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?

Solitary Moments

The beach. Yesterday.

Sometimes I am all alone and the pain and joy of living in this world overwhelms me.

Odd that.

I mean: I would never share, in anyone's presence, these tears. They are private.

Right now is one of those times.

When I've been over-peopled and have finally found myself alone by choice.

I mourn the death today of a dear long term blog friend no longer with us who shared every step of the dying process with her friends. Her bravery, love and courage in the face of a far too early death and a very tragic life inspires me and continues to do so.

And still.....there's always more to it.

It's that time of the year, isn't it?

Where so much hurts.

And so much inspires.

And there are memories.

And losses.

And yes, tears flow.

Intensity

When I was growing up emotional extremes were a defect of character. As if I could change my intrinsic nature. Even though at times I wanted, badly, to toughen up.

Yes, I feel life too intensely. And my feelings are often worn on my sleeve. Or shut away so tightly (you might see the real me, you know) that it hurts.

Like those quilts in the wake-room. All hand created by my friend Patricia. Thrown over every surface, every chair. Every piece of scattered fabric in her life tied together so beautifully, so creatively. Colours of the land and the ocean and the boats and the wonderful drenching of colour that residents flood their buildings with. All you had to say was "I wish I had one of your quilts" and next thing, she was on your doorstep with one.

Picasso is honoured. Why aren't these handcrafters of such beauty so respected? Women's work of course. There should be many female only art galleries, flooded with the colours of the creations of artists like Patricia. With knitting and embroidery and weavings and crochet and lace. And many, many quilts.

It seemed like my floodgates opened today. I had been locking so many tears inside me, for what seemed like a month or two.

It was Jennifer Johnston who started it. I am reading "The Gingerbread Woman". And it struck chords. And more chords.

Life is about loss, isn't it? Mainly the loss of what went before. What formed us. What ignited us. What sustained us. What we leave behind. She writes of this like no other I've read.

And I had myself a really good cry.