July 2012
43 posts
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I grieve for love that is not free
“And the love is free…” I came upon this phrase in an Aussie cookbook written by a daughter about her mother.
I grieve that as time passes, it seems more and more unlikely that the love will be free. Free of recriminations, of judgement, of past mistakes as swords held over the other’s head, of cruel hurtful words remembered and begrudgingly watered for eons to flower into...
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For things that didn't go as planned
What might have happened if things had gone as planned?
What might have we said, done, attempted together, laughed at, eaten and savored, taken in, if things has gone as planned?
Would I have told you how I felt, if things had gone as planned? That I was firmly in love with you, my best friend, and that I had been since that winter when you told me you would fly across the world for me. No one...
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I’ve lost hope. I’ve tried to adapt my body and my mind, but my spirit is crushed. Suicide has been whispering in my ear.
My body changed when a growth was found on my spine. The neurosurgeon was not concerned about paralysis, from the surgery, but I would die. I survived the surgery, but the recovery has been tremendously hard. I missed an entire year of work. And pain remains. My constant...
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One sticky situation avoided
I hate baby showers. I don’t want to sniff candy bar “poo” and try to guess the culprit. I do not want to wax philosophical on how long it is ok to breastfeed or pretend that it is perfectly normal for a five year-old to walk up to his momma and ask for some milky. I’ve reached an age where people think it’s abnormal that I do not have children. They wonder if my marriage is on the rocks....
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Family
My Dad died two weeks after my partner and I adopted our beautiful girl. She’s so much like him - goofy, strong, a dreamer. I try, as best I can, to make him real for her, to give her her Grandpa Brian.
To make him real for her, I have to make him real for me again. I relive my Daddy’s girl childhood and miss him all over again.
It’s been 10 years, almost to the day and I...
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Relationship Loss
I grieve the relationship I could have had with my mother if I hadn’t chosen to direct my rage at her when my daddy died of a heart attack. It was he, not Mother, who decided to stay in our small town to heal after his “warning heart attack” rather than seek advanced coronary care in the city. I have spent a lifetime regretting the blame I loaded on Mother when she had suffered a loss as heavy...
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Sense of Place (revised from submission July 9th)
Sense of Place
My incredible grief turns on the loss of a sense of place. The small towns have dried up—no jobs, boarded-up storefronts, graffiti slashing across my high school’s windows. The family old place is up for sale, but today’s families don’t want that old rambling ginger-breaded house where my father grew up.
People are part of place, too. Nobody stays put anymore. Where once I had...
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“To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other’s hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time.” - Unknown
-Laura Gilbow
To be a young adult sibling left behind has to be one of the most complex feelings known...
It’s your 24th birthday. My how time flies.
You know, even though it has been 24 years since you were born, you are forever 19. That kind of sucks.
Sometimes I’m angry that you were taken so young, other times I am grateful that if it was imperative for you to be taken young, at least it was sooner rather than later. It has spared your daughter the pain of losing you, after all. She...
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What is my grief like?
First, like a tsunami: I pretty much just had to hang on. There was no other choice. JUST. HANG. ON.
Next, like a roller coaster: I got on it voluntarily albeit reluctantly because I was afraid. I could have chosen to avoid it alltogether through a little something we Social Workers like to call “denial.” However I knew that I should let myself experience it, and that I had a...
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I grieve the fact that I don’t get to grieve my brother’s death in old age; I have to grieve it now, at age 21 and beyond.
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for all
It is for the little one I grieve – confused, with no way to understand a world beyond comprehension. A world she walked alone. No one would understand. No one was curious enough see. No one would be bothered with her silenced experience. She knew better, knew in speaking she would be more alone than in bearing up. She made it through. All of the years. She does not know how. I do not...
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The desert
i lived in the sonoran desert for one year only. i can remember when i first moved out there to that renegade land populated by saguaro cactus (l call them Cactus People) cocatillo and reptiles that looked older than god. i thought, “oh my god, who knew it was so beautiful out here..that there really are purple mountains majesty-i this beautiful arizona desert- i never knew…i guess...
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Sense of Place
My incredible grief turns on the loss of a sense of place. The small towns have dried up—no jobs, boarded-up storefronts, graffiti slashing across your high school’s windows. The family old place is up for sale, but today’s families don’t want that old rambling ginger-breaded house where my father grew up.
People are part of place, too. Nobody stays put anymore. Where once you had...
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I was lucky, I discovered. I grew up with three grandparents, and five great-grandparents still alive. I didn’t know that was unusual. When my children were born we had two lines of five generations living; by then I had an appreciation for what that meant!
My maternal grandparents were a huge part of my children’s lives - we visited them frequently. We have pictures of baby Shaun sitting in my...
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Grief has its own journey.
Grief has its own journey. It takes the time its needs, I am only a captive, without control, as I grieve the loss of my Mother who went too young and too quickly. It is a strange and silent journey as she told no one, only me, that she was dying and bound me to do the same, even after she passed. The silence of keeping her death is a heavy burden. One I gladly bear.
When you love someone deeply...
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Tell them you love them
He was only twenty-six and had the soul and wisdom of a much older man. He was my child of choice. I unofficially adopted him as my god-son and I was privileged to be his “Fort Worth mom” for three years.
During those three years, James taught me how to view the world through the eyes of a person who had already had close to twenty open-heart surgeries and still suffered from...
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Webster’s 1913 Dictionary Definition of Grief:
1. Pain of mind on account of something in the past; mental suffering arising from any cause, as misfortune, loss of friends, misconduct of one’s self or others, etc.; sorrow; sadness.
2. Cause of sorrow or pain; that which afflicts or distresses; trial; grievance.
3. Physical pain, or a cause of it;...
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For What or Whom do You Grieve?
The Obituary reads, “Carlisle, PA, Oct. 11, 1948-Funeral Services will be held tomorrow for 14 months old Joseph G. Larocca who drowned in a spring near the Carlisle barracks grounds. He was the son of Lt. and Mrs. Eugene W LaRocca who said he slipped from their sight while they visited another Army family at the post. Rescuers tried for four hours to resuscitate the child.”
The...
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The Fouth of July
What makes me still and silent on this day of bright celebration is what has happened to our country’s culture since 9/11. I remember before that day, our country was brash, and open and daring. After that day, fear dominated. We fear immigrants. We fear dark-skinned people. We fear non-Christians. We give up privacy and freedom in exchange for a false sense of protection. We separate the...
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Why I grieve
Morning
mourning loss
of that distant self
running back into darkness,
the eye of the heart,
those feet so light
and elusive.
she visits me in glimpses
sometimes.
sometimes I think I remember
remembering her,
barefoot and summery
like Persephone before all hell
and winter, still she runs
from me. I am the mother
who has lost her child,
I am the split,
the division, the pit
...
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Independence Day
Today, July 4th, marks the 17th anniversary of the death of one of the best friends I ever had in my life, someone gentle and kind, who never hurt another person in her life. She was killed one month before her 21st birthday along with her unborn son. This wonderful girl, Margo Glickman was best friends with myself and my niece LeAnn simultaneously. The three of us were a force to be reckoned...
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Larger, Faster, Shinier
Larger, Faster, Shinier by Ellen Tumavicus I was in the bathroom stall at the Obama victory party when my phone rang. “Can you come with me tomorrow, El?” That stomach ache she had been experiencing finally brought her to the local emergency room. After an initial review of the symptoms, an immediate appointment with the oncologist was highly recommended. “It’s probably just an ulcer,” I said....
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never a virgin
When I was seven years old, an elderly neighbor befriended me. I was a very lonely child and often hungry for emotional and physical nourishment. Over time, he began to invade my physical boundaries. I did know what he did, what he said ‘we’ did, was wrong. It was a huge secret.
It was so huge a secret that I did not tell another person until I was 32. Experiencing postpartum...
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never quite the same....
15 years ago, my husband had a brief affair…not surprisingly, it devastated me to my very core…at the time, our marriage was not perfect (whose is??) but it was good: our son was in college, our daughter was a senior in high school, I was looking forward to the time that my husband and I could spend more time together, take more trips, etc…without going into the reasons why I...
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The Time with My Father that Father Time Gave Me
In the nearly two and a half decades of my life I only knew pieces of my father his life a puzzle with the last piece always just out of my grasp. The puzzle of my life only outlined and connected by the edges, the middle still a picture to be seen. For all the incomplete portions the theme still remained the same, he appeared in mere flashes and moments, time stolen by addiction throughout the...
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Peach on Purple
Peach on Purple by Ellen Tumavicus I was perched on the highest rung of the tall ladder leaning against my even taller house, paint can, drippy brush, iced mocha, and cell phone carefully placed in easily accessible positions. We were painting our house that summer, giving it a sorely needed lift- scraping and covering the old dirty peeling paint with a fresh coat of bright peachy orange...
Reversal
I grieve the reversal of a sign
From negative, to positive.
My nails fell off from infections, I grieved them.
My gums bled and receded from infections, I grieved them.
My body wasted, and I grieved for every pound I lost.
My future shrank to a few possible months
I grieved every lost day.
One vertical line
Become a wall,
Built of stigma.
Fear.
Blame.
And I grieve it.
My nails...
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Having always felt much older than my years, I am looking over my life from what feels like its midpoint. (The veracity of this stance will require another 37 years to bear out. We could each go at any time.) And because I believe I’ve only ever made the decisions that felt right to me when I made them, it’s come as a shock to realize that I am in active mourning for certain lives I...
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A Little Broken
My father died.
I was 13.
Forty Five years later…a bit lost.
Why?
No grieving.
“It’s over.”
“What’s over?”
“He’s gone.”
“Well…where did he go?”
Went to school the next day.
Idiot.
No funeral, no memorial.
No mention.
Lots of casseroles and
“Isn’t it a blessing?”
Oh, hell no.
Walked down the aisle with
Option Number Two.
Angry. Why weren’t you here?
Walked up the aisle with the man
Who is very...
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To the ones I lost
I grieve for my dad, who, at the age of 60, died of a cancer that took him in three months. I talked to him every two days when he was sick, and got to spend a lot of time with him the week before he died. I was there when he did. I feel blessed to have had that privilege.
I wish I’d been able to ask him if it was ok that I didn’t have children. I grieve for that. I know how much it...
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For me it loss and change are nearly constant in my life and the atlas of experience is a good metaphor for all of it, since I am very geographically mobile. I am currently struggling with a combined loss of a job that brought me a great deal of personal and professional satisfaction, and a place that I loved dearly. It is a sacrifice that I know was necessary, but that doesn’t make it any...
Not Just One Mom, but Two
I grieve the loss of not just one mother, but two. My mother passed away three years ago. Cancer took her from me, but not before we had three years of ups and downs, chemo and not-really-remission-but-freedom-from-the-worst-symptoms.
They were three of the best years of our relationship. Suddenly, she was willing to travel in spite of the “no smoking” rules on the airplanes, in...
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An extra gene
A doctor told me I have an extra empathy gene. I’m not sure it was a medical opinion.
My empathy and my grief were born, in childhood, over hearing about deaths and injuries in war and other conflicts of the “good” people and those who are considered bad. My grief is always on the surface because I witness all who are hungry or homeless; those whose lives are made worse because of circumstances...
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I Never Had a Childhood
I can’t remember a time when my parents didn’t argue. I lived with my mom after they divorced in 1980. She didn’t adapt well and, at the age of 12, I often had to be the grownup of the house. My much-older brothers lived with us off and on, which never went well. More arguing. I married a girl just to get out of the house. An obvious mistake, accompanied by more arguing. I...
For motherless mothers...
I have had my share of grief in my life…but one loss hits me hardest, and I didn’t even know the child.
An old friend posted on Facebook on Mother’s Day 2009, “My little one has a fever. It is so sad to watch your child sick on Mother’s Day when you don’t have a mother anymore.” Her mother had died six years prior. Little did she know that four days later...
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Grief Meets Gratitude
I grieve gracefully for the beautiful lives within my own that I have lost. The nine year old girl with the weak heart, the 66 year old woman who inspired me to shoot for the stars and the 90 year old woman who was ready to move forward.
I grieve sorrowfully for the childhood that I wasn’t given. The innocence that was taken too soon; the fun I had to miss out on throughout high school; the love...
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I grieve my father each day of my living. I grieve the security of having him in the world. He would do anything for me, no matter how uncomfortable it made him. He had a way of making me believe no matter what was going on in the world around me, it would all be okay. I grieve that feeling that only he could conjure up for me.
I grieve the magic emitted from his eyes when they lay up on his...
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Maybe it's cliche, but I grieve for my mom
Four days before she died, I told her I was pregnant again. So now there is a young boy with her eyes running around my house. He never got to meet his grandmother, who, seven years on, is still talked about by her friends and loved, loved, loved by her husband. Sometimes I can convince myself that she still will answer when I call, so I don’t test that theory.
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I Grieve The Little Girl
I grieve not for the man who committed the crimes, but for the innocence he took from the little girl. I grieve for her loss of trust, her loss of feeling safe in the dark. Replaced by fear of people, fear of the dark, and fear that she was not the best person she could be, because he played on her innocence and destroyed that, just to pleasure himself.
I grieve for the young woman who tried to...
left behind
She didn’t appear online as she did every morning before. It was Valentine’s Day. So I called… there was no response. The “Mom’s not answering” chain of events was put in to place… I was too far away… and she was already gone. Valentines from the Granddaughters had arrived in her mailbox the day before only to be left behind… like me.
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For the life I had always envisioned
In spite of showing no physical signs or symptoms, a blood test told me that I have genital herpes in October 2011. After the humiliating task of calling all my exes to discover the origin, I found out that I contracted the virus six years ago when I was engaged to a man who was unfaithful to me.
He was someone to whom I was ready to pledge the rest of my life… and in a way I have, because...
