Between mourning and burying

My neck is a lot better. The collarbone is worse, or at least seems worse because that is the focus now.

I am not quite better yet, so I am trying to work my way toward that.

Plus, there is another big stress coming. (This one will be financial.)

The surface stress of Mom's health issues were feeling a need to do something and not knowing what to do, but it also pulled up things that were not quite at the surface.

I mean, we don't really ever stop carrying this grief with us. We love our mother, we had a lot of good times together, and she is absent, but still here. We know her, and we recognize so much of her nature, but we are not recognized back. 

Where dementia is especially cruel is that it happens in stages, where we keep adjusting and then constantly getting knocked off of that tentative equilibrium. 

One thing I have been thinking about here is that while I have been more emotionally present since June last year, it may be time to grow beyond that now.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/10/all-better.html

Yes, it was a big thing to break down some of those inner walls. I feel the pain of Mom's loss more now, but at the same time it is just this sad inner cry: "Mom!" 

I don't do anything with it. I don't know what to do with it.

Well, okay, what I have been doing is reading and then writing in my journal and sometimes blogging. Shortly after writing that post in October (about the realization in June), I posted about books I was reading and planning on reading that I thought would come together.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/11/deciding.html

I still think they will, but that list has expanded to include books about Italy and grief and trauma, and it will be a while before I am done.

In fact, while things were going on with Mom, there was brief wondering if this was the beginning of the end, and if so, well, I haven't finished the books yet! (Because then I would be ready, see, because being ready is possible.) 

It is not surprising that someone who spent decades trying not to feel might not completely work out the details of what to do with emotions over a thirteen month period. It is something I am thinking about more.

It is probable that I over-intellectualize things. That was probably one thing that was helpful with the bodywork, in that it was not all taking place inside my head; it couldn't be. No matter how much the pain was rooted emotionally, it had anchored itself physically.

I did find myself thinking a lot about and feeling that there is so much unresolved grief all around me. I personally am not the only person who does not know what to do with their pain.

I am not the only person who has buried without mourning.

One hope I have is that after all the books and the things that I learn, that I will be able to help others.

That distance will not be marked solely in books.