After loss: the way healing feels

Dad, me and a coupla sibs

I talked to a good friend recently who asked me how I come up with blog ideas every week or so. 

I explained to him that I spend a little time each week thinking about a thing that meant something to me about life, people, loss, love, etc. Something that would likely be universal, because I don't notice magical things, I just notice important things. 

And sometimes a single event can teach you something about all of those things – people, life, loss, love – at once. 

My father's death has been that event. 

When he passed away two months ago, I experienced what other people call "the hole" of  loss i.e., the feeling that life would not ever feel as it did when the lost person was in it. Even the parts of my life that my dad never really understood  would not be the same.

The old normal was gone.

I've dreamed about, planned, and carried out plenty of changes in my life and so the feeling that my life had changed, was changing every day without my permission, was alarming. The feeling of loss had affected everything from my thoughts while cooking, to my happiness over an accepted piece, to my ability to look forward to the future the way I always had.  

I wasn't really aware until now that I am a person who carries a visual of the future more than an idea. It's a sprawling, changing Monet of possibilities – seeing all my children build lives they love, imagining the publishing dreams that excite and inspire me, and who knows, maybe a life near water someday.

A month or so after my dad died, trying to pull up that view  was like trying to inflate a pool toy with a hidden hole. It would only puff up so much before refusing to do more. My visual was a sunless sky that didn't know whether to clear or rain or what, other than remain on duty until the night sky arrived to relieve it.

The drive to get "back to normal" was powerful, and the muscle memory of familiar life made it easy to head  that way. In the hazy days after losing Dad, I wanted to live on auto-pilot, and allow my mind to deal with the air pockets of grief, and nothing else.

I yielded to this. Tried, tried, tried in that before place to do what I've always done – get up, go to work, talk on the phone, read texts, attend meetings, have dinner – while the feeling of "before" remained, ever so slightly, beyond reach.

This is the "hole," people talk about, the life that looks, after loss, exactly as it did before, but feels expired, hollow, a place where you once lived but don't anymore.

It was opening my calendar like I do every morning but remembering that I didn't have to schedule a visit to the Memory Care unit. It was driving past the restaurant where we used to eat lunch like I often do, but not thinking it's been too long since the last one. It was driving past his street like I do every day, but not wondering if it was too late or early for a visit.

I thought about that hole, and about how I was trying to fill it by carrying out normal habits and trying not to lose it when I saw someone who looked like my dad. 

I began to wonder if maintaining a normal, unchanged life might be making that hole even bigger with all those glimpses at what wasn't  there anymore.

I discovered something wonderful.

It would never be a process of teasing out the reminders.  But it could be, step by step, a process of shrinking the prominence of this person's absence by changing the context of their presence.  

I decided to change my normal life, one tiny habit at a time.

I changed the music I listen to.

I changed the way I eat.

I started dressing a little differently. 

I changed the kind of writing I do and my targets.

And how I spend money

And how much I sleep

And who I want to see more of 

And what dreams my husband and I can share of a life we might love in a new place.

Few of these things have anything to do with my dad's absence. Most had little to do with his presence. I miss my dad still, to the point of tears. But I embrace memories now, and wait for the spiritual lift that comes after I've wished for his take on a problem or struggle.

"So Dad..."

There is a hole, but there is a new Monet coming together, too. I'm making something about every day different, healthy and new. I am again connecting to the future with joy and imagination and I am realizing that the past has done all it was supposed to do, which includes the gift of knowing my dad, getting his take on things, making him laugh. 

I hope if you're in this place, you find the same picture of new things to come, new places to be, and if the absence of your loved one is painful at times,  I hope their spiritual presence will become a perfect piece of furniture in your new home of "after."

This post is dedicated with love to Teri and Dana 

We are never doing nothing

Here is a picture of some
decisions I'm making.

Two things happened recently. One of my articles was mentioned in a Post round-up of most read parenting pieces in 2017, which was great.

And, I was turned down by a publication that is smaller than the Post, but equally discriminating, which was not great.

I've written before about taking control of happiness, choosing our point of view, learning to hear and listen to our inner critic so that we can report  it to our inner therapist who will remind  us that our inner  critic is full of shit.

I write about these things because for a long time, my inner critic ran the show and it just became my default state to feel awkward or out of place, and see myself through the eyes of others. It changed when I began to journal. On the page, I laid out my truest feelings like dainty, knotted necklaces in need of detangling.

I learned a few things after several years of this.   

That negative self-talk is easier to believe than the self-talk we use to challenge it.

That fear feels like information in our minds, but looks like a nervous child on the page.

That figuring it out is not only a valid strategy, but sometimes the best one because it draws on intuition more than practical skills.

That intuition is information.

That truth is often discovered when you're doing nothing to find it.

We are never doing nothing.

It doesn't surprise me that what captured my attention last week was the rejection. Because feedback like "well done, but not ground breaking," makes me feel like I must be playing it safe, or don't care enough to develop new ideas.

If that's what's going on, I thought, I have a new necklace to free of knots.

That is what's going on.

I've been sleepwalking, and today I woke up with a "what now?" stretch on my hands.

As I write this, I'm thinking about an article that I haven't drafted yet, the three or four short stories that are in progress but have no target, the novel that I like but don't love yet.

It feels like I'm not serious, but I'm never not serious.

It feels like I lack the energy to be better, but it's passion I need.

I would have panicked in earlier years to think of what all this meant:

Oh, my God. Maybe I'm in the wrong job/relationship/city/major etc. Oh, my God.

But I have learned that  as much as I dread them, a what-now stretch heralds a new turn, a change in direction, a shake up, a thing that is coming and is supposed to happen.

While I was doing nothing about this, a surge of honest conscience emerged about really, how hard I've been working at my writing. My inner critic offered that it could be harder and, for once, my inner therapist agreed. And that is a good thing, because knowing I could be working harder, but am not, is a perfect  opening to the question of: 

If not this, then what?

It's a complex question that only presents yes answers after the no's – not this, not that – have been exhausted.

I am taking my own advice today.

I will stop focusing on what I should be doing better and consider what I should possibly be doing instead.

I will accept that only some ideas can enter a habit-oriented mind, but that others, if I rest and open my mind will present themselves.

I will think about the difference between undisciplined and uninspired. 

I will try to remember that ideas are supposed to come and go as often as they come and stay.

I will aim to love the work in process as much as the idea of finishing it. 

I will consider that effort not fueled by the heart and mind can be injurious to the spirit. 

But mostly, I will, I already do,see this stretch as a test,  a break, a time to realize that if I'm not doing enough, or doing the right thing, the something behind it all will present itself. 

It will be one of those times when I'm not doing nothing.