Grief - Blog Posts

So I think, I realized what has been triggering my anxiety. On top work, trying to move, April 7, is when my step dad passed away. He treated me like I was one of his girls, raised me, taught me how to drive, fix irrigation systems, drive tractors, showed me how to work hard and be a good person, but most importantly...he showed me love.

It's been three years, but it doesn't hurt any less. I miss him very much!

one moment my hand is holding yours and then suddenly it's reaching out for something that's no longer there

365 Days Without You

I always thought grief would be black and white, monotonous for the most part. Then I thought it would be grey, like the clouds, right before it rained, holding onto as much as you can till you fall apart. But the past year has taught me that grief has colors, colors no one stops to notice or understand, colors I never thought I’d see again...

Sometimes grief would be blue, like the sky that goes on without an end, it was quiet and calm, maybe a little long yet soothing despite the sorrow deep within. Grief was green, like the trees, grass, and weeds that grew on the side of your grave, grief was growth and life despite the life lost. Grief was red, like the million flowers we arranged atop your grave in hopes you could smell them the way we could, red like the anger that kept seething despite all the rational thoughts and beliefs, a little faulty and unpredictable. Then, grief was yellow, it was funny with a little drop of sunshine where you could only think to find darkness, it was proof you could smile despite adversities. Grief is anything but the gloomy, grey picture we often paint in our heads.

I still vividly remember the day I received the call at work. I had only imagined what pain and sorrow would feel like until that moment, and despite knowing the worst has happened, all I felt was complete numbness. I could have sworn I held my breath on the ride home, wishing the car to speed past traffic lights, but also praying not to reach, not to ever find out what was awaiting me at the end of the journey. I was not prepared for this goodbye despite knowing and feeling its lingering presence for months. I was not ready to let you go… 

I had so much to say and yet silence engulfed me whole for months. I could never quite put my thoughts into words the way I wanted to, I could not speak to a wall thinking your presence filled the room or think of you as an angel living in the heavens above, looking down on me. I could not simply pretend you still were here, yet I could not completely fathom your absence long enough to understand that you were gone forever.

Maybe I was a little mad, but more than anger, it was sadness in a way I had never felt before. It was in knowing nothing would ever come close to having spent decades with you ever again. It was in knowing I could never again hold your hand as we walked through the park, never again drink the coffees that you make or share your favorite strawberry ice creams with you, it was in knowing I could never again hear your voice calling me out as I walked past your room, never again having your presence in celebrations and festivities that you dearly looked forward to. It was in knowing you’d never again sing along to the songs that played on the radio, never again waking up in the wee hours to catch World Cup matches, listening to your commentary and supporting Brazil because that was your favorite team. It was in knowing you’d never be the one who takes up the spot right next to me in family portraits and birthday photographs, it was in knowing I have kissed you goodbye for the last time and put you six feet deep where I could not quite reach you the way I wanted to. My sorrow was tied to never having you again, and knowing that there is still much I needed you for in life. It is tied to the absence and void that I now have to live and make peace with because there isn’t much else to do…

I expected myself to feel lost, to go through tons of emotions, behave irrationally, throw tantrums, and spend most of my days and nights in complete solitude. Life was a far cry from what I’d imagined, I spent most of my days after your loss swamped with work and I was surprisingly good at it. And when I couldn’t breathe, I found myself locked in a toilet or curled up on the bed, holding myself together on the brink of losing it, praying to keep it together for just a bit longer. This was a huge loss for the entire family, and with the emotional rollercoaster we all rode those months, I found it necessary to keep all my pain and sorrow hidden. I made the most jokes, recalled your time with us animatedly and did what I could to make sure everyone was okay. Most days, I kept myself mentally and physically busy to the point when I hit the bed, there was no room for thinking, let alone overthinking. All I did for a good six months or so, was work, exhaust myself and sleep.

Life took a complete turn overnight and I was nowhere near prepared for a death I knew was coming and would completely shatter me.

Tell me, how does one prepare for the complete absence of a loved one for the rest of whatever forever we have left…

I am grateful for photographs and videos of you; they bring you back whole to me for a split second every time I catch a glimpse of them. Sometimes, with my eyes closed, I could swear I feel you right here with me. In the moments I spend most alone, most broken and find myself hurting and longing for your comforting hug and presence, I feel myself break in a way I could never explain. But in those very moments, I think you’re somewhere nearby, holding my hands, silently sitting with me, the way you always did. I know you are right here. 

You’re in every flower that blooms in my garden, in every innocent smile and laughter of every child I meet on the streets, in the black coffees I drink every morning now, and in your favorite songs that play constantly on my playlist. You’re everywhere I turn, and it is not painful anymore. It’s comforting to know the things you’ve left behind in the form of objects, routines, and habits help hold me together in knowing you’re just as much here as you were before when I feel a little abandoned in life.

It still feels like you’re asleep in an unknown, unfindable room in this house, I still wait to see if you’d come walking down the hall whenever we gather for family time like you always do, I still think you’re here whenever I turn another corner or sit on your couch waiting for you to magically appear again as though nothing went amiss, like the past year didn't happen. I wonder if I prayed long and hard enough, if you'd come right back and life would resume playing out the way it was supposed to.

Sitting here, I could tell you I did not believe I’d make it past the first 24 hours, let alone a whole year. It feels surreal, like a never-ending dream I hope to awaken from and find you laughing with me as I recall every little detail, but it all feels less probable and more an unchanged reality as time passes by. With every day that begins and ends without you, know that I carry you in my heart, know that every step I take and every single thing I do, will embody you, and it will be something I hope makes you proud.

Tell me what I missed when I see you again, tell me how much you missed me and hold me till I feel whole again, tell me all your wonderful adventures from when you were young again even though I remember every story, every word, by heart, the way I do you.

I will always hold you in my heart for whatever life and eternity there is left to live,

with eternal love,

Rose.

In loving memory of my most beloved grandfather♥️

© Raina Rose 

‘Love is the one thing that we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.’

“Eulogy from a Physicist” by Aaron Freeman, with quotes from Interstellar by Christopher Nolan, and images from NASA, Interstellar, Getty, Petrichara, and Reuters.

1- NASA: GOODS-South.

2- NASA: NGC 1850.

3- NASA: Iberian Peninsula.

4- Christopher Nolan: Interstellar.

5- NASA: From the Earth to the Moon.

6- Hannah La Folette Ryan: Subway Hands.

7- Adams Evans: Heart Nebula.

8- NASA: Exploring the Antennae.

9- NASA: Crescent Moon from the International Space Station.

10- Petrichara.

11- Getty Images.

12- NASA: SMACS 0723.

13- Reuters

Ghost Of My Ghosts, Sol Rios

Ada Limon

James Baldwin

Autumn, Ali Smith

Hamlet, Shakespeare

Residual Hauntings, Psychic Library

Autumn, Ali Smith

The Five Stages of Grief, Linda Pastan

Hauntology: How the Ghosts of our Past haunt our Future, Vincent Freeland

BBC Archive - What is Hauntology

Hauntology

adult life is crazy because you can be going through the most devastating and heartbreaking things while still having to go to work and do the laundry and grocery shopping

Winter hiking series.

High Desert

West of Santa Fe NM

18 degrees

I promised my dearest friend when he passed away, that I would still take our daily walks/hikes.

I miss you like crazy, unerringly kind one.

There are always deer in the cemeteries here.

I had just bought the skirt when the Fog rolled in Thick and Heavy and Fast.

I always drive past this cemetery. I've loved its mausoleums for years.

Tonight, I finally took some classic cemetery goth photos.

I do wish we had a plot for Joe. Some marker somewhere that it would be acceptable, and desired by Joe, for me to take my silly cemetery photos with. So as not to intrude on strange families like I did here. I mean nothing but admiration for the beautiful memorials, and respect for the passed and present families. In my grief, I offer love and reverence to them all.

The touch of your coat as you trot on by.

The green of your eyes as you gaze at the sky.

The scratch of your claws as you knock on my door.

I miss that sound dearly

for I do not hear it anymore.

And I am content to keep hurting. I am content to keep pressing my soft body into the recesses of his absence, if it will only bring me closer to his place in nothing.

I miss him. I see him out of the corner of my eye, walking into the living room like he’s done a hundred times before with his stark blue eyes and crisp white coat, a proud look on his face like he has the body of a panther and not a simple house cat. But he isn’t there. Only shadows cast by the wooden side tables he used to stretch himself on. A trick of the light, played on me by my aching heart. For the ornery flame tail Siamese to prance into view, and reject any and all affections, sitting elegantly with his tail tucked around his legs like a statue. Fine art, looked at, not touched. What I wouldn’t give to adore him from a distance again. Though even I was lucky enough at times to win his favor, and have the statue descend from his pedestal to rest at my feet, with his head on my ankle and the occasion lick of my fingers as I let him sniff me. His fur was soft as a rabbit’s, a forbidden fruit tempting me every time he strode through the kitchen to watch me cook. I respected his space, and in return he sat on the counter where he knew he wasn’t allowed, and perused the grocery bags curiously, often times sitting in the empty ones. I didn’t mind it, I cherished spending time with him, even if it meant washing the counters of paw prints. I miss him dearly. And I wish the tricks of the light would last just a little bit longer, so that maybe as I look at him, eager to absorb every detail of his little perfect face, he can look at me one last time and see me too.

I lost my boy today. He wasn’t overly fond of me, more so my mother was his favorite, but he had his moments. Moments when he’d remember the day I saved him, abandoned by his mother as a kitten only days old. Whatever happened to her, I don’t know. Maybe she knew he was sick. That one day his heart would fail, and she didn’t want to stick around for the ticking time bomb to finally go off. The one only of his litter to survive the cold of the night, finally joining his brothers and sisters on the other side. I loved him more than you can imagine. And I cherished his tender moments with me, every one. I do not care that his heart was enlarged and he would live to only 7. I would save him every time I found him in every universe that I did. He will always be worth the pain of loving him. Always.

Why do the ones I love keep being taken from me? What have I done to deserve shards of their memory pricking my fingertips like spindles every time I scroll on my phone and see a face that has stolen a piece of them? Their eyes on someone else’s head, their smile creasing someone else’s cheeks, their ginger hair curling around someone else’s ears that don’t fucking look right! I hate that I see you everywhere. I hate more that it’s never you.

Connecting the dots between generational trauma. There were some things my dad didn’t know that I knew about what led to complex family dynamics and emotions I didn’t understand until I was in my early 20s. One of my uncles shared the history not long before he unexpectedly passed.

Dad’s dad made a choice (well, several choices) that leaves a forever impression on any kid that learns a parent was dishonest and that’s why there are now two separate households and holidays. This might explain why my dad struggled to navigate fatherhood, on top of only being 18. It was a few years from my parents’ divorce before he decided to give it a real try. I’ll never know exactly what my great-grandma said to him to change his mind about signing away his parental rights.

He didn’t know what he didn’t know. Some family members have found that hard to believe, but I think their experience clouds their understanding and nothing now could change that. It’s unknowable to them and I’m not responsible for trying to make them understand.

I forgive him.

He was there for my first breath. I was there when he took his last. I would give up so much to talk to you again.

34

It’s been a long week and an even longer day.

The grief is forever. I’m thankful he is no longer suffering.

I miss them a bit

"To love is to be afraid. You are frightened, deathly terrified, that something will happen to those you love. Think of the possibilities. Does you heart clench with each thought? That, my friend, is love. And love enslaves us all, for you cannot have love without fear."

- Marie Lu

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal. But we do not regret falling in love. Instead we would relive the experience of meeting and falling in love with them over and over again, knowing it will result in the same outcome, same torment, same despair, same grief. Surely there's something about love that is worth the pain.

Recently, a close friend lost their dog.

Her name was ‘Too Many’, as she was the stray and her addition to the family officially meant they had too many dogs.

I wrote a poem for her

Poem for Too Many, A Good Dog.

I’m a good dog

I will take myself

Out into the woods

To lay my head down softly

Don’t yell for me

This time I can’t come

The paper I originally scribbled it down on.

And a picture of Too Many.

“Loss has a wider choice of directions Than the other thing.”

— W.S. Merwin, from “The Nails,” The Moving Target (Macmillan Pub Co, 1963)

Nico and the cocoa puff (the others are sleeping)

The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion

“Grief is a circular staircase. I have lost you.”

— from “The Five Stages of Grief” by Linda Pastan, in The Five Stages of Grief

Sara Barnard, A Quiet Kind of Thunder

dead mom comics

“all time is frozen

living the moments

before the eruption

of my emotions”

Pompeii = underrated metaphor for grief & not being able to move on, frozen in time to just before the tragedy