I was just reading on our Board here how some are having difficulties with their sadness, lonliness, depression, even functioning as they think they should be. To borrow a line, "This ain't Kansas anymore Dorothy"! We are all ill-prepared for the loss of the love of our life. Honestly, I thought I'd be good after 2 weeks, that was the longest I'd ever grieved before. I was a master at "compartmentalizing", tucking my emotions and my thoughts away in a neat little box that I didn't have to open again unless I wanted to do so. Through the years, this allowed me to continue in what I liked to call my "zone", a place of intense concentration that allowed me to focus on my work at hand. My zone served me well through my many years of getting paid to think, always strategizing, planning, building the infrastructure for business operations, being 2 steps ahead, seeing and knowing how to combat the strategies I'd use if I was on the other side of the fence. I had a great mind.

I'd say my first 2 months of grieving were surreal, like existing in a fog, in reality numb to the real pain I was in. That is how our bodies protect us. The shock of our loss is too great for our minds to grasp. And so we shut down instinctively. But we can't see our shut down because we feel so incredibly sad. At some point, we begin to come out of shock and that is when our world's as we knew them begin to disintegrate. No one understands what we are going through, and we can't explain it or even begin to comprehend it ourselves. We can only perceive that we are sinking deeper and deeper, and no matter what we try, we can't shake it. It just keeps sucking us farther and farther into a place we'd give anything to get out of. But we can't. No matter what.

I'm not sure I've ever run across FILO in the alphabet soup mix of abbreviations. First In, Last Out, is a modification of FIFO, First In, First Out, how a business should operate whether it be inventory control or customer management. But like everything else, grief has its own set of rules and never plays fair. For me, my FILO is my mind. It was the first to go south on me, and I struggle to regain enough to focus on just one thing at a time. First my ability to sleep a good nights sleep began with the terminal cancer diagnosis, and that 4 month period was like running on pure adrenelin. I don't know how I kept going, usually 3, at most 4 hours of sleep a night. And that abbreviated sleep pattern continued for at least 6 months into my grief. And my cognitive abilities kept degrading, and I reached a point where my mind literally shut down. I lost all ability to think one day at the office, like my brain just turned off. I'd been struggling and struggling trying to do what I had to do, but deadlines came and went and then I reached my lowest where I just didn't care. And that is when I went into the doctor. I was diagnosed with depression. So the doctor put me on one anti-depressant. It helped for a short time, but my sleep disorder continued. I awoke one afternoon plowing snow at 70 mph in the interstate median about half way home on a short 1 hour drive. I didn't wreck or wreck anyone else. But I went back to the doctor. So he upped my dose of one anti-depressant, and gave me a 2nd to take as a sleep aide at bednight. Well, it worked. That first night I stumbled to bed as if I had drank a 12 pack of beer. I was knocked out. The intoxicating effect wore off in a few days, but I continued to sleep well. It took time, but little by little my mind began to start functioning. My mind was the first to go.

Now I'm into my once every two year super busy time at my work. With the State biennium budget comes grant funding for our food bank and 33 food pantries in five central Washington counties, and we are responsible for getting it all in place. It is a taxing (which reminds me, I forgot to file my tax extension, good thing I'm writing this) time when operating at full capacity night and day barely gets the job done. I was going through everything I am now 2 years ago with my wife dying at home. Thank God I got last year off. But here I am again, and the triggers are everywhere. I open a file to see how I did it the last go-around and it all triggers memories of everything going on approaching my wife's death at the same time 2 years ago. Four days after Juanita died, I held it together to make a presentation to secure 2 years of funding totaling about $250,000. I kept sinking lower and lower, and I honestly don't know how I survived it. But for this site, I'm convinced I would have perished. This was my one and only lifeline, and the true friends I made, sharing a bond of misery, sharing those rare sunrays of hope that appear only to be sucked back down into the deep abyss again and again. Somehow in our grief, we can't help ourselves but we are able to help each other. Similar to going off and fighting a war with your unit, I think. A really bad experience commonly shared that creates an understanding in each other's plight and aftermath that no one else can even begin to comprehend.

So as I get closer and closer to getting busier and busier, I am finding that I am finally able to concentrate. But not like before. I can do one thing, and only one thing, at a time or my mind gets scrambled. But thank God I can do one thing, and then hopefully another and another. But I don't have it in me to do a thing at home, or the multiple things I need to be getting done at work. I can only focus on the one thing that must be done, and it takes me 3 times as long. But I'm doing it. I went to the doctor last week and the depression test they give says I'm still moderately to severely depressed. Wow, I must have been off the charts before because I think I'm doing pretty good. I'm not at all an advocate for popping pills, all I'd take was a tylenol every now and then for many years. But there comes a point when you've got to do what you've got to do, and so I take my medicine because it allows me to function.

You know, I didn't even realize I was depressed. I thought it was all just the grief. All I knew was it just kept getting worse and worse until my mind just shut down. And true to FILO, it is my mind that was the first to go and it is my mind that is the last to be healed. I know my grief is nearly over except for the remnants that will remain with us the rest of our lives. But it is my mind that is barely keeping up with the demands of life. I can only laugh at how bad my short term memory is. I lose and forget things constantly. And I will be looking 4 times in the same place for something I just know has to be there, and it is, but I just don't see it. And our standing joke at the office is how I forget so easily. And when I'm speaking, if I get interupted or off on a tangent, I forget what I was talking about. Multiple times. I can only describe it as something not clicking upstairs yet. But I get glimmers of hope, like when a really good idea pops into my head. But I got to tell someone quickly before I forget it, usually within minutes.

I can say the pain does lessen with time. The broken heart does mend. My lonliness remains but is now just an adjusted lifestyle. But it is my mind that is obviously going to be the last to mend. Perhaps this is as good as I'll ever be now. I hope not, but then I do find myself able to relax and have fun now like never before when I was always wound tighter than a drum for all those many years. So it all ain't so bad. Find myself doing a whole lot of nothing these past 2 years and for the first time in my adult life I'm taking life as it comes. One day at a time. And if you think about it, there is freedom in this new life style. Freedom to find ourselves, freedom to heal, freedom to figure out what the hell is happening to us. And freedom to help others along on this grief train. ~~~ Scottie