Grief & Loss

I don't understand grief. Actually, I don't think that's totally accurate. More accurate: I don't know what to do with grief. Loss is certainly a part of the human experience. Personally, I have experienced some pretty big losses throughout the years; everything from my first pet goldfish all the way to losing a parent at a young age (14). Most recently, I lost my baby kitty girl Daisy. I, alone, needed to make the decision to put her to sleep. In my logic mind, I know I did the right thing. My emotion mind is reeling from the loss and looking for anyway to mitigate that pain. So I question my decision. I wonder what do I do now. How do I make these powerful feelings stop so I don't feel so bad about it.

When I encounter the grief of another individual, I immediately feel uncomfortable around it. Do you know why? Because I can't fix it. I can't offer advice. I can't DO anything about it. Because there is no action to take, I feel helpless. I have studied about grief and loss because I want to know what the right thing to do with friends and family that struggle with grief and loss. You know what all my studying found? There is no answer really. Each person experiences grief and loss in different ways. People may grieve over different things. The "answer" so to speak is that each person needs to find what they need to make the world move again. That isn't a great answer for me. Not only do I need to figure out HOW I grieve, I will have to figure out a way to BE with the grief. I can't just take and apply someone's plan. 

One of the hardest things about grief and loss for me, personally, is that each loss tends to bring up all the losses in my life. Maybe it's the familiarity of the feelings that suddenly thrusts me back into the memories of things lost. With my dad's death, those emotions were pretty profound and I think I lacked the ability to articulate and understand those feelings. My whole family was left devastated from the loss. Each of us needed to grieve in different ways. I didn't want to grieve. That was sad, hard and uncomfortable. That made my stomach turn. In the first year after his death, when anyone would talk about him, I would try to change the subject because the grief as I physically felt it would come rushing up. I would feel nervous and nauseous. No person wants to feel like that so I did everything I could to just make it go away. My way of doing that was to block it all out. I did that long before finding alcohol. When I did finally find alcohol, it was literally the best feeling I had known to that date. I didn't have to try to forget, it was done on my behalf.

As my alcoholism worsened, I started to lose more things. I lost my marriage. Although we were probably never meant to be anyway, I had to grieve the loss of what I thought it was going to be. For a short period of time, I felt socially acceptable. I was married and had a home. I was doing all the things that we like to write our schools about for the alumni updates. When marriage was gone, the person I felt knew me the best was gone and he had already moved on before he was even out of home. My way of dealing with that was to drink some more and to vanish him from my life. From the time I asked for the divorce (Feb 2007) to the actual divorced (July 2007), I saw him once. After that time, I saw him once in early 2008. I talked to him on the phone twice after he moved out. I needed him gone and out of my life forever. It was years before I could talk about times when we were together because I had the same physical response as I had with the loss of my dad. 

Right before my wedding in 2004, I lost of friend. I have tons regrets around this particular loss because I decided to be spiteful for pretty much no good reason just weeks before he was gone. I wasn't able to attend his funeral. Not only was there this tremendous grief from the loss, I carried around such regret about our last interaction. His death was another huge spike in my drinking. I screwed up and there was absolutely nothing I could do to change it. I grieve a friend who was always more devoted to me than I was to him. He had a huge big brother mentality towards me. I wish I had valued that for what it was. It took many years for me to realize the real extent of what I lost and what the world lost the day he died. Ironically, the fight between us was related to my marriage. He begged me not to get married. He did not like my ex-husband. 

Now, I am experiencing the loss of my cat. To the few people who will tell me, "Oh my God, it was a cat, get over it," I implore you to give me a chance to explain what these cats mean to me. In 2007, I was crushed when my divorce was finalized. I thought I was going to be really happy, but I wasn't. I was drinking daily, overdosing regularly on alcohol. I stopped eating, I was less functional at work. I was totally lost. I had 2 cats with my ex-husband, and for the sake of the cats, I sent them with him. One was highly bonded to him and the other cat was bonded to that cat. My world was collapsing around me and I didn't know how to handled it or what to do. So I thought leaving life would be my only "out". I didn't know how to stop drinking anymore. I didn't know how to make the pain stop. Therapy wasn't working. The medications weren't working. If my life was going to be like this, I wasn't going to make it. 

My suicide attempt obviously failed. I was in the psych ward for almost 2 weeks after that. There were all sorts of differential diagnoses around my mental health. For the first time in about 10 years, I had been sober for about 35 days. I tried to sell my home to change my environment. Part of the reason I didn't adopt again was related to my attempt to get rid of the property. It was easier to try to sell without animals. When the house did not sell, I returned to therapy and made my announcement that I was going to stay where I was at. The therapist immediately looked up from her notes and said, "...and I hope that you are intending to get yourself a cat. Go get a cat. You need one." I don't ever remember talking that much about the cats prior to that although I remember telling people then and now that letting the cats go was possibly more hurtful than the divorce itself.

So, I did as I was told. I found these two tiny 8 week old kittens at a shelter. They were a light in my day. No matter what my mood or my status, they always ran to the door every single time, tails in the air, looking for some attention and love. There were only a few things in my life after I returned to drinking in late 2007 that made anything worthwhile - my family and my cats. The thought of my kittens returning to a shelter if I wasn't there was almost too much to bear. I needed to be there for them. These kittens have been through 4 different moves, 3 different stints in rehab, a couple serious relationships and umpteen job changes. When I look back at the past 13 years, one thing I came home to every day were these kittens. In return, they gave me unconditional love especially during the time in which I didn't feel like I was all that lovable. Here's the thing: The only other people in the world that love me like that is my family. Therefore, to me, Daisy and Duke the cats are my family.

In saying good-bye to Daisy, grief is back in my life and dredging up a lot of residual feelings of loss. I don't like when I experience one loss that all the other losses seem to surface. I mean, really? Haven't I figured out how to move forward with life? I know that I am associating powerful feelings with powerful events. I guess I just get frustrated that grief never really goes away. We find our way through it, find ways to live with it and maybe even find ways to accept it. There is this intense longing to have things "be the way they were". Unfortunately, with loss, things are never going to be exactly the same again. It's easier for me to see the losses experienced when I was younger made me stronger. For the losses in the past 15 years, I feel there is some acceptance around those things and with how life ended up changing in some aspects, I came out ahead (getting sober, getting additional education, working my way out of debt). With every new loss, though, I feel like I fall back to square one with all life's losses. I don't like it. Why doesn't grief ever resolve?

So, the new normal now, without Daisy, is loving her brother up as much as I can. He is depressed. He can't find his sister and I don't know how to tell him she is gone. It makes me burst into tears when he is trying to find her. I am working to keep myself present and not turn this loss into all losses. I am also trying to let myself feel through some of this stuff. God forbid I have emotions like everyone else, right? I still feel a little lost and definitely very sad. If I find the magic secret to moving through grief in one week or less, I will be sure to share it here first. From what I am learning this time around, though, I don't think that will be the book I write. 

Love to everyone,
J