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User
Posted 08 Aug 2017 at 12:53

So sorry to hear this and thinking of you. I want to thank you for sharing your journey on here.

User
Posted 08 Aug 2017 at 15:15
Just wanted to add my condolences Eleanor. I can only imagine how you must be feeling right now. I hope you're pain will start to ease as time goes on. Thinking about you.

Debbie x

User
Posted 08 Aug 2017 at 20:48
Oh Ruth,

You knew I would be here sooner or later and so here I am just another wife with nothing much to offer in practical terms . I can't make the pain any Less, I can't make the out come any different but I have a huge heart and pretty big ears to listen . Oh and of course a ginormous pile of comfort blankets to drape you in .

Thank you so much for the links and I totally get the egg anology I also loved Janet's post which also gave me comfort and I hope it did for you as well .

Grief has no limits on time / emotion / or how any one deals with it we are all different, we can only get through it as best we can . What ever feels right Is right .

Grief is a journey for some the journey is short and we are able to get to the light at the end of the tunnel withought to many grief stops

For others the journey takes longer and we think we are at the right stop and we try to get off but it isn't our stop .

Sometimes we think we can't get of the train but then suddenly the light says hey this is your stop.

Grief is such a strange journey sometimes we don't know we have alighted from the platform until we have arrived .

BFN

Julie X

NEVER LAUGH AT A LIVE DRAGON
User
Posted 08 Aug 2017 at 22:31

Such sad news, my sincere condolences.

Barry
User
Posted 09 Aug 2017 at 09:34

Ruth, I am so very sorry for your loss. Debbie xx

Debbie xxx
User
Posted 10 Aug 2017 at 12:19
I'm deeply sorry for your loss.

Thinking of you xx

User
Posted 10 Aug 2017 at 15:29

R

So sorry to hear of your loss, please accept my sincere condolences.

Thanks Chris

 

User
Posted 10 Aug 2017 at 17:40

So very sorry to hear of your loss. Please accept my sincerest condolences.

Regards

Clare

User
Posted 11 Aug 2017 at 22:02

You have a heart the size of a football stadium Julie, and enough empathy to fill several olympic-sized swimming pools. Plus a ton of wisdom. Thank you for all of those things...

I've been reading a pile of stuff about grief, and have just ordered another load of memoirs of people who have been through it and are still standing. I have this notion that if I can just find the right words, something that accurately expresses how this grief feels, it will somehow be easier to live with it, to let it be. I'm so used to being able to explain things, to communicate how I'm feeling, that my current incoherence feels like choking. Battered with emotion but no words to pin it down / hold it steady while I brace myself for the next onslaught.

Part of me suspects that I'm just p*ssing in the wind however! Seems unlikely that a couple of well-written, well-observed sentences will stop the storm. But here's a starter for 10 from Jamie Anderson...

"Grief, I’ve learned, is really love. It’s all the love you want to give but cannot give. The more you loved someone, the more you grieve. All of that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes and in that part of your chest that gets empty and hollow feeling. The happiness of love turns to sadness when unspent. Grief is just love with no place to go.

It’s taken me seven years to realize that my grief is my way of telling the great vastness that the love I have still resides here with me. It won’t stop. That’s how love goes."

Hugs and strength to you and to all of us.

Ruth/Eleanor

x

User
Posted 11 Aug 2017 at 22:16

Thank you so much Janet - it's a huge help to know that pockets of happiness will eventually start to return to my life.

I'm in that 'what's the point of anything' state of physical and emotional exhaustion right now but I know that I have an amazing pool of people and possibilities in my life that will sooner or later give me back a sense of purpose and meaning. No way of hurrying things up though. It's hard to just sit still and allow the grief to be whatever it needs/wants to be, particularly when it's all so painful. But that's the only option I guess.

Thanks for shining a light.

Love

Ruth / Eleanor

x

User
Posted 11 Aug 2017 at 23:26
Oh Ruth ,

Thankyou for the Football Staduim comment but I think that's my bum your talking about 😳

Most people think I am a dog breeder but actually I am a grief councillor you wouldn't believe how many people phone me to enquire about a puppy only to burst into tears before they have actually spoken to me .

It's something I deal with on a weekly basis , I know some people would say it was only a dog and doesn't compare with a person my answer to that is it is the love they felt and there grief is real .

Of course I wouldn't compare the loss of a loved one to that of a pet but these people are genuinely grieving and you thought my life was just puppy poop !

Time ! Time ! Is the only healer and unfortunately you can't rush time and nor she would we try to. At the moment you are living in grief every moment of every day , sleeping it / eating it / breathing it / dreaming it . It is all consuming but I promise you one day it won't be your first thought when you wake . Ok it will be your second thought but that is progress until one day you will feel the Sun on your skin and enjoy the taste of food again .

There is no magic formula only time can heal you at the moment you feel like you are wading through Treacle with your wellies on stuck to the treacle and unable to move forward every step is such a huge effort. In time the treacle will become like syrup and you will slip and slide for a bit maybe even slip backwards for a while , eventually the syrup will become like sugar water and you could even try your flip flops , the wellies will be long gone but take care because that grief is still there and the floor is still slippery.

Then the Sun will come out and dry the floor completely and you won't even worry about what shoes to wear , you might even go bare foot.

I am here when you need me .

BFN

Julie X

NEVER LAUGH AT A LIVE DRAGON
User
Posted 12 Aug 2017 at 08:30

Blimey Julie - you are in a league of your own. I didn't need to send for all those books: you have more wisdom and love and poetry and understanding and humour in your treacle-covered little toe than the rest of the world put together.

There aren't a lot of up-sides to this whole situation but discovering you is definitely one of them. If there was a 'massive roar of appreciation / Mexican wave / standing ovation' button I'd click on it every hour on the hour. As it is, all I can do is click the 'thanks' button. Doesn't even begin to reflect who you are and what you give but it comes from my heart.

Tons of love

Ruth xxxx

User
Posted 30 Aug 2017 at 15:15
My friend sent this to me at a time when I lost someone close to me. It meant a lot at a time when I felt like I was literally clinging on because it clicked for me and gave me hope. I shall leave the link here, and if you feel like reading its there

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/kindnessblog.com/2013/09/02/my-friend-just-died-i-dont-know-what-to-do/amp/

Edited by member 31 Aug 2017 at 18:26  | Reason: Not specified

User
Posted 30 Aug 2017 at 20:24

Thank you so much Aja, really kind of you to think of me. The link doesn't work though! Can you try it again?

Rx

User
Posted 30 Aug 2017 at 20:36

Does this help? I've only copied and pasted it though

 

 

MY FRIEND JUST DIED. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO.”

the grief cycle

ALRIGHT, HERE GOES. I’M OLD. WHAT THAT MEANS IS THAT I’VE SURVIVED (SO FAR) AND A LOT OF PEOPLE I’VE KNOWN AND LOVED DID NOT.

I’VE LOST FRIENDS, BEST FRIENDS, ACQUAINTANCES, CO-WORKERS, GRANDPARENTS, MOM, RELATIVES, TEACHERS, MENTORS, STUDENTS, NEIGHBORS, AND A HOST OF OTHER FOLKS. I HAVE NO CHILDREN, AND I CAN’T IMAGINE THE PAIN IT MUST BE TO LOSE A CHILD. BUT HERE’S MY TWO CENTS.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes.

My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.

As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function.

You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.

~ by GSnow

Edited by member 30 Aug 2017 at 20:36  | Reason: Not specified

We can't control the winds - but we can adjust our sails
User
Posted 30 Aug 2017 at 20:48

Wonderful! Many thanks. It really does help to know that it won't always be this tough. Will repost on the bereaved partners forum I'm a member of.

Thanks.

Rx

User
Posted 31 Aug 2017 at 09:55

Oops sorry that the link didn't work. Thanks Johsan!

 
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