From ifishoulddie.co.uk

Understanding and coping with grief

Grief is the most painful of all human experiences and is a natural reaction to loss. It is the process which allows people to come to terms with the loss and resulting change in their lives.

It can take varying lengths of time depending on the significance of the loss, even lasting for several years.

Disbelief

After a loss such as a bereavement, the initial response is one of numbness and disbelief.

Seeing the body and organising the funeral all help to bring home the reality of the situation.

People may continue to carry out their normal routine and daily activities but feel completely numb and not part of the real world.

Anger and guilt

Once the numbness disappears it may be replaced by anger. Anger is strongly associated with grief and can come in many forms. It is common to question the circumstances of the death and ask questions about how it could have been prevented, or what someone should have done or should not have done.

There may also be a period of agitation with intense yearning for the dead person and a sense of almost ’searching’ for them.

Depression

After the intense emotions outlined above, a feeling of depression usually sets in and the bereaved person may seem withdrawn and silent.

Three to four months after the death can be a particularly hard time, as this is when the reality of the death really sinks in.

It may also be a very lonely time, when the bereaved person feels that no one else understands them and what they are going through and that their grief will never go away.

Depression can last longer after a sudden death.

Paul Theroux writing in yesterday’s Guardian on the suicide of Hunter S Thompson – who joins my Dad, John Peel and A’s Mum on the AWOL list.

“He was unsparing, self-punishing, in the way he lived his life. His friends adored him. Such a brooding presence could not be the life of the party but he was always its soul.

“He quickly realised true objectivity was not possible and that he was at least as important as whatever he was writing about. To this personal intrusion he gave the name gonzo journalism.*

“He lived the life he wanted, as half outlaw, half hero, without any inhibition; broke the law when he felt it impinged upon him, was beholden to no one, shot holes in any fakery he found – either with a .44 Magnum or a breezy vocabulary; and he died the same way, at the moment of his choosing, probably in great pain from a variety of ailments – spinal injury, broken bones and psyhic wounds. “Pain” in the metaphysical sense too.”

* But Mr Theroux – Hunter geeks will know that the term ‘gonzo’ was actually coined by HST’s friend and journalist Bill Cardoso

Nothing to haunt me and no reassurance. Just swollen, hungry, resonant and angry absence.

Snowing again this morning. If that was really a message from Dad it would be Mondrian snow; yellow, red and blue. I will miss him so much.

It doesn’t help to know that other people have been through the same thing. That normalises it, makes it seem routine. Just get over it and get on with life, never mind the gaping hole and the broken heart.

Guilty recollection of phone calls missed and invitations declined, selfish preoccupations, panic of letters and phone calls, morbid administration, frantic greetings with worn faces from my childhood. All over now.

Quiet day, typing late in the evening wrapped in a blanket and listening to Bessie Smith.

All strangely normal, but the silences are too quiet. Something permanently unsettled. Something essential and irreplaceable has vanished instantly. No warning and no explanation. No message and nothing to haunt me. Tectonic plates shifted. Absence, silence, emptiness.

From notes typed by Dad, 13th September 1984, and filed with letters from his Mother

“My Mother and I were very close, more close than a son can grow to remember. We had to share times together when both our hopes and happiness seemed jeopardized.

“I loved my Mother.

“I don’t know how one can cope with, what for ordinary human beings, is the stunning finality of death and its seeming mockery of us as individuals…except by reference to abstract ideas.

“Can’t believe I’ll never see again that look she gave me.”

Black suede wedges £85
Gold strappy heels £25
Chocolate brown satin dress £49
Art Deco limed-oak chest of drawers £35
Rocking chair £30
Skinny jeans £65
Flower press £2.50
Bessie Smith double album £10

Bamboo coffin, red sash. Cards and letters to Dad left with him. Mum left ribbons the colours of dark cherries and yellow ochre – a reminder of when they fell in love and ate cherries together on his yellow bed.

“Thanks for the cherries and the children.”

We sang the Red Flag and played Dead Man’s Blues in the chapel on Dad’s wind-up gramophone.

Took trousers, a shirt, shoes and underwear to the funeral director for Dad’s final outfit.

Snow fell heavily outside. Hands and feet numb with cold. Mind and memory numb with heartache.

Half asleep, not really sleeping. Saw Dad standing on green grass on the other side of a river, smiling, waving. Looked just like he did when he met me at the train station on Sunday.

I don’t normally post pictures of people, but this is my Dad. He called me his Mima-daughter.

There I was in uniform
Looking at the art teacher
I was just a girl then
Never have I loved since then

He was not that much older than I was
He had taken our class to the Metropolitan Museum
He asked us what our favorite work of art was
But never could I tell it was him
Oh, I wish I could tell him –
Oh, I wish I could have told him

I looked at the Rubens and Rembrandts
I liked the John Singer Sargents
He told me he liked Turner
Never have I turned since then
No, never have I turned to any other man

All this having been said
I married an executive company head
All this having been done, a Turner – I own one
Here I am in this uniformish, pant-suit sort of thing
Thinking of the art teacher
I was just a girl then
Never have I loved since then
No, never have I loved any other man

Rufus…

He was the biggest constancy in my life. He was more like me than I am. The only person I could be with that didn’t make me feel weird, eccentric, cold or an outsider.

I can’t imagine not having him in my life. I absolutely adore my Dad. He was the love of my life.

Animals live through birth, death, life unquestionning. Our love, hate, anxiety, aspirations are all the curse of our consciousness, without which we would be free just to survive.

I’m sure someone clever has said this is in a beautiful way in some smart book. But this is just raw for me.

Today’s Guardian obituary of Arthur Miller:

“Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller… were not indulging in a whirlwind romance. They had had an affair in the early 1950s and corresponded regularly since; each seems to have become a kind of beacon to the other in a storm-darkened world…

“Each married an idea of each other that could not be sustained…

“He wrote: ‘It was impossible to guess what she wanted for herself when she herself had no idea beyond the peaceful completion of each day.

“‘When she appeared the future vanished; she seemed without expectations, and this was like freedom.

“‘At the same time, the mystery put its own burden on us, the burden of the unknown.’”

Christopher Rush on travelling after the death of his wife:

“I got lost, had to wade naked through freezing, swollen streams. I was shot at in the mountain fog by hunters who thought we were wild boar.

“I quickly snapped out of my mourning and had to concentrate on the nuts and bolts of living. I was floundering in things other than grief.”

I walked home past the born-again Christian that preaches on the corner outside the model shop.

“Where will you go when you die?” he asked a couple walking by.

“No thanks.”

“Or burn in hell”, he muttered.

Wouldn’t it be
a lovely headline:
life is
beautiful
On the New York Times

Headphones on at work, writing less lovely headlines, miles away or would be. Rufus all day. And love his Cohen cover too.

Nothing more boring than listening to other people’s dreams.

But last night I was having a bath with John Peel, giggling like naughty kids.

I’m having a strop about my blog.

I don’t work on this blog for anyone except me. So if you think it’s a bit abstract, or you don’t really understand it, or you’d rather just read about what I had for breakfast then don’t read it. There’s about eight million blogs out there doing just that. This isn’t one of them.

I take photos and have random thoughts through the day, and that’s what this blog is for. Random stuff. I could write reams about my deepest inner most fantasies, crises, neuroses – but that wouldn’t work because I’d only end up a) upsetting people and b) being sectioned.

I’ve only put tiny images on when they are low quality photos from my camera phone. Photos from my proper camera are also pretty small, but I don’t want anyone nicking them if I use them in any decent size and I don’t really want to have to set up a new page to open so that photos can be viewed full size.

If you’re really that bothered, you can add a comment. Click on the title of an entry, and then click on ‘comment’.

PS
I had fried egg, beans, mushrooms and tomato for breakfast.

PPS
Interestingly enough, when I wrote ‘deepest’ then I mistyped it as ‘deppest’. Again. He’s embedded in my mind, like a gorgeous war reporter cornered by my amorous troops.