Personal Thoughts on Grieving

When my husband was a young man he went to England as a tourist to the church where the Pilgrim Fathers and/or Sir Francis Bacon left to explore the New World and colonize North America (at least I think they were the same church in Plymouth ???). Anyway, one of these groups of people held a church service and the verses that were used were Ecclesiastes 3:1-22 "For every thing has a season" and my DH (being the nerd that he was) went up into the pulpit and started reading from the Bible out loud.
As he was reading, other people began to wander in and sit down. DH realized that these other tourists thought that he may be the Reverend and so, after finishing reading the verses, he began an impromptu sermon. He never remembered exactly what he spoke about (the fright of having to say something or running for it) but he told me about standing at the church doors , shaking hands with people as they left and (being an honest Canadian,) having people leave money in the Poor Box. ( I read these verses of Ecclesiastes for DH's funeral as they were his fave.)

Now I can hear you asking what does this have to do with grieving? Well, this is my version of Ecclesiastes of the grieving. (I have The Byrds singing Pete Seeger's "Turn, Turn, Turn" in my head as I write) I'll admit that my list is not very poetic or in any order but it's how I feel.


Grieving is a very personal experience. For some, it may take some time and for others it may hit in the beginning like a tonne of bricks. 

Grieving is always a tonne of bricks.

There will be times that you cry for no reason or you thought you saw your loved one walking down the street. 

You will feel like crap and times you feel good.

There will be times when you want to cook and time when take-out is easy.

Times when you want to clean and times when you say "screw it all".

A Lot of times you want to say "screw it all".

Sometimes you want your friends around and others you don't.

You want to hide from the World but you can't.

You hate to hear "well, it will take time".

Sometimes you'll want to talk and other times not. 

Times you'll yell at the World and other times it tells you to be silent.

Sometimes you can't reach anyone.

Didn't you love me or I love you enough?

Feeling like shopping or shopping too much.

Wanting to drink or drinking too much.

Not knowing how to feel and confused about how you feel.

Forgetting things when you really can't.

Wanting to get stuff out of the house and wanting to hold on to it.

Hating a favorite movie/song and wanting to watch/hear it again.

Hating feeling confused.

And waiting for things to get back to normal.

An Important Question to My Readers

With the death of my husband, I know that I've not been blogging recently but that doesn't mean that I've not been thinking about what I want to write about. I'd like this site to be somewhere that people can come, share and feel free to talk to either each other or have a place to ask questions and have others share their experiences with being a caregiver from an holistic perspective.

So here is my question: would you like to see a chat room or have a forum available on my blog?

If you want both, that would be fine by me but, you must know, that this will take me awhile to figure out to how to implement either one. Personally, I think that a chat room is the first place to start that way we be able to begin to support each other in a meaningful way from the very beginning. I have been reading the news about chat rooms set up by different Associations, Cancer and Alzheimer's, about the benefits of using chat rooms for caregivers who are dealing with those specific diseases. I must let you know that any chat room or forum that I set up will be of the FREE kind and therefore very limited. The best place I've found (so far) for a free chat room will only allow 10 people be there at a time. I do know that I've not set up my site to do a quiz but please go to the full article and let me know by sending me a comment and putting in the beginning which  form of communication with each other you'ld like and why.

Jerith