In the Aftermath of Grief

I was reading an article in a magazine that I don't normally read and there was one on the death of a loved one and it had the stages of grieving.

One of the points was bargaining. I don't remember seeing that one before but I guess I just don't remember, as really, who are you going to bargain with?

I know that God is the first obvious choice and after that who?

You can't bargain with someone who is dead. Silly.

I think possibly the person I was always trying to bargain with after my brother's suicide was myself and of course, him, though those conversations had to be imaginary.

I sometimes talked out loud to him or wrote him letters but really I knew he no longer had any bargaining chips, so to speak.

So in my bargaining I was always skipping around in the various stages of grieving though I just seemed to sob all the time, the stages didn't really seem to move much from there and I only seemed to have two or maybe three stages going on.

The other stage that kept flying in out of nowhere was anger but that was mostly directed at myself for failing my brother so badly. So of course I would have to cry again, try to bargain with him ( in my mind) and then get mad at myself all over again.

Then of course the denial, that had lots of sub categories like:

I couldn't believe he had killed himself.

He had left us.

He didn't want to stay.

He didn't care about us and he did all of the above.

I couldn't believe he didn't come and ask me for help and on and on the tape would play, click and start again and then I would start my combination of anger/crying and bargaining.

The standard rules of grieving weren't working for me so I made up some strategies of my own to help me cope with the "grieving steps" that weren't helping.

First, chain smoking because you can't cry when you are smoking.

Obsessively reading novel after novel so that you can't cry, think and especially bargain when engrossed in a good novel. You can also chain smoke at the same time.

In the evenings, drinking big unhealthy doses of alcohol to numb the pain and to slow your brain down so it won't think or bargain. 

This isn't a very good strategy to engage in and you are best to avoid it or keep it to once or maybe twice a week. You can cry uncontrollably and all the things you have been trying to avoid in your brain during the day may come out of your mouth in an incoherent rush.

You will possibly phone people and gabble and cry or email them - it is a bit worrying for those closest too you. Save them this added pain and burden. Please believe me on this one!

Eventually my oldest son moved home to "keep a bit of an eye on me", I think he meant both eyes.
He also felt that if he was in the family home, he could better grieve. In a cloud of smoke and tears, I welcomed him home.

So together we smoked and drank companionably, shared novels and daily we emptied the coffee plunger together and sang and listened to all the songs my brother used to play. 

Misery loves company and we became the best of mates,

We helped each other out of the holes and sometimes the quicksand, two are better than one so daily life  became a little, bit easier.

I even had someone to bargain with now!

Of course, evemtually, I had to move past my invented stages of grief too. It took some time and my son went back to his life and left me alone with  my novels, coffees, the ciggies and of course, my brothers two beautiful boxer dogs, Sabre and Bronx.

George's babies and my sole, living piece of my brother's life and the next stage of my grieving.

Every day and sometimes twice, I would take one of the "boys" walking. 

In the mornings I would walk my kids to the bus, wave them goodbye and then carrying on walking down the road. Whilst walking, I would "think" about things, do some more bargaining, sing a little bit and talk to the dog, oh and wave out to lots of people.

I became a regular fixture each morning on Oruru Road. I was walking out my frustrations, my sorrows, anger, doubts and the bargaining. It was as if the sweat was forcing all that darkness from the inner most depths of my being, even into the bone and marrow and perhaps even on a cellular level.

I did this walking for many, many months and it was during this time that I began to really, truly write and to write properly. I felt that the breaking of my heart had somehow released stored up, untapped talents and creative juice that I had never used or even knew existed.

I must also mention that my singing voice came back to me in this time too. My voice had been dormant since my self-conscious teenage years.

So the healing had begun, to steal a quote from that old sage, Van the Man Morrison.

                                      BRONX (foreground) and SABRE,  HORI'S BABIES.

Now, I can write with a light heart about this, the darkest and saddest time of my life.

I can remember back to how every day I would wake up and lie very still, trying to get a sense of the world around but grief was always sitting on the edge of the bed beside me, ready to pounce and engulf me with another day of torment.

During the night my reservoir of tears had filled up so that I had to leap out of bed and rush to the coffee pot, rolling up a few ciggies so I would be armed for the day before I was drowned in sorrow.

But every morning before I fled the non existent safety of my nice, warm bed, I would pray earnestly to God and this was my prayer: "Well God, I still feel like crap, I am still sad, I don't feel any different but I know, I really know that I won't always feel like this and you are helping me, even if I can't feel anything. I know there is a light at the end of the tunnel and even though I can't see it, I will one day and one day, I will be better again and I will be happy because I know YOU always make everything better again."

I would then sit on my back step with Bronx and Sabre who were now, "my dogs" and we would cuddle together while I smoked and gulped coffee, looking up at the morning sky and hoping for something, something maybe even something a little better as my tears began falling at the start of another new day.

to be continued.........