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grief

On Faith…

February 6, 2019 by carol anne Leave a Comment

Author’s Note

I’ve been thinking about faith a lot in the past few years. I spent hours last night working on a piece. This is not that piece. This is an anaphora poem from tonight’s first Unspoken Ink prompt.  Poetry is not my genre either, so I’m all sorts of out of my comfort zone in tonight’s writings.

I figure if I keep thinking and writing I will eventually get my head, my heart, and my soul right.

On Faith

Faith is belief in things unseen.

Faith is believing you don’t have to go through this alone.

Faith is knowing he will raise you up on the last day.

Faith is wondering where he is during the fall.

Faith is hoping like hell that’s a ball pit down there while you’re falling.

Faith is swimming against the current when your arms gave out ten miles ago.

Faith is knowing with every fiber of your being that going to find the shore.

Faith is making it to shore and having no idea where to go next or how to get there.

Faith is lighting smoke signals every day in the hopes you will be found.

Faith is continuing on barefoot and alone.

Faith is continuing to walk even though you don’t know the way.

Faith is wondering who crashed the plane and if the pilot survived.

Faith is wondering where he is.

Faith is lighting another Goddamn smoke signal fire.

Faith is knowing a rescue (answers) may never come but walking on and lighting fires anyway, because you have faith there will come a road that will lead you home.

Faith is belief in things unseen.

Posted in: Spiritual Ramblings Tagged: Catholic, death, Faith, grief, Poetry, Unspoken Ink

The Space Between Memories (Where grief lives)

January 24, 2019 by carol anne Leave a Comment





Author’s Note

The thing they don’t tell you about death and grieving is, you don’t just say goodbye once. You say goodbye at the hospital or hospice or wherever you are, you say goodbye when you leave the first viewing of the body at the funeral home, the night of the wake, the afternoon of the burial, the day you get up the courage and emotional wherewithal to donate his clothes, and a million other moments that you never understood were goodbyes until you’ve lost the one you love.

The Space Between Memories

What kind of life goes on in the space between memories? It’s the life where you do the work of living. It’s where you do the heavy lifting and the keepin’ on with the keepin’ on.

    Yesterday, I heard you say, “Made me laugh so hard” in that laughing tone your voice went to when you told me about something that amused you. It was so real it took my breath away. I turned to look for you, but you weren’t there.

I can’t get the memories of that last day out of my head and yet I make new memories, choose joy, question the will of God, and I live on, in the space between memories.

Today, I had all the papers you left behind shredded. I couldn’t complete the mission on my own so I called a mobile shredding truck to come finish the job. Twenty years of old bills, cancelled checks, pay stubs, and tax returns reduced to thousands of pieces of ephemera in a pile of trash bags that were gone in an instant. The house somehow feels emptier today. I didn’t expect that.

Through all these months of trying to shred it all myself, I cursed you, and yelled at you, I told you, “If you weren’t already dead, I’d kill you my damn self for leaving me with all this work.” I never expected to find myself standing on the driveway crying as the truck carrying the space between our memories drove away.

Posted in: General Ramblings Tagged: cancer, carrying on after loss, grief, loss, newly widowed, The things you don't know about loss, widow, widowhood

Write, he Said… The Widow Diaries (Chapter 3)

February 28, 2018 by carol anne Leave a Comment

It’s been 3 months since Chuck passed away. I still can’t bring myself to finish writing out the thank you cards. I wrote out the first 75 in January, but I haven’t been able to touch the mass cards or thank you cards since. I did, however, write him a letter in my journal on Monday night. I cried as I wrote, it was a cleansing cry. I woke up this morning feeling calm and better than I have in a long time so I thought I’d tell you a little about our beginning.

I met Chuck in March 1991, I was still 18 and he was a few months shy of his 20th birthday. I met him at a mutual friend’s house after her 18th birthday party. He came to pick him up his mother, she’d kept my friend’s mother company while we were all out celebrating Jenn’s birthday. I opened the door to him standing on the front step in his black Member’s Only jacket. I loved him on first sight, my heart immediately knew his. I was so smitten I actively pursued him, flirting any time I saw him, stopping by the pizza place where he worked, and eventually I gave him my number and then going to see him when he didn’t use it. I asked him, “Hey, you don’t use a pretty girl’s number?” (brazen hussy, party of 1) If you know me, you know this is so totally like me and so totally not at all like me. He called the next week and we had our first date on June 6th. We saw Soap Dish and had dinner at Friendly’s. We drove there in his 1979 baby blue Buick Regal; I loved that car.  My mother joked, it must be love at first sight if we enjoyed Soap Dish. It was and we did.

Posted in: The Widow Diaries Tagged: bereavement, cancer, death, dying, grief, new widow, newly widowed, relationship s, widow, widowhood

On Death, and Dying, and Loss, and Grief

September 1, 2015 by carol anne Leave a Comment

white rose

I feel lost,

 I feel angry,

 I feel like this past year can’t possibly have been real.

 

I just don’t even know where to start or what to write. I don’t know how to answer when people ask me how I am. I don’t have words enough to express what I’m feeling.

 

In the last 365 days I’ve lost a best friend, a grandmother-in-law, a father-in-law, and my dad. I’m reeling, I’m numb, I’m in shock, I’m overwhelmed, I’m lost.

 

I.just.don’t.know.

 

 

One year ago my world changed with the words, “Jenn died.” Truth-be-told I never really got the chance to properly mourn Jenn’s passing. Two weeks after Jenn died, my dad was rushed to the hospital and my grandmother-in-law was unexpectedly moved to hospice care at almost the exact same time, we were pulling up to the hospital dad was in when we got the call about grandmom; grandmom passed two days later, dad spent almost a month in the hospital and getting stronger in rehab. Dad was a rock star in rehab; he was better than he’d been in years, but hope is a cruel bitch and pulled the rug out from under us. Shortly after dad returned home from rehab dad had a terrifying, steep, rapid, (did I mention terrifying?) decline. Dad rebounded from that decline and spent the next ten months declining and rebounding, declining and rebounding, declining and rebounding; it was a terrifying, emotional, and exhausting roller coaster ride of good health, bad health, and really bad health. Dad mostly declined over these last few months; I started reading about grief before death. It was like losing Nanny to dementia ten years ago, the dad who still existed wasn’t the dad we all knew and loved; he wasn’t the Reds he and rest of the world knew and loved.

 

Dad was in bad shape when my father-in-law suddenly passed away after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. The night of my father-in-law’s viewing my own dad could barely walk or stand up on his own; six days later I got a call that dad wasn’t doing well and I worried if he’d make it through the night. The next morning we took him to the hospital, all the neighbors were out as dad was loaded in to the private ambulance we called to take him to the good hospital where his cardiologist practices, my brother and I remarked it was like they were out saying goodbye to dad. As it turns out, they were, dad never returned home. After seven days in the hospital and twelve days in rehab he had his third or fourth (I don’t remember now) heart attack and died on the afternoon of August 18th.

 

You know you always expect “the phone call” to come in the middle of the night. I never expected the call to come a little before 7am on a Tuesday morning, but it did. “Your dad’s unresponsive, he still has vitals, but he’s unresponsive, he’s been taken to the hospital.” I called my mother and my brother and rushed to the hospital hoping and praying the rush hour traffic would be unusually light and that dad wouldn’t die before I or someone got to the hospital. Turns out we all made it before he died, but honestly in reality dad was gone before any of us got there, he’d crashed in the ER. Because there was no DNR on file they revived him and transferred him to a hospital with an ICU, where the cardiologist informed us dad was in multi organ failure, at about 1pm dad passed away surrounded by all of us.

 

It’s a little past midnight on September 1st, two weeks since dad passed away and a year and a day since Jenn died. The last 366 days have been a study in grief, and loss, and fear, and sorrow, and I’m not sure what it is I am supposed to have learned from them. I’m so lost, and confused, and adrift, I’m not sure if there’s even anything to be learned from so much loss in such a compressed amount of time. I.just.don’t.know.

 

 

 

Posted in: Soul Baring Ramblings Tagged: death, dying, grief, loss, sorrow

He’s Gone

August 19, 2015 by carol anne Leave a Comment

Dear Old Dad

 

Dear Old Dad is gone, he passed away just before one o’clock Tuesday afternoon. Rest in peace Dad, maybe the Phillies play better in heaven.

 

Posted in: Soul Baring Ramblings Tagged: Dad, death, dying, grief
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