Donna died nine years ago. For nine years I have written, made podcasts, shared my thoughts on grief, Tweeted, and more about loss, love, memories, and most of all grief. I even wrote a memoir “Donna, A Photo Memoir of Love and Loss” What I've learned about grief, specifically my grief, can be put into three categories:
A. We all grieve differently. Our grief is ours alone in all its amazing uniqueness, debilitating pain, and lost tomorrows. Our memories and actions surrounding our grief journey/work are unique, insightful, and brilliant.
B. Attack grief hard. Ugly cry over your grief. Dance alone in the dark with your grief. Study your grief like a Monet. Run your fingers over your grief like a bas relief. Accept it as a life partner. Discover what purpose grief has for you and your memories.
C. The wound of grief allows light to enter. That light entering your grief wound is knowledge and understanding.
I am going to pull some of what I’ve written over the years, offer a small review, and label the posts A, B, or C. Most of what is here is from this site. Though my writing on grief began shortly after Donna’s death in 2011 if not before on my business Web site www.bioc.net.
B. “Grief is My Glow Stick” was the first post on this site June 2018 which is by far not my first post about my grief journey. So long ago and so far far away. Though I had been deeply examining my grief this is one of my first posts.
A. July 10, 2011 was written a year after Donna’s death about the last day we shared a bed. It's the moment that rests behind my eyes forever. At times this moment comes on like lightening strikes in the summer. Suddenly and in blinding repetition. It’s how I grieve.
C. Love and Memories in Absentia is an exploration into my memories but under the larger umbrella of what are memories, how are they created, what's the motivation to create them, and how I interact with them. The light entering my grief would is here.
C. Death, Grief, Memes, and Post Traumatic Growth is a very personal examination of my traumatic brain injury, recovery, PTG, and grief. This is quite the examination of grief in clinical terms that offered up so much light and knowledge. Learned about Post Traumatic Growth. And low and behold growth.
A. Grief is An Artesian Aquifer of Memories is all about grabbing my grief by the throat and chocking out the memories which in reality you don’t need to. They just flow.
B. Dying Season Part I is most def attacking my grief in an emotionally hard post. Less about actively stepping into my grief work more about how anniversaries of death or weddings or birthdays just walk right up to you and dope slap you hard.
B. Dying Season Part II is the continuation of me attacking my grief with very specific and detailed moments. How I put grief into words.
B. Dying Season Part III more attacking my grief journey examining the final days of Donna’s life before she died in hospice on August 7, 2011
B. Dying Season Part IV: Am I Maudlin? This is another attack my grief. I return to Donna’s final days in hospice. sigh Even on the cusp of death she was still Donna who took no shit. LOL You gotta love her.
C. August 7, 2011 5:50 PM: An End A Beginning Talking about the funeral and the light that entered my grief wound from that end. And what began my grief journey/work.
C. Banana Bread On Sunday Came from a moment when I wondered how all the rituals that I continue, even after Donna’s death, remain in place. It became a story of sorts where in the end so much light entered me.
A. Does a Memory Love You? Memories are a corner stone for my grief journey. I have written a lot about them and how they behave in me and around me.
C. Does Your Grief Sofa Need to be Replaced? A hard examination of love from Plato’s Theory of Love. Plato tells us, everything begins where we used to think everything ended. Just a wonderful examination of how that fucking wound is a gateway to knowledge.
If this post garners some attention I’ll do Part II