Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Mom,

I appreciated your email of support and I think that posting my response to your email will help me to work through some stuff and explain it to you and DB...

I know that I can trust you and that you love me. I'm struggling with feelings that are so deeply buried that I'm surprised by them when the come up. I never had the chance to grow up and away from Daddy in the way I did with you when I was a teenager. I think that's why I still idolize him in the way a child does. I'm still a child in my heart when it comes to thinking about Daddy--I still feel very child like feelings for him and his presence in my childhood. That's one of the reasons I think I'm having such a hard time letting all of this go. I knew I was taking a risk putting some of my thoughts and feelings out there for all (mostly you and DB!) to see, but I have such a hard time talking about all of this in person. I think the added layer of a blog or email makes it a bit easier for me.

I also worry A LOT that what I'm feeling will hurt you and so that's another reason why it's so hard to talk about it in person--I can barely cope with my own feelings that the idea of having to cope with what I imagine yours would be is scary. I know that doesn't give you much credit for having already grieved and being much further ahead than me, but, the pre-teen me is still worried about upsetting you. I know that it's not my job to protect you, but I'm still very aware that you lost your childhood sweetheart--the love of your life. If Daddy was the love of my childhood life, I can only imagine how much more you loved him!


Unfortunately, taking my pain away to a metaphorical (and sometimes actual) closet to cope with has been the way I've coped for years. I think our family coped with our stunned feelings that way--were all in our little corners feeling pain and not knowing how to find comfort in each other. I feel very sad about that, but I don't yet have the skills to find comfort in anyone else right now. That's one of the things I'm working on in therapy--how much comfort can I tolerate from anyone else. It seems silly to say out loud, but it's a big thing right now for me to let someone else attempt to comfort me with a tissue, or a kind word or a hug.

I think this struggle is as hard now as it would have been then, but now I have a third party to help me through it--someone for whom the burden of my feelings isn't so personal. I also have the added benefit of adult perspective to help me through. Thanks for writing to me and I love you very much! Thank you for listening/reading and not judging me and my feelings.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

1976

As I was driving one day a couple of weeks ago, a radio announcer mentioned a year--1981 or something. Immediately I referenced this date with the year Daddy died. At that moment, I became aware that I always--and I mean always--use 1976 as a pivot point when determining how long ago something happened.

I have many other dates from which to choose: my birth date, the date I graduated from HS, my wedding date, my child's birth year... yet 1976 is the year I automatically think about when determining a period of time. I know why this is so. I have thought of myself as a girl whose father died for the past 32 years. I am always aware of how many years it has been since Daddy died.

As I had this automatic thought, my second thought was that I needed to find different ways to reference the passage of time. I had very mixed feelings about this realization. I felt a mixture of sorrow and relief. On the one hand, using 1976 is something I'm very used to and it's comfortable. It also serves to remind me that Daddy is dead and I have spent 32 years loyal to his memory. To stop referencing his death strikes me as disloyal to his memory.

On the other hand, by using this date I'm continually reinforcing the "I'm a girl whose father is dead" thought. This thought is in direct conflict with my efforts to grieve and become healthier. And, I can't believe that the father that knew me and loved me would want me to be miserable--this is not honoring his memory. The relief I felt was one of being set free from the burden of keeping such a strict vigil to the memory of Daddy.

This is the path I'm on: to grieve and to set myself (and my poor father!) free from the rigid thoughts I've used since I was 11 to cope with Daddy's death. As I mentioned in a previous post, this is truly hard for me. I don't have the one person I felt totally comfortable with, Daddy, to help me through it. Oh, the irony! Well, if I've been strong enough to repress my feelings and create an elaborate thought process for which I've built a life, I'm strong enough to work through these feelings and thoughts and come out healthier and with more understanding of myself and this truly tragic and defining event in my life. I have faith that I can, with help!, do this. I don't know what the paths through this journey will be, but I do know that I'll be a happier, more content, more accepting ME when I'm on the other side.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

How Do You Feel Today?

My mother and brother left today after a 4 day visit with us for Christmas. We had a great time together, and we rarely get to spend this much time at one visit. After they left this morning, my daughter was very sad. She looked distressed and when I asked her what was wrong she told me she missed her Nana and Uncle. As she was crying in my lap, she told me that she felt like something was missing--Nana and Uncle's leaving left a piece missing in the house.

As I held my daughter while she cried and talked to me about how she was feeling, I had a parallel thought that I need to comfort myself the way I do with her. I make a very conscious and deliberate decision each time she is experiencing any emotion to support her through it. To be there for her; not to try to fix it, but to let her FEEL it in a safe, loving and supportive way.

Even before I entered therapy and discovered that I had a very hard time feeling anything but ennui, depression, anger, frustration, and impatience with my feelings, I knew that I needed to help my daughter to grow up emotionally healthier than I did. It is so fascinating to learn what helping her is teaching me. I am by no means as well versed as she is in handling her emotions!

I'm spending quite a bit of time in therapy, and in my life outside the hour of therapy every two weeks, trying to identify what I am feeling. Once I recognize what I'm feeling, I'm working very hard on just feeling them--accepting that they are a part of me. As I think back over the past few months of this practice, I have to laugh at how limited my vocabulary was--and how basic my feelings were. Most of the feelings I could identify were sadness, anger, frustration and rage. Shortly after that, the feeling and label for "disappointment" became part of my repertoire. It was soon after that my therapist found a sheet of line drawn faces that showed and labeled about 70 emotions. This has been so helpful to me!

For me, it was (and still is) easiest to feel sad or feel nothing after my father died. Even sadness was pushed away in favor of closing myself off from all emotions. When you've spent a lot of time (like 30 years!) spending most of your time pushing away how you are feeling, it isn't very long before you can't identify all those feelings you haven't been feeling!

Much of my depression is the result of not being able to identify and accept my feelings. I admit that this may seem ridiculous for some people to understand. You ask, "What's so hard about knowing what's going on in your head?" Feelings are scary when you don't know how you'll react, when you haven't given yourself the opportunity to practice them. Happiness, anger and grief can feel really weird if you're not experienced with it. And for me, happiness and emotions of that ilk felt disloyal to my father who had just (or 5 or 10 or 30 years later) died.

I've recently joked that it is much easier to just not feel anything--I'm very good at that! It's exhausting identifying and experiencing emotions and I'm not really good at it yet! But I am committed to this process and to the process of grieving in a fuller way than I ever have before. If that means crying jags because I'll never have Daddy back or incredible rage at the unfairness of it all, that's what it means.

I'm so grateful to have a very supportive husband and the ability to afford therapy and medication to help me stay stable and able to work through these feelings. I'm also blessed to have a daughter to help show me the way to my feelings.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Christmas...

...doesn't usually make me sadder than usual. On the contrary, I have very fond memories of Christmas as a child. It's these memories that can help me through some rough times, but my focus this year is on inviting Daddy to be present with me.

I wish with all my heart that he could come back; that we could go back before he got sick and died. I wish I could have lived my life with him. In person. In real, living flesh. I wish I could have spent my teenaged years fighting with him to become a young woman instead of spending them shut down so that I wouldn't feel the pain of his not being with me.

The 11 year old in me still wishes he would come back. She still wishes that it had been someone else's Daddy that died. She still can't understand why he got sick and medicine couldn't help him. She still feels the deep, soul-wrenching pain that came when he died. She felt her heart break the day she walked home from school and KNEW at the first footstep onto the driveway that he was dead. She--I--still wants him back.

My grown up self understands that Daddy can't come back to me. I understand that what happened happened and it was rando--or maybe not. Whether his illness and death was random or fate or an opportunity for me to learn something in this life, he--his body, his words of wisdom, his jokes, his terrific back scratches--is gone.

What is not gone are my memories and my sense that Daddy is watching over me even now. He's proud of me. He wishes he could be with me. He does not want me to suffer the way I have been. I want to hear from him though, not in a seance kind of way, but I want to feel his presence in my life.

So, I'm inviting him in. I'm inviting him to be with me as I go about my daily business. I'm opening my heart to him again. I don't know what will happen or how I'll feel or even IF I feel anything. But, I want the possibility, and, I want to heal that tear in my heart.

Why I am here, redux

While I wonder if anyone really cares about my process of grief, I figure, my family might be interested. Others might be as well, so here I am.

I've often wanted to meet and talk with other adults who lost a parent when they were old enough to remember the parent, but young enough to have not really been able to process the loss (i.e. grieve). I was 11 years old.

I feel very alone in my experiences and, with the exception of my husband who lost his father when he was in college, have never met anyone whose parent died when they were young. At this point, no one I know, except for my family members, knew my father. At times, this makes me so sad and I wish so much that my husband and child, especially, could have met him.

I'll be posting somewhat regularly on this blog as I work through the grief that I held deep inside of me for the past 32 years. I'll explore why I did this; what my feelings were and are, and anything else that I feel is relevant.

Comments are welcome, but please remember that I want this to be a space that is safe and caring and I will delete comments that I believe are hurtful or don't serve any useful purpose in this discussion here.

DLG