Pre Feeling Grief...

My old sponsor used to tell me this was not possible.  But I still maintain it is.  In fact, I will go so far to say, that if you have any inkling grief is coming for ya, that is all you can do.

I call it anticipatory grief.  It is the grief you feel before the loss actually happens but you know the loss is coming.  It can be something mild like knowing your team is not going to win the big game and you begin to process the loss before the game has ended.  It can be a larger kind of grief, like the child leaving home and setting out on their own adventure.  You have known it is coming for years and years but when the date is set and the decisions made, you begin to grieve.

And, of course, there is the biggest grief, the permanent loss of someone you love.  If you are given time to process before their death, you grieve a little every day.  And then you grieve a great deal after they are gone...for the rest of your life.

I am not sure why the urge to pre feel or start the grieving process earlier than required is so strong for me.  I am sure it has to do with control.  But other than that, I am not sure why I so strongly want to begin this grieving process earlier than is required.  I guess I can’t help it.  When I sense something is coming, it is all I can think about.  I just have that mind, and heart.

I am not talking about worry.  I do a fair amount of that also.  But less than I used to.  I used to get all whacked out about shit that might happen.  And I still have the mind that has to run through all the possible scenarios.  But I have been doing it for so long now that it is almost automatic.  I run through the options, the possibilities, I run the odds and then I decide what to let go of and what to prepare for.  It is just how I am.

But grief is different.  It is something that takes over your life.  It is something you eat, you sleep, you walk, you work.  It is like this other part of your existence happens when you grieve.  It interrupts the day to day.  It throws things into chaos.  It causes you to have to attend to your feelings first and foremost because your feelings are totally in control of everything during grief.  When you sleep, if you sleep, when you eat, if you eat.  How much you talk to others, or how little.  How much you cry or sob or breakdown is all directed and controlled by feelings.  It is a tidal wave that no matter how far out to sea you see it, you will never, ever have enough time to plan to escape it.

And once it is on you, it is on you and it takes control.  Holds you back and down and you just pray you survive it, and some days, you pray you don’t.

My daughter leaves for a great job in Arizona in just a couple of weeks.  My father fails a little more every day.  My son has already flown the coup and is well into his new life.   I do not want my daughter to go.  I do not want my father to die.  But both of these things are going to happen.  And I have been engaging grief’s close friends, denial and disassociation, to help me deal with the coming losses.  And doing my best to pre-feel my way through this letting go process.  And I know, no matter how much I pre feel it, there will always be more feeling to be done, forever.

I do not know exactly how to live without my daughter.  She has been here every day for the last 18 years.  I barely remember what life was like without her.  It is different with her because my relationship with her very different than that of my son.  He was always coming and going.  But my girl was the constant through it all and now she is moving to Arizona to start her adult life and I am so proud of her and happy for her.  And I can already feel the loss that is coming and how much I am dreading coming home to a place that is no longer her residence. It will always be her home but that is little comfort if she is not there.

My dad is holding his own.  He has good days and bad days, just like all of us.  Some days he makes sense, and some days he does not.  He always recognizes me and I am grateful for that. But he is not going to survive dementia and I know that.  And while our relationship has been stormy and troubled for my entire life, I do not know a life without him in it.  He has always been there, sometimes this malignant force that pushed me harder than was often fair.  But he was there, always.  No matter what.

And I guess this is my turn.  To be there.  And I have to own there is a part of me that doesn’t want to be.  I want to cut and run.  To just dip and move on and distract myself with tons of stuff that isn’t as important.  And I have learned that one of the things pre feeling does for you is let you off the hook when the time for real grieving comes for you.  When you have spent all this time pre feeling it and anticipating it, when the loss comes, there is this perverse notion that sits on your shoulder telling you that you are all done now and it is fair for you to skip this next part.

And for a long time, I did. I skipped the actual grieving. Shoving it down and to the side.  And moving on, still tethered to the grief I would not feel or allow.  All the pre feeling I had done a set up for myself to miss the part that I actually really needed to do.

But I began to look at it differently.  When that inevitable resistance to feel comes for me, I just have to release the resistance.  To allow all the things I feel to just take me over.  Resisting them only made them more persistent in my life.  I can recall without any effort at all, all the griefs I allowed to pass without the requisite sentiments to follow.  Creating log jams of emotion and sadness and grief inside my person.

I will never stem the tide of that resistance but I know what to do with it today.  I know not to give into it because it promises salvation but delivers only enslavement.

I was watching 1883 with my daughter last night on the couch.  I have seen it before, but for her, a first time.  And I was struck that life has always been hard.  Life requires struggle, anything worthwhile in this world is going to require effort and blood and sweat and tears.  The world has always been this brutal place where hearts and minds and bodies are ripped in two.  That is the way life is because that is the way man is.  Humankind is a bloodthirsty lot and it has never been anything else.  But we have become more civilized. And better liars.  We pretend to be less savage as we hurl hatred into webs of space and time.  No less brutal than in 1883, just better at hiding the bodies.  Human beings have so much potential for greatness but we allow petty jealousies and ridiculous unmet needs to drive us to do things that keep us in a never ending cycle of loss and grief.  Adding more shame and guilt and sorrow than perhaps is really necessary.

I always thought I would have been a good pioneer.  But that is just folly.  I probably would haven’t lasted a day.  My inner nature too sensitive for the brutality of the world.  I can barely live in today’s world, I can’t even imagine what life back then would have been like.  Survival meaning something absolutely different than what we claim for it today.

So I will pre feel my ensuing grief and I will feel it fully when it arrives.   There is nothing else to do with it really.  Avoiding it is just signing up to live with it longer and harder.  And for me, I guess, the pre feeling is required because if I wait to feel it all when the event actually arrives, I think it would break me.  I need the grief pre-party in order to survive the event.  Anything I can do to shave off a little bit of the pain, into something manageable, digestible.

For now, with my daughter and my dad, I will be here appreciating them both with every moment I have left with them.  I will trust that the world has an order that I do not always like but must agree with nevertheless.  One of the most positive things I can do to pre feel is to appreciate them, their presence in my life and the love I have for them and them for me, every single moment I get...

There is little difference between grief and praise. We only grieve the things we thought highly enough to praise and we only praise the things we are desperately afraid to lose.

Again, still...