Still grateful
I know many of us have had a rough time recently. I don't think I ever cried as much as I did last Saturday. Justin dying was so sad on top of all the other sad.
So......... what to be grateful for.
Well, since the grief smoked me out of my hole, and made me throw myself face down on the ground, crawl over to the laptop to write to you all, and later fall on Drew with explicit requests for comfort (tired of waiting for him to notice the look in my eyes) I will give thanks for the solace that people do try to extend to each other. Thank YOU for having offered your arms, your hearts... I'm sorry so many of us were in this terrible place but grateful that we could find each other. (Thank you Barbara for knowing how much the world needed an FMO type place.)
There IS a lot of compassion in my world. Even though nobody feels the depth of the loss like a mom, people do care. Just today I went home at lunch to meet a contractor and he told me he thinks of me every time he steps foot in the church building on Monday nights for his meditation group. He said he can't imagine how crazy it must feel to go on with life. I said you are right, it does make me feel crazy, and thank you for saying this, Matt, because there's nothing worse or crazier than people who say nothing and ask me (with their silence) to act as if nothing happened.
In fact, I'm thinking now (later): thank you Matt for helping me see me how far I have come... that I (oh god I'm sorry) USED to be the kind of person who didn't know what to say to a mother or father in grief, and so I would say nothing. To all of those mothers and fathers, I wish I could apologize. All I can do is say from now on, I won't say nothing. I understand more. I am so sorry for where I was, and grateful that from my own grief at least I can learn to be a better kinder braver person in this 'vale of tears'...
xoxox
========== adding this which a friend just sent me... ============
Going to try to give a picture of what happens from an anthroposophical* perspective. I think I explained another time that in anthroposophical medicine, the human being consists of 4 bodies working together. (*work of Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf Schools' founder)
Physical body => at the mineral level - bone, water, pure matter
Etheric body => life forces - everything that allows you to do what a plant can do that stone cannot - breathe, grow, digest - change in relation to outward substances. Each organ has an etheric equivalent.
Astral body => feeling body - that which an animal experiences that the plant world cannot - desire, pain, hunger, excitement, etc.
Ego => that which allows a human being to say 'I am' - what distinguishes us from the animal world, and includes thinking, and control of will, action beyond instinct. When you are connected deeply to another person, there is another being that arises -the being of the relationship between you. This being connects your etheric substance deeply the more fully you share in each other. Of course, a child springs forth from the etheric substance of the mother and lives wholly within it for the first 6-7 years. When you must deliver your grown child through an intense illness into death, it seems to me that this etheric life force connection is deepened again.
In a marriage or partner relationship there is a kind of whole-ness of that relationship body. And when one if the pair dies, it actually is like ripping out a large part of the life forces of the remaining person. There is a reason that in the Jewish tradition a stone is not set until a full year after death - it offers an opportunity for everyone to come together and remember the deceased, but also begins another kind of healing.
So......... what to be grateful for.
Well, since the grief smoked me out of my hole, and made me throw myself face down on the ground, crawl over to the laptop to write to you all, and later fall on Drew with explicit requests for comfort (tired of waiting for him to notice the look in my eyes) I will give thanks for the solace that people do try to extend to each other. Thank YOU for having offered your arms, your hearts... I'm sorry so many of us were in this terrible place but grateful that we could find each other. (Thank you Barbara for knowing how much the world needed an FMO type place.)
There IS a lot of compassion in my world. Even though nobody feels the depth of the loss like a mom, people do care. Just today I went home at lunch to meet a contractor and he told me he thinks of me every time he steps foot in the church building on Monday nights for his meditation group. He said he can't imagine how crazy it must feel to go on with life. I said you are right, it does make me feel crazy, and thank you for saying this, Matt, because there's nothing worse or crazier than people who say nothing and ask me (with their silence) to act as if nothing happened.
In fact, I'm thinking now (later): thank you Matt for helping me see me how far I have come... that I (oh god I'm sorry) USED to be the kind of person who didn't know what to say to a mother or father in grief, and so I would say nothing. To all of those mothers and fathers, I wish I could apologize. All I can do is say from now on, I won't say nothing. I understand more. I am so sorry for where I was, and grateful that from my own grief at least I can learn to be a better kinder braver person in this 'vale of tears'...
xoxox
========== adding this which a friend just sent me... ============
Going to try to give a picture of what happens from an anthroposophical* perspective. I think I explained another time that in anthroposophical medicine, the human being consists of 4 bodies working together. (*work of Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf Schools' founder)
Physical body => at the mineral level - bone, water, pure matter
Etheric body => life forces - everything that allows you to do what a plant can do that stone cannot - breathe, grow, digest - change in relation to outward substances. Each organ has an etheric equivalent.
Astral body => feeling body - that which an animal experiences that the plant world cannot - desire, pain, hunger, excitement, etc.
Ego => that which allows a human being to say 'I am' - what distinguishes us from the animal world, and includes thinking, and control of will, action beyond instinct. When you are connected deeply to another person, there is another being that arises -the being of the relationship between you. This being connects your etheric substance deeply the more fully you share in each other. Of course, a child springs forth from the etheric substance of the mother and lives wholly within it for the first 6-7 years. When you must deliver your grown child through an intense illness into death, it seems to me that this etheric life force connection is deepened again.
In a marriage or partner relationship there is a kind of whole-ness of that relationship body. And when one if the pair dies, it actually is like ripping out a large part of the life forces of the remaining person. There is a reason that in the Jewish tradition a stone is not set until a full year after death - it offers an opportunity for everyone to come together and remember the deceased, but also begins another kind of healing.
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