Making room for grief and healing

Last week's post had a reference to worrying about my dog.

At the time of that writing session we had a vet appointment. We ended up going to the emergency vet earlier and finding that her lungs were full of cancer. It was while writing that I decided we couldn't wait, and began to know what would happen.

Preparing for this post had another long journal session. Not everything that I needed to write for myself will matter for everyone, but I hope that what I write here can be practical for some.

Even with my belief in the afterlife, and that these separations are not permanent, they hurt. It's reasonable that they hurt. It's easy to try and skip to the comfort part, but that really only makes things worse. This is all part of being human.

As humans, we sometimes struggle with seeming contradictions, like the opposing needs to mourn and to be comforted. That can lead to the attempt to skip over mourning to get straight to healing, but it might also result is resisting the healing because of guilt. 

We have to accept that uneasy balance.

Actually, I am leading to a point of healing about something parental; we should get there next week. For now, there are three things about Adele from which I want to try and pull some lessons.

The first relates to the disruption in what you are used to.

I can feel very sad hearing about the death of someone that I care for but haven't seen for a while; we all have. With someone who has been playing a larger role in your life, there are more frequent reminders.

I first noticed this with our first greyhound, Jake. He was always at the door when you came in or out, and he did that for eleven years. Going in or out after he was gone left a sharp pain for a while.

Adele was my roommate for eight years. Every time I see her bed, or when it is time for her pill but I don't need to give it to her, or when we don't need to put the stick back in the door because she didn't go out into the back yard, I feel her absence. It has been less than two weeks; this is still pretty fresh. 

It probably makes sense to let the bed go, but that empty space will still be noticed. That just takes time. In other instances, there may be more changes to make. 

One of the great practical things about human healing is that you still need to eat and drink and go to the bathroom. That pulls you along -- maybe even forward -- whether you like it or not. For things that we can avoid, we may need to make changes but keep putting it off.

If you have lost someone who always did the cooking or the vacuuming, what are the new ways of taking care of that? Did you always used to sit with them? Are Tuesday nights suddenly free?

One of the books I have been thinking about is Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner. After her mother's death, her father would call about the loss and his devastation, and then eventually he moved to Thailand. That seemed extreme, but sometimes things need shaking up. Truthfully, some shaking up already happened; now you're trying to regain equilibrium. 

It makes sense to look at not just the relationship, but the patterns that were built around it. Ideally, examining that can be a part of honoring the relationship. It also is accepting the right to heal. You will feel pain, but it shouldn't always hurt that much

One thing making Adele's loss a little harder is a certain sense of finality. This house has not been without a dog since 1978. At times, there have been as many as five dogs, but there was only one cat then. Now we have six cats, which could make introducing a new dog tricky.

Most of those cats and dogs were not exactly premeditated. I suspect at some point there will be at least one more dog who needs us, and we will take that dog in, because that's who we are. We are not in a position to seek out a new dog though, and there is some pain with that.

There are relationships you don't get back, at least not on this side, but there are roles that are still there. You can find other people who will care about you, listen to you, give you good advice, be glad to see you, need your help with things... not as replacements, but as an expansion of your connections. 

That is not easy, but it's beautiful.

It does require being willing to love more, which also means being willing to lose again. That takes courage, and effort, but it's worthwhile.

Speaking of that dog and six cats... I would worry sometimes about the cats getting more attention, because they can get in your laps or sit next to you and purr. Actually, when Jake first came to us, he got more attention than Laddie (collie) and RK (sheltie) because he asked for it more. With that worry I made sure to remember to talk to Adele and pet her and to not neglect her.

That's the thing that helps most with the guilt: we don't ever know how long we will have an animal, but while they are with us we can make their life good, and that's what we do.

That part of healing works better if you think of it before the separation.

Again, this is hard. I keep thinking of needing to reach out to people, and then finding other things I need to do. Then I will text three friends in one night, perhaps an over-correction, but that led to one long phone call with one friend, and getting together with another. Even if we can't spend as much time as we would like, we can keep the interactions that we do have kind.

Finally, just in case anyone is offended at comparisons between humans and dogs and cats, you're right, it is very different. My pets can never mess me up like a family member can, and I cannot choose to have any family members put down (which is probably for the best). 

Nonetheless, some of the emotions are the same.

Honoring your brain

Maybe you noticed I skipped last week.

There were two primary reasons that I did not feel able to write.

One is content. I was planning on spending more time on capitalism, and how it combines with racism as part of dominator culture. Writing about my job woes seemed like a reasonable springboard for that, and it is always relevant, but I think I need to spend some time on more emotional things.

The other is more technical, in that even though I had this idea for the switch, no words were flowing.

One of my job woes is less time for reading, where it wasn't even strictly time so much as the mental capacity and energy I had left after a work day or week. 

I have been doing really well recently at seizing time here and there and making progress in books. I have been taking in a lot of information.

It put me into this state... I am not sure that the right word is overstimulation, but there were too many concepts coming in, and not enough getting out.

That sounds like blogging would be an antidote: get some thoughts out. 

I do get into states where my ideas on a specific topic are very clear, and then writing about it is easy. Lots of thoughts on multiple topics does not flow.

Sometimes I will make lists, perhaps with little drawings, but this time I did a journal session where I was alternating between scheduling which e-books I was going to read and thoughts I'd had during my scripture study and which Marvel series I wanted to watch and my worries about the dog, plus working out the songs of the day.

It went on for four pages. It helped, though I believe I need at least one more session like that. 

On frequent thought lately is that you can't do everything. I don't like giving things up, but I keep having to do it. 

When feeling like I was actually getting better at accomplishing some of my goals there, but that it was possibly taking me away from other things (like being able to blog or even write a coherent journal entry about an emotional issue), that was a real concern.

It looks like I can maintain this pace, but it requires writing out things that I have been able to mentally track in my head or at least on a spreadsheet. There are more now.

I may still have to slow down some of it, at least to incorporate other things. However, it is helpful to understand how your own brain works and what it needs.

I suppose it is a form of self-care. Lowering my expectations could be another form, but does not seem to be the most needed form at this time.

Remember when I was telling mission stories? It took me a long time to figure out how to study Lao effectively for me. It turned out that I needed to write it. I remember someone had given us a box of old church magazines and I really wanted to spend time reading them (perhaps it was book withdrawal). If I had just realized sooner, writing translations of them would have been perfect. It would have given me new vocabulary and writing it out would have reinforced it in my brain.

When I was in school, before that, other than maybe an hour in TAG talking about the differences between visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles, we didn't really talk much about how to learn. Much like sports, it seemed like you were either good at it or you weren't. I was a natural at learning; sports not so much.

Learning was so easy, but I would periodically hit snags that I had to work out on my own. There was very little helpful advice out there.

Some things I have figured out by overanalyzing everything, but following a lot of neurodivergent people on Twitter helps. I don't even know if it is that I get that many tips, but it has done a lot to eliminate worrying about what is weird and normal or right.

Don't sell yourself short; you may just not have found the write method or combination of methods yet.

The Everything Bagel

"You've been feeling it too, haven't you? Something is off. Your clothes never wear as well the next day. Your hair never falls quite the same way. Even your coffee tastes wrong. Our institutions are crumbling. Nobody trusts their neighbor anymore. And you stay up at night wondering to yourself..."  Alpha Waymond, Everything Everywhere All At Once

The posts about me hating my job and exploring the factors that go into that (I hope) illustrated how things go wrong, often with capitalism as the primary culprit.

It is not the only culprit, and we will spend more time on that, but I remembered this part of the movie.

The quote can simply create a mood, but we may be surprised by the break down.

Your clothes never wear as well the next day:

I'll start with my weakest link, but it is still interesting.

One potential issue is use of fabric softener. These products coat your clothing, and may lead to your clothes not being (or smelling) truly clean. This may be a reason for the popularity of scent beads.

https://mygreencloset.com/never-use-fabric-softener/

These are things that are not good for you, your clothes, your appliances, or the planet, but they are still widely advertised.

It is probably more to the point that mass-produced clothes are often produced cheaply, where you will have threads coming out, making seams sloppy, or if they are the threads holding the elastic in place that can really mess with the structure. 

Plus, you may also notice that clothes being the same size, even for the same brand and design, don't always fit the same way. This could be a function of the fabric cutting, where multiple cloth segments are being cut at once, not all with the same amount of fabric, or where the stitching does not work out exactly the same.

https://www.thread.com/us/tips/men/style-sos/style-sos-why-does-same-size-fit-differently/

This is worse with cheaper brands, but only being able to afford cheap clothes probably means there are many areas that aren't going as well for you.

(And if you're fat... )

Your hair never falls quite the same way:

Personally, my hair texture is difficult tough to match. Pantene used to work really well for me. Hairdressers tended to hate Pantene, but I could afford it, and my hair felt good. They changed the formula. I found a good fit with Shea Moisture, but then they changed the formula for that.

The really annoying thing with that is apparently the change was to try and get more white customers. (I am not Black, but my hair has some similarities.) I was ditched again, though my sisters are still using Shea Moisture. (Their hair is more conventional.)

I keep bouncing around with different brands, some working better than others. If I had more disposable income, that would help, but there would be lots of other places to use that first.

Of course, climate changes that result in more hot, humid days can have a big effect on hair. Also the water we are getting may have some problems, but that may be more of a factor for...

Even your coffee tastes wrong:

https://www.discovery.com/science/unsafe-drinking-levels-in-rainwater

In the Willamette Valley, we drink rainwater, but it does come through the water district; one hopes it's fine, but food gets watered by rain. 

I don't drink coffee, but I eat fruits and vegetables and grain products; what is coming out of the sky matters. 

Plus, so much of that (and the food for the animals we eat) is grown in depleted soil.

Lately a lot of meat just doesn't taste that great. I still have my sense of smell, so it's not that. 

I have long been aware of the difference between beef grown on feeding lots versus beef raised by 4-H kids. I mostly understand the reasons for that, but what if everything is getting worse? What if you have depleted soil as the source of the grass or hay or alfalfa or corn, plus rain water full of chemicals, and that is what tired, overworked people find on their plates?

You can argue that the crumbling institutions and the neighbors not trusting each other are bigger issues, but the "small" issues all relate.

With my job getting busier, and medical offices getting busier, people are spending more time on hold. That is less of a problem than the other barriers to care and to healthy lifestyles, but it still sucks.

It's not because of a giant bagel across parallel realities, but many things -- big life issues and small pleasures that could take some edge off of the larger difficulties -- are collapsing inward in a vortex of suck.

Have you been feeling it too?