After experiencing grief for nineteen years it is my conclusion that there is nothing good about it. My lovely, beautiful, caring, adoring wife Barbara died on this day nineteen years ago. I write this at three hours past the time she expired in 2003. Over the last few years this day has not crossed my mind as sharply as it has this year. All I know is that suddenly, like the piercing pain that shot down my back last week I am laden with depression. This phenomenon is not new to me. For years after she died I would fall into depression at the beginning of July and be miserable for the next two months. The first day of July, 2003 is when she went into the hospital with peritonitis, and never returned. The memory of her last days has faded over the years except, this year it is as sharp and clear as it has ever been.
My writing frequency has diminished over the last two months, and I am now beginning to believe that it is because of my depression. Usually, once I realize why I’m not able to think of anything to write about I attribute it to depression. One way I can dig myself out of the hole is to express my feelings to the ether of the internet. Once they are out of my mind my soul is once again free to soar.
A friend who writes the Just Cruising blog is currently going through a similar change. The writer is taking time off to rethink why he has a blog in the first place. I too have to remember why I began this journey. I know for fact that my original goal was to promote the benefits of positive thinking. I have strayed from that path and instead immersed myself in the idiocy of trying to persuade people to my conservative ideas. That was fun for a while but after achieving failure, I switched to just plain story telling; find a subject and tell the story about how that topic came into my life. I must have run out of topics because that no longer amuses me. So now, I find myself writing about myself and my depression triggered by grief.
In the days after Barb died, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being maximum unbearable pain, my grief was at a hundred. Slowly, ever so slowly over the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years it softened to where I would place it at about a four. Then 2022 hit me right square between the eyes and I am back to ten. I thank God it is no longer at one hundred.
One way I coped with grief was to remarry. I found a beautiful lady who was also a widow. She totally understood my emotions as she experienced them also. We were happy for fifteen years together. Our shared grief was mild, but still present. Unfortunately, after ten years she contracted a disease that caused her to forget who I was. We were faithful lovers and friends to the end.
Grief didn’t hit me as hard the second time, but it was certainly there. I think the first round hardened my soul to resist the emotion. Now that I think about it, my current depression began around late June, which is when she died three years ago. Add that to the first grief beginning in July and I wonder why I am having trouble? I am experiencing a super nova of grief. Maybe it is because of the way the planets are aligned and the moon is circling.
At this point of my tome of over 600 words I realize that I am embarking on the very first session of blogging therapy which no doubt will begin digging me out of the trench in which I landed. That my friends is why I probably have been doing this for so many years, it is a form of therapy for me.
Filed under: Aging, Biography, Writer | Tagged: grief, love, marriage, Til death do us part | Leave a comment »
I cannot imagine how the world became populated. Last week I overdosed on the Senate hearings, and frankly, I am sick of it. They made me hate all democrats even though I have some very good friends who are democrats. I heard only one take on this matter which made sense. Both Ms Blasey-Ford and Judge Kavanaugh are right. Neither is lying. Ms Ford is telling what she remembers, but what if what she remembers isn’t what happened? What if during the course of her therapy to get over this dreadful incident while a teen she was hypnotised and the process has altered her memory? Stranger things have happened.
Now here is my old guy take on the matter. I think Ms Ford wanted to be abused by the Judge when they were both young, and he rejected her. I wouldn’t put it past a woman scorned to create a story so brazen that people believe it. Just today, I heard a story on the news about a mother who allowed her very young daughter to be raped by her boy friend. What will that little girl remember? I turned on an afternoon program MC’d by Maury Povich. A very pretty young white girl a little bit over weight had a baby and she asked Maury to find out which of nine different boys might be the father. She remembers all of them but which one really hit the jackpot? It will take the remainder of the week to learn if any of the nine guys she named is the father. Today, they eliminated two. The stuff of life happens daily and will continue to happen daily as long as Earth is filled with people.
When politics begins to establish new norms upon which to base our votes and those norms are based upon teen age curiosity about sex and the awful scar it leaves on the psyche of the offenders it is time to re-set the country. I don’t believe there is a woman alive who lived through her teen years without at least one story to tell about how she was groped by an over-sexed boy who thought that was the way you make it with a girl. That very kind of activity is most likely why marriage was invented. Set the rule, want some sex, get married and the world opens for you at least with the woman you chose. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. In my day it mostly worked. Many of my friends met and married when they left high school and they are still together sixty-five years later.
When I was young, there was no such thing as a legal pre-nuptial agreement except the vows one took at the altar. After my first wife set me free by leaving (she died) I got married a second time, but not without intense pressure from my lawyer to have my new wife sign a pre-nuptial agreement. I argued that we wouldn’t need such a document. He insisted, and we went to a family lawyer to discuss our views. We married without a pre-nup, but we both spoke the vows of “till death do us part.”
All I can say in closing is that Ms Blasey-Ford is one screwed up lady, and she has opted to make the Judge into one screwed up guy.
