Grief part 3

MY FATHER’S body

Is ashes now…I had to fax a note to Nakamura’s mortuary. It said this “This note authorizes Nakamura’s mortuary to creamate the body of Walter McAnally.”

I spelled cremate wrong.
That is so far the only part that I have in the transition of his body to spirit.

The last time I held his hand was in August. Brad and I flew to him, he said he was sick so we went to see him. He would not tell us what was wrong, mumbled something about Rehad, needing to get off of the sauce. He could not drink and live at the same time.
Apparently the drink was more important than his life.

I am so glad that I followed my gut and said goodbye. When I drove away from his Lahaina house, I knew that it was goodbye. His closest companion didn’t seem to think
So, his boss seemed to think he would choose to live somehow.
Oh crap, this story is probably going to far.

But you can see friends who requested that I update my blog, that grief has anger in it too.

It sucks to be angry at someone who is gone. I know, I know, it is part of grieving but it still sucks.

I know my body relives the first abandonment at 3 years old when my mother left him, and he fled to Maui. I didn’t see him for 15 years…I don’t remember that 3 year old me and the grief that must have generated.

But I feel it, somewhere it is buried in me, it is resurfacing.

And I think that is Universal, when someone dies, all the unfinished business, all of the memories, good and bad come up. The “proper” thing is to let go and remember only the good, to smile and cry and grieve the loss of the person. The truth is though that you are grieving your own personal losses, every one of them comes up again.

The losses are like a can of shaken soda, the cap comes off and the bubbles explode out.
All of the emotions, the good, the bad and the ugly…

Grief part 1

Beginning something, with words, feeling my way through the text.

I have had reluctant fingers, afraid that they won’t represent well, or afraid on an even more difficult sentiment, that I will get started and won’t be able to stop.

The emotions that I have been carrying around are a great sea trench. I have been floating over them, looking down and wondering to what depth the darkness goes.

I was afraid to take the plunge, to swim in them, in they mystery and depth.

But last Thursday, I had no choice.

A week has gone by since I got the news, via phone message, that sent me plummeting, iron weights on my feet, into that watery cavern.

The message from my uncle was that my father lay in the hospital with tubes in him, making his heart beat, breathing for him. He decided that methodone and alcohol would be the way to end his life, he decided that his body had betrayed him and that it was no longer worth living in.

I know he made that decision awhile ago, but last week he carried it out to a fatal end. Intentional? Unintentional? The answer to that will only be known to him. I can’t go there, the world of questions could make me crazy.

His decision did not surprise me, but the phone message shocked me, grief enveloped me, pulled me under. I was driving when I heard the message. It took all of my strength to turn my car around and be back where people would ground me. I couldn’t go home, Arno and the boys were out camping.

So I went back to the clinic where I was held as sobs wracked my body. I was taken home and fed and helped to figure out what to do.

If any of your read this…thank you. I couldn’t have gone at it alone.

I was stuck for a bit, figuring out how to deal with my father’s death alone. They had made the decision to take him off of life support and I wouldn’t be in Maui in time to say goodbye to his physical body.

So I did the only thing I could think of and that was to go to San Diego, to be with my older son, to connect with my father that way.

Arno joined me two days later, he had been out of cell phone range for two days. Not being with my guys was disorienting.

Grief part 2

Grief is a strange thing. There is not a set of instructions on how to grieve.

There are times when I smile and feel awful for doing so, I am not supposed to feel like smiling am I?
There are times when I can’t form a sentence, when I have delved so far into my inner world that asking a simple thing like “What time is it?” seems to drain all of my energy.

I cry at inappropriate times, standing in line to get on the airplane, at the bookstore counter.

Yet, I cannot cry at appropriate times either.

I feel huge anxiety every time I move into new interactions because people want to say the right thing to me. People want to give me comfort, want to embrace me, and when they do, the wound opens up fresh, the emotion threatens to send me sobbing in the arms of near strangers.

I wonder how people would react, casual acquaintances, when offering condolences, if I did just let myself cry in their arms.

The hardest part is staving off that wave of emotions with every new “I am so sorry for your loss.”

I know, I should just let it out right…I was taught to stuff it. It is not so easy to overcome that teaching.

Sometimes I want to carry around a notepad and just write out what I am feeling, for me that is so much easier.

I stumble over my spoken word, it cannot convey what it is that I feel. Spoken words for me just tumble around like rough rocks in my mouth. I cannot speak the depth of love and gratitude that I have, the depth of grief, I cannot speak tears into my eyes.