Not all of them
Aug. 19th, 2012 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistI don't remember the last time I cried so hard, for no apparent reason. "Delayed mourning for a lot of things," a friend told me, which I knew, but it didn't really seem like an explanation.
It was the day we had to sort out the plane tickets for Christmas, first thing in the morniing. I was very careful -- this is something that often induces panic attacks in me; the terrifying expense and the huge importance of everything going right just pulls the rug out from under me every time I think about it -- but by the time it was all sorted I still felt like I'd been punched in the head. I stayed in bed a long time that morning, and when I got out, I was crying. Tears streamed down my face as I went to the kitchen to try to find something to eat; sobs tore up the silence as I went to blow my nose. Sometimes the crying folded me in half, curled me up like a bug shrinking from the touch of your finger, but mostly I was still able to go around the house and do things in what was left of that morning.
And yes, delayed mourning, yes the comedown of an outwardly-simplistic but inwardly-demanding act of sorting out the plane tickets (I make Andrew do most of it but it's still hard on me), yes yes, but I couldn't get past the feeling that the usually happy (or at least relief-filled; it's been a while since I could say I had a happy Christmas) thoughts of home and family and Christmas were making me cry.
"I miss my family," I told Andrew when I finally confessed the crying. He reminded me that I'd see them soon, that we had the tickets now to prove it.
"Not all of them," I wanted to say. But instead I said "I know." I knew what he meant, and I knew he meant well. But not only is the prospect of a Christmas Eve without my grandpa simply horrific, I was missing my brother that day, more than I have in a long, long time.
At the funeral and stuff for my grandpa, my mom had a really hard time. Of course she was mourning her dad, but she kept saying all this reminded her of Chris, and even though it was almost seven years ago now, it is the last time we had a funeral in our close family -- one of those where you pick out the casket and the pictures for the little video and turn up early before the deluge of well-wishers. At the time it didn't faze me at all -- I remember that stuff hardly or not at all; there's about six months there, including my own wedding, of which I have only the fuzziest and incomplete memories -- buut what else could it be, leaving me think of my brother all the time now? What else is making me cry and stealing my words so no one even knows I'm thinking this?
Who knows?
As everyone, including the excellent Bill of Mourner's Rights says, "grief is a process, not an event."
It's easy to make time for it and to get help from close people when it's fresh and new, but it never really goes away; it just lessens and we stop talking about it.
It was the day we had to sort out the plane tickets for Christmas, first thing in the morniing. I was very careful -- this is something that often induces panic attacks in me; the terrifying expense and the huge importance of everything going right just pulls the rug out from under me every time I think about it -- but by the time it was all sorted I still felt like I'd been punched in the head. I stayed in bed a long time that morning, and when I got out, I was crying. Tears streamed down my face as I went to the kitchen to try to find something to eat; sobs tore up the silence as I went to blow my nose. Sometimes the crying folded me in half, curled me up like a bug shrinking from the touch of your finger, but mostly I was still able to go around the house and do things in what was left of that morning.
And yes, delayed mourning, yes the comedown of an outwardly-simplistic but inwardly-demanding act of sorting out the plane tickets (I make Andrew do most of it but it's still hard on me), yes yes, but I couldn't get past the feeling that the usually happy (or at least relief-filled; it's been a while since I could say I had a happy Christmas) thoughts of home and family and Christmas were making me cry.
"I miss my family," I told Andrew when I finally confessed the crying. He reminded me that I'd see them soon, that we had the tickets now to prove it.
"Not all of them," I wanted to say. But instead I said "I know." I knew what he meant, and I knew he meant well. But not only is the prospect of a Christmas Eve without my grandpa simply horrific, I was missing my brother that day, more than I have in a long, long time.
At the funeral and stuff for my grandpa, my mom had a really hard time. Of course she was mourning her dad, but she kept saying all this reminded her of Chris, and even though it was almost seven years ago now, it is the last time we had a funeral in our close family -- one of those where you pick out the casket and the pictures for the little video and turn up early before the deluge of well-wishers. At the time it didn't faze me at all -- I remember that stuff hardly or not at all; there's about six months there, including my own wedding, of which I have only the fuzziest and incomplete memories -- buut what else could it be, leaving me think of my brother all the time now? What else is making me cry and stealing my words so no one even knows I'm thinking this?
Who knows?
As everyone, including the excellent Bill of Mourner's Rights says, "grief is a process, not an event."
It's easy to make time for it and to get help from close people when it's fresh and new, but it never really goes away; it just lessens and we stop talking about it.