i know aye no
https://www.dailystrength.org/group/anxiety/discussion/i-know-aye-no
me and homophones have a very long herstory. proof still unavailable, but i am nearly ready to trust the memory that homophones were a prominent part of speech defect which held me mostly mute until early adolescence. did you say, know or no? aye, i or eye? not or knot? witch or which? there, their or they're? high or hi? to my senses, homophones are even more confusing than pronouns. maybe. lord knows my 10 siblings put great emphasis on the profound diffs between the toy, your toy, my toy, his toy, her toy, our toy and a toy. they toyed with me a great deal on that very point. these days i am the one toying with them on that point.
i am currently navigating another round of dual grieving over both of my sons. it seems i can't think of one son without the other coming to mind. the process of raising youngest son's (ys) three children keeps his absence forefront in my daily thoughts. eldest son's (es) absence is far more dynamic than his brother's coffin, but equally there.
"i know" has been a well used phrase since the onset of es's condition during his adolescence in the mid 90's. maybe long before that, but the pattern crystalized for me during the adolescent declarations that he didn't "give a rat's ass." is that a rat's ass or rat sass? these days even hubby seems to hear rat sass more often than he hears a rodent's gluteous maximus. somehow, "aye, no" fits the rat sass context more solidly than, "i know."
one of the haunting moments from ys's funeral was very shortly after hubs and i arrived at the urban homestead after dropping the children off with their mother's family. es came to sit by me in the second tv lounge chair with body language which spoke of empathy and compassion. i donae remember the full exchange well. my emotions and memories are still intensely mixed when i am reminded of that funeral. methinks the small talk had landed on the farm chicken flocks he hasnae ever seen. i donae believe i had finished the first sentence before he asserted his ? ? ? knowledge? reluctance to hear me speak?
i didnae have the capacity to sort "i know" from "aye, no." i fled the room and isolated myself for an uninterrupted cry.
i leave the mood icon on the rapid cycling median for this particular sorting, but believe i am solidly okay and fully functional for the rest of the activity onboard this little ship of fools. the new day has dawned. the chickens are already mad at me because i am in here typing while they remain trapped in their coops. the house is peacefully quiet while the other crew members sleep in.
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If you can, look into ambiguous loss. This is when the loss is unclear and undefined and often lingers indefinitely. Can be situations with no certainty that this person will come back, or no return to the way they used to be. This can be situations of someone gone from our lives but not deceased -- as in MIA, being kidnapped and never found, estrangements, pet getting outside and gone forever, being ghosted, adoption, etc. There is also the type that works with dementia or brain health disorders, substance abuse. Their body is around us but their minds are going. So the relationship changes, we feel loss but we can't say it is a death, we don't have a finite conclusion, no funeral, society doesn't recognize this as loss or they blame or criticize how we feel. Many people struggle with ambiguous loss. The pandemic brought about a lot of ambiguous loss, people who died from covid but we could not be with them, no funerals, people who lost jobs or we being sent to work at home without our normal contact with people, and the fear that made many pull away from friendships and social times. I've just finished reading a book on this and that is why it is on my mind. I have many ambiguous losses with my adult kids and with family members and even some friends. I felt the pandemic was a time many of my friends pulled away from me, although they were actually just isolating and it wasn't about me. The confidence we felt before, going out, being in crowds, getting a cold and not worrying it was this awful illness, it just feels like a huge loss to many of us including me.
a piece of 70's pop psychology which doesn't seem to have made the internet is, "healing as an orphan" designed for folks such as myself whose family was unable and/or unwilling to be supportive of psychotherapy. my therapists of the mid-70's were all well versed in the theories and guided me through the "therapy funeral" which allowed me to pursue my healing journey without expectations of empathy or support from my birth family.
that was many pop psychology fads ago, and even more psychotherapy sessions ago, but could i be remembering "ambiguous loss" from that era?
at my current phase of grieving, it all feels pretty ambiguous to me. i mostly want to let the mystery be, but. . .
processing. . .
healing hopes for all. no exceptions.
ambiguous loss was coined by Pauline Boss, PhD in the 1970's. It is now considered a theory of grieving. I do not think it is pop psychology, rather an explanation of types of grief or loss where their is no body, there is no cut and dried case of is this person dead or not dead, or when the person is gone from us through dementia, drug use or dumping us as the toxic person in their lives. Because we love, we remember. Because we are human, there is not closure as is pop psychology. You can do some reading up on this or get her latest book from the library and see what you think. For me it resonates and has a lot of truth in it. This type of loss is why we grieve so differently than when the body is dead, we have a funeral, people know our loved one is gone. The newest book about the pandemic and ambiguous loss is The Myth of Closure. Wikipedia has a pretty good covering of this under "ambiguous loss".
Gentle hugs <3
all new theories are pop psychology, but the 70's pop psychology which is still being practiced has had time to become old school. that was half a century ago, after all. i am lousy with names, but "ambiguous grieving" does resonate as one of the therapy themes which guided me through the before, during and after of my "therapy funeral." perhaps the most impressive piece of that therapy sequence is that it transpired on 2 continents and two different states. none of the therapists knew one another, but that might have been the most consistent therapy sequence i have experienced in my 50 years of formal therapy. it is far more typical for PhD's to toss whatever was covered by the last PhD. acronymically endowed experts arenae famous for agreeing with one another.
i have, indeed, been plying the same therapy tools i used in leaving my birth family to ease the all too similar pain of estrangement from the son who is still breathing. my damaged memory willnae ever win me a name/acronym dropping contest, but i'm doing the best i can with what i have to work with. unfortunately, time is one of the things i don't have allot of to work with. caring for 3 young orphans and 2 seniors doesn't leave me much time for keeping up with all the latest reading lists.
thank you, missy.