Great Grief

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.