Dear Blog Reader
I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The lovely
Miss Beverly and I have traveled to the great state of Texas to witness the
wedding of our niece to a fine young man. Fine enough that there was no sharp
intake of breath when asked if there was any reason, no beat of silence while
deciding to hold our forever silence.
I know that writing about taking vacation in a cavalier
manner violates all internet blogging protocol. The more literate bad guys might
read that last paragraph and covet things that are not theirs; items of great
worth, vast treasures. The lovely Miss Beverly’s pie plates, or the electric
heater that I warm myself with on cold winter mornings are two items that would
be irreplaceable. By the time the bad guy’s lips stop moving reading the first
paragraph, I will have gotten home and have quite the surprise waiting for them
having had my four day Texas indoctrination. Shoot them all and let God decide
is the state motto.
The title of this blog will seem strange given that I have
spent a lovely celebratory weekend at a niece’s wedding. No it is not a cynical
look at the institution of marriage. Marriage when practiced is fine and glorious
institution. It is not an interminable sentence of drudgery and boredom.
Marriage when practiced will take care of itself. No, the grief that I write of has nothing to
do with the temporary living of my life for the weekend. It just happens to be
the topic that has made it to the top of the list of things that I have to
write about.
It is one of the blessings of writing a blog on a regular
basis over a period of 4 years. There were times early on when writing was a
chore. There were times when I would have to sit down and start typing words
and hopefully like throwing so much spaghetti against my mind wall, something
would stick and 1000 words of semi-cogent ideas would be stitched together into
a blog.
These days there is a list of five to ten ideas kept on my
phone’s action memos. Each one marinating there fighting for their moment in
the sun. Some are there for a week before they write themselves. Some are never
born; worthy only of a paragraph inside of a bigger blog. Others sit there for
months, slowly gathering ideas, wanting to be expressed but the ideas are so
hard or so personal that they resist being formed.
Writing about grief has been a slow grower and this is its
week.
The spring while long and cold was also full of grief.
Friends and family lost jobs, lost loved
ones, lost their health or their family’s health. They have stories of great
grief, of huge sadness. I am not here to write about the specifics of their
grief, the cause or the resolution of that grief. It is not my place. I do not
have permission. It would serve no purpose.
Great grief is a horrible name for this blog. It brings to
mind a Charlie Brown cartoon with Lucy screaming “Good Grief Charlie Brown.”
That may be why she only received five cents for her psychiatry sessions. There
is nothing good about grief. It hurts. It scars. Once visited upon you, you
will never be the same. You will get better but never the same.
Walking with these friends and acquaintances through their
grief has awakened memories of great grief in my own story, a story that I can
tell because I have passed through the grief. I am okay, forever changed but
okay.
Mrs. Gray, my high school English teacher, taught a class
called death and dying. Why is was permitted or needed in high school in the
late 70’s is certainly debatable. While everyone will die, I doubt that it
would be considered core curriculum. But there you have it. Mrs. Gray offered
it and a lot of people took it. The curriculum included reading through Dr. Kubler-Ross’s
book “On Death and Dying.” In it she says that there are five stages of grief:
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Thankfully, Mrs. Gray
drilled it into our heads that there was no order, stages could be addressed in
any order or could be skipped altogether.
It was good that she emphasized that the stages were more of
a suggestion than a rule. If not, I would have been certified as crazy. It
appears that for Sharritts the stages of grief are anger, anger, angression,
depranger, and acceptance.
Twenty-five years ago, in August, the new school year was just
starting at Purdue. It was move in weekend at the residence hall. Excitement
was high with the anticipation of new beginnings. I received a phone call at
4:00 p.m. “Go to your sister’s apartment, get her, and come to Methodist
hospital’s emergency room. Your dad was in a farm accident and he is very hurt.
Hurry.”
It is bad when you get to the emergency room and when you
walk in there are more preachers surrounding your family than there are family
members. The news was bad. Terminal. We spent the rest of the weekend
unplugging the machinery of extension.
During that time, the curtain of grief and its anger was
being drawn. There is a memory of making arrangements, the funeral, 3 days of
rain and a solo walk through every field of the farm slogging in ankle deep mud
on a hot, muggy, August day.
After that, I remember feeling normal but having the lovely
Miss Beverly being concerned about how angry I was. And then I remember nothing
until the one year anniversary of dad’s death when I remembered wondering how
in the world am I going to survive the next two weeks. Argh!!!!
There were dreams for the next five years where dad would
return to the farm after a “walk about” asking why I had not kept milking cows
because it was a dairy farm. Finally, the F___ you. You don’t get to leave and
then make demands on what happens to the farm.
Those have passed. Passed successfully largely through the
practice of marriage for which I am thankful to the lovely Miss Beverly.
He is still missed. There are times when I see his
contemporaries and wonder what wisdom I missed with his loss.
To my suffering friends, I am sorry. It is hard. I cannot
make it better. I can only listen, note your denial, anger, bargaining,
depression or acceptance in whatever, depth or order for whatever duration.
Hang in there.
Roger.
