over. Whoa Nelly, said I, internally, what the hell?

And it struck me, like that, suddenly and without mercy, I will never see the land of my birth again. The long journey is basically insurmountable with my health challenges. And I will miss re-tracing the scenes of my childhood, my parents' graves, my beloved West Cork. And it's funny that, we never realize when it's happening that it could be the last time we are someplace or with someone we love. The very last time.

And that's what I was feeling in my emigrant heart - an overwhelming grief and a kind of longing. Even though the country had no time for me when I needed it the most over fifty years ago. I had to leave. Or I (and my natal family) would have been disgraced by an early pregnancy. Times have changed I know and that was then and so few people, even in my own family, get how it was. And I have no regrets, I hasten to add, it's not about that. My life in Canada has been rich in far too many ways to count. I would never be the me I love today without Canada having my back.

But I bawled my eyes out for quite a while anyway. And then carried on. In my state of Neverness.

Neverness.

It should be a word.

Blog Jam

A long time blog friend passed a few days ago. It's a wrench and particularly so in Marianne's case as we sang from the same page of the political and feminist song-book. Her posts and her comments were incisive, intelligent, wise and compassionate. She went far too quickly, but comfortably, at home and in the warmth of her family. She joined the ranks of quite a few of my blogmates who have passed. Time from diagnosis to death has been swift and unrelenting in the cases of the many, both in real life and in internet life, who have departed my world in the last few years. And their losses never get easier.

I find I wrap up most of this grief in the void that Ansa has left. I only realized this recently when I was in the car and I saw a dog that looked like her and I was overwhelmed with sobs. Unreasonably I felt. But I learned from grief therapy that this is often the case with us mourners. We will find something that triggers a whopping outpouring but it's yelling into the void of pain and absence of the many. Of all, I think. Opening up every single loss. This is one of the reasons why so many seniors gamble and drink as the stats are simply frightening. Undealt with grief and depression would be a foundation for this I would speculate but it would be enlightening if more studies were funded on this possible correlation.

Daughter and I fielded a table of our wares on the weekend at a fair. We sold a little but boy I felt it when people raced through my prints and knitting and jams without comment or question. Surprisingly, a shot I took of a miniature village a few years back was the hot item as the old man who created and built it tore it all down after a couple of tourists banged on his door. He was over 90 and terrified and thought he'd stop this harassment if he destroyed his magnificent work of art. I know, sad. But I'm still getting calls from people who heard about this picture and want a copy. It is large, 11"X 14" but captures the sense of the beautiful wee village of Oderin. It was where the old man grew up. The residents there were resettled as happened a lot in rural/outport Newfoundland but his heart remained in the idyllic place now long abandoned and forgotten. But not by him as he painstakingly recreated it.

Here it is in video format:

House Memories

It's mainly silence. But I believe a house holds both visual and aural memories forever. So now and again I hear the tinkling of a dog-collar as the tag briefly strikes the collar-hook it's on.

Or a rustling from where the dog bed was.

Or the slurping of water from one of the two bowls on each end of the house that I kept filled.

And then at night, I still say goodnight to her. The last couple of years the stairs were too much of a challenge for her. I still look to see her heartbroken face lifting up to watch me go up the Mount Everest of stairs and turn at the top to look down and catch the remnants of that enormous sigh of hers.

I still don't walk on the area of floor in my bedroom where her bed used to be for years.

Lying in bed at night I sometimes hear a deep groan which is creepy in the extreme. But this is a house memory forcing through the anguish of a previous resident who died of cancer here, far too young, many, many years ago, leaving her teenage children with an elderly father. It could be her enormous grief lingering on. Now mingled with mine.

I now close the three inside doors to the family room when I have the fire lit. To conserve the heat. I couldn't do that before as Ansa needed access everywhere. I look up from reading or knitting and see the faint outline of her sitting, back towards me, staring at one of the doors aa if there was a magic trick to opening it and she was patiently waiting for the technique to reveal itself.

I find my right hand still going to the backseat to have her kiss it even though it was a long time since she was able to ride in my car.

I still have the remains of her dog-food in a kitchen cupboard but gave away her cookies from the jar that was always stocked. Her car gear is in the garage. I find her water flask particularly poignant as after a good long hike I would pour some into her car-bowl and after she was finished drinking she would lick my hand in gratitude. I tear up even thinking about it.

I still can't finish a sandwich without tearing off a corner for her.

And leave the remains of my morning egg for her to enjoy.

Our little routines, so automatic when we lived together, now so deeply heartbreaking.

This house remembers.


And PS - more on my previous post soon. I am still processing but I am OK and the overwhelming support I received has eased my outraged shock remarkably.

Know Thyself

I'm buggering off for a while. I need to regroup. I found myself a small farm way off somewhere in the middle of absolutely nowhere and booked in for a week. A small farm? Well, a change from the constant seascapes which are stunning, but I felt change, even in surroundings, needed to happen.

I thought of lurking here with the car hidden away and curtains drawn but at my age that could be misconstrued quite badly and white coated "helpers" might not be far away. I'm packing my unfinished manuscripts, some reading, some knitting, my journal. I didn't even check to see if there was internet as I don't care.

On the one day off I had in a MONTH (truly) a dear friend barged in and said it was an emergency and could I divest myself of my pyjamas and dress up a bit and go across the bay with him to sign off on some really important documents for the lawyers, it would only take a few hours.

And something snapped in me. I felt I had only one remaining nerve ending in my head and he had crunched it. Nothing to do with him, I still love him dearly but when your calendar has been crawling with crap for 4 weeks straight and there's not even a day you can call your own in your favourite pyjamas the precipice yawns.

And the grief. Too much of it. And the health, still shaky. And families out here on the Edge, they are all so tight and supportive of each other, never seen the like, adds to the sense of tribal isolation at times. And becomes unreasonably magnified

I may not do well on my own, driving over 600k to the farmhouse (and back, I trust) but I'm ready for different surroundings and being alone with my writing. And reintroducing myself to me. Being alone with words. Being alone to write my inner outwards. There hasn't been time to reflect in yonks.

I need that.

So desperately.

Forget-Me-Nots

I get lonely for Helen. I re-read some of the thousands of emails we exchanged over twenty years. News. Challenges. Grief. Stories. Support. Love. Solidarity.

She wrote about a mutual school friend who stayed behind to chat with her after a book club meet. Una was seven months pregnant forty years ago when she was summoned from Dublin to Cork by her family as her mother was terminally ill and wanted to die at home in the pre-hospice era. A few days after Una's arrival she woke up in the middle of the night with terrible pains that she thought might be labour. She lay there in terror.

Terror?

The only phone in the house was downstairs in the hall and no one in the house she was reared in ever disturbed her father, a light sleeper, in the middle of the night. Ever. The punishment for one of her brothers who had the temerity to do so resulted in injuries that kept him out of school for over a week.

Una wept as she told Helen how she cried and moaned into her pillow all night, her body writhing in agony. In the morning she waited for her father to leave for work before she got out of bed. The pains had now stopped and she was relieved but she felt nauseous. Once the doctor arrived to administer morphine to her mother, she mentioned the pains of the night before and he evaluated the situation. He immediately summoned an ambulance.

The baby was born dead a few hours later.

Una said to Helen it was the first time she'd ever talked about all of it.

Helen wrote to me: "I'm only telling you because you understand that kind of terror."

Sadly, I do.

This Much is True

Still life lunch. Alas, no, none of it grown by me.

I've come out of the shadow of darkness. Everybody keeps telling me. I look better, sound better, talk better, respond better. That's good.

A major part of this was letting go. Of so much I can't begin to tell you. Not just the 3 beloveds who died, but also my past, my missing daughter, and on.

Finding a new purpose(s), taking care of my health which is not terrific, being honest, distancing myself from those who harm me. Taking stock. Feeling pleased with the inventory. Finding some new projects, one over dinner last night with a long time client who's visiting St.John's for a conference and is expanding her core business and wants me on board for a while with this. Fortuitous.

July is heavily booked with my PGs, the anthology just about ready to go to print, a 3-day (free!)vacation planned with a dear friend to visit another friend's newly opened gallery about 250km from here, with side-visits to other places of interest.

And I spent some time designing a new afghan for a beloved niece. And was excited to get it on the needles this morning. Quite a few have said I should make a little industry out of this too, maybe I will.

All in all, I do love this quiet place in bright sunshine I find myself in. I think we only appreciate such contentment when we have wrestled for long stretches in the dark with shadows and hurt and pain.

And a huge bonus is knowing, truly and deeply, who one's soul friends are.

And it can be delightful to discover those who really care.

Along with stopping the cartwheels for those who couldn't give a tosser.

I am so grateful.

I truly feel reborn.

Fun

I didn't think I could have fun again, so much loss my dears. So much I didn't write about the half of it, it sounded like so much fiction. Like a fantastical situation, my gawd, you'd say, the woman has to be exaggerating. So I didn't. I just carried it. Sometimes not so bravely. Under covers. Not functioning too well. Performing life, one might say. Knowing life will never be the same again is a huge adjustment. Knowing that those who purportedly love you absolutely do not.

And then this little one walks into my life in a hell of a mess. I've written about her here and here.

And the fun starts to happen. She is dyslexic but has a photographic memory so if she's seen something once, her memory stores it. Very handy in a store where I was looking for a small fan for a bedroom and she whizzed off and came back with one small white convertible one and I said "perfect". And we laughed. And she got her hair streaked foiled today for the first time in her life and she looks amazing. And she bought stuff for her kids and a big rosebush for her mother and a special halogen light bulb for her father ("how do you know which one?" - "my photographic memory!"). And she was so full of joy and gratitude and just plain into life that I realized that for the last week or so, some huge black heavy object has been lifted from my heart. And it's all due to her pushing me out of my own misery and she wouldn't even be aware of that. She connected me with fun again.

I see the world through her eyes and she's funny and talky even though her life story would make you cry for her. She doesn't cry for herself.

I hope she makes it. I truly do. And so far so good at 2 weeks and 2 days.

Safety

I ran into an old friend yesterday. I hadn't seen him in a while and he asked me how I was doing. I said it had been a rough time and he asked me why and I gave him the briefest of versions of the past year in my life and it was the oddest thing. Without a pause or reflective comment or even sympathy, he launched into this long narrative of how he was so much worse off. Ten minutes later I broke away from him. I felt like I'd been slapped.

I had a session with my counsellor an hour later - previously scheduled - and told him what had happened. I recognised that I needed to be even more careful with whom I share anything with for I can feel far worse afterwards. That crying in the wilderness thing.

My counsellor had me focus on the gifts that have sprung from my losses. And there were many. Not least of which is reevaluating my life now in light of these. He also had me talk about Missing Daughter and revisit that with the heart numbing thought that I am "dead" to her and may remain so. It's a fresh way of looking at this and I am grateful for that.

Healing is the underlying scaffolding of all of this. I keep thinking I'm ready to brace myself against the real world and then find I'm not. I'm unable to live superficially, it's a gift given to many but alas, I didn't make that particular cut. Many, many times I wished I was light and fluffy and could fiddle-dee-dee life's trials, both yours and mine. Or stay mum and wait for them to pass or even bury them.

The last few days have been rough, that Black Dog thing. I know there's an end in sight, I wish I knew when. Change is always nerve-wracking and emotional, even the changes wrought by intensive counselling sessions with the healing acceptance of the losses of former confidantes combined with the rejection of those I hold most dear.

No one gets a free pass, particularly as we age. It comes down to the tools we have to just deal.

I am grateful for those.

Life Long Learning

Isn't it great? - I mean the fact that we are never finished learning about this life business.

I had a session yesterday. What should be obvious often isn't. And vice versa. I can't believe what's tumbling out of my head. Stuff I hadn't thought about in years. Linking previously (to me) unrelated events. And sharing. And it's astonishing how he can weave a tapestry out of all this.

Like the man says, terrible losses can open up every single loss in one's life. All over again. Fresh. Or for the first time if they've never been looked at before and dealt with. I'd rather deal. For what happens is: every creative stream inside is finally set free and becomes "magnificent in its flight". We shall see. The pieces of every sorrow are gathered within us ready to fracture again when a new loss is inflicted on this huge ball. I wouldn't have believed it until it happened to me.

Plus insight. Example: living life like a stereotype, a cliché, for most do. Automatons, told how to feel, desire, behave, respond, accumulate, judge, terrified of anyone who marches differently and thinks tangentially. Never for me, thanks.

Maybe we need to be more like metaphors. Ha!

Happy New Year 2016 to all you duckies out there. Keep waddling and quacking.

Breathe. Feel. Learn.

Being Present

Fogo Island at yesternight taken by Paddy Barry, enbiggen to take your breath away

Sometimes I am overwhelmed with people's kindness. Today, and I hope all days, I will notice and be grateful.

In the last few minutes, an acquaintance, a boat captain, dropped off a passel of freshly caught cod.

After lunch at a friend's today, she gifted me with fresh limes, more cod, moose and my dinner for later.

Then my cousin called from Ireland, it was "free calls to Canada" day on her service.

And it looks like my two person play is going to fly with wings now and play here and maybe Ireland in the fall of next year.

I feel like I'm coming out of an awful, stumbling, numbing fog. I haven't shared a lot of it here as, seriously, I thought I was losing my mind along with my health. I can't thank my grief therapist enough. My treatment is ongoing and his assistance in my process is invaluable. It's far from over. It's almost like I have to reinvent myself and focus more, much more, on my existing support network and forcibly interact at a level I'm comfortable with, with those who care for my wellbeing. For a gregarious loner like me that can be a bit of a mountain but I'll put on the climbing boots. I was making streams of excuses about old friends being far better than new friends, why invest time in new friends when they could drop off the face of the earth too, blah-blah. And no joint history doncha know. I'm awfully good at shopping from the excuses wagon.

As the man said, I had lost all trust in myself and now it's filtering through.

Being present. Meditating. Suiting up and showing up. All is beginning to feel well.

Me and Da Couch

It's been a while since I had "outside help" - I'd say close on 30 years now. Well actually "outside help" is a misnomer for surely it is "inside help". Stuff for the spirit, soul and psyche. If you believe in that kind of thing. Which I do. It's either that or pills and I am surrounded by sedative/tranquilizer and anti-depressant takers. I'd rather take the therapy route. I don't judge the others who opt for the chemical solution. Ever. It's a very personal choice, some like to keep the daemons buried. I wanted to stop feeling so discombobulated and raging after sobering up so had no hesitation about unlocking all the childhood misery so many decades ago.

I just looked up my therapist from close on 30 years ago and found his obituary. He was 93 when he died last year. An amazing man, he brought me from darkness into a place of peace with my past.

The thing is when I seek this kind of help I'm always hesitant and almost apologetic. So much serious crap in the world and here I am sullying your doorstep with my trivial concerns.

Was I set to rights rather quickly with my case review yesterday. Dr. Patrick (pseudonym)looked at me intently and said:

"I have rarely seen anyone in my long practice with so much devastation in 8 months. Actually, come to think of it, never."

And I bawled my eyes out when he said "you've lost 3 anam caras", using the Irish language. Anam cara means, literally: friend of my soul.

And over an hour and a half I poured my heart out and he said to me then:

"The privilege in my job is that I really, really get to know dead people and the families supporting or abandoning the bereaved."

And he proceeded to gently cast a light on behaviours that have hurt and baffled me and the ongoing pain and loss of creativity that have me plagued and the overwhelming tides of grief that take me unaware.

He told me to try and find one small moment in every day that brings me a sliver of joy until he sees me again.

I feel the beginning of hope and renewal today, a little match struck in the darkness.

Into the Grief Room

Some trepidation in the parking lot.

Some downtalk as I enter the room, you know the drill: "what the hell are you doing here when so many others are so much worse off?"

Some tears. Gulping them back.

Recognition of others and others of me, my gawd, we're all in the same boat of anguish and pain. We're all new to this process wondering what to do next with our lives which have this meaningless, hollow ring to them.

Understanding. Everyone here gets this. Understands the absolutely crazy insane thinking inside of the skull of the bereaved.

Down to the total lack of comprehension of the process from family members. The sheer cruel isolation of it all.

I was totally at ease in that strange, loving, kleenexed room. For two hours.

My blood sugars were normal when I took a reading a few hours later.

For the first time in months and months.

Mind=Body.

I'm a believer.

Quote:

There's a point in which life stops giving you things and starts to take them away.

Diversion & Distraction

A view of St. John's, capital city of Newfoundland & Labrador, taken a few days ago by moi.

A friend of over 40 years standing came and visited me for 6 days. Which accounts for my lack of attention to your blogs and to my own.

She couldn't have timed it better as it was her first visit here and I pulled out all the touristy stuff within easy reach. The weather was kind to us and the pace was leisurely. Art galleries, fossil sites (oldest fossils in the world), Signal Hill (see view up above)and Cape Spear - the most eastern point in North America, to name a few. And oh yes Thanksgiving dinner chez moi thrown in there too. We had long conversations into the small hours catching up on all the doings that phone-calling and emailing don't quite cover.

Now that she's gone I am taking the day off to regroup. My new grief counsellor phoned me and we had a lovely chat, he right away went into a recent grief process of his own which resulted also in physical health issues and he won me over. So my first F2F session is next Wednesday.

I can't thank everyone out there enough for all the support, both private and on comments, that has been offered so lovingly and with such compassion.

My sometimes difficult and challenging passages through life are rendered easier because of you, my web gang.

You are truly the family of my heart.