The Hiccups
Katherine wrote this last night about death. It resonates with me because it’s absolutely the truth written eloquently.
It goes like this, though, the way death sits with you like the hiccups. You think it’s not bothering you anymore and you have moved past it, and then you start with a wee break and you’re gone again. Those five stages of Elizabeth Kubler Ross are very neat and antiseptic and make you feel like you can spreadsheet the whole thing when your turn comes–and your turn is coming–but it doesn’t work like that. There is no “Okay I had denial, now let’s bargain for awhile.” After the first few days when you realise that nothing is quite the same you are sort of normalish and then angerbargainingdenialgrief come burbling out at the oddest times. No amount of scaring it away, of drinking water while standing on your head, makes it any easier.
Grief comes is so many ways, but it’s that little moment that finds you and doesn’t let you get away with anything. It’s like momentarily being blinded.
She’s right. When my first hubs died unexpectedly in ‘04 I went straight into anger. I was so mad for so long that I really couldn’t process anything I needed to in order to start moving. It took 6 mos. of anger before I realized that I needed help and went into therapy. That ended up being the key for the catharsis that moved me on into the other phases, but they never followed that neat little pattern. I still have times that all of the “stuff” comes rushing back, and I probably always will. I remarried in 2007 and luckily the Bob is the type that understands and accepts the person who was in my life before. I look at my life now as two lives really – before Oct. 2004 and after. Neither of them is better, they are just different. Very different. I learned that inside I am much stronger than I ever thought I was. I learned that my priorities were very much fouled up. Death, in short, taught me about life. I wish there had been a less traumatic way to learn the lessons, but there wasn’t. Now, it is what it is and I go on. He would have wanted that, but more importantly I want that. I am the survivor. That’s what I do.
Thanks for sharing your story, Missy.
You’re right. I think we have different phases. A woman I know lost her husband about ten years ago unexpectedly and she says the same thing. She had one life, now she has another.
Life is precious. It’s odd that I have to be reminded of this constantly.