I am so full of it. Who am I kidding? Last night I wrote about facing grief on my terms. Well, that's a bunch of crap. There are no terms, mine or otherwise. I didn't think after 119 days I could still break down so completely, but last night I was once again sobbing. Thank God my husband was home to hold me, otherwise I think I would have literally ripped in two. After I regained some semblance of composure, I thought about the one time I remember seeing my mother grieve openly. It was 1973, Fountain, CO, at Roby Ranch, the home of my grandfather, who had just passed away. I've already mentioned how Mom wasn't raised by him, but after she married my dad they corresponded, and he usually came out by bus to visit us every Christmas. He died suddenly of a heart attack that year while walking down the streets of Colorado Springs so Mom didn't get the chance to say, "Good-bye," like we did w/ her. She stood in her father's living room sobbing as she looked through his belongings. I was nine, and I remember wanting to go to her to comfort her, but Dad stopped me and told me she needed some time to herself. I hope it's what she wanted and not what he thought she needed, but I think I needed to openly grieve w/ her. If our parents teach us how to deal w/ other difficulties, then they should also teach us how to mourn....that it's okay to cry the minute we lose someone as well as the next day, the next month, the next year, and every day, month, and year after that.
Six years ago after having a brain aneurysm coiled and part of my left kidney removed due to a malignant tumor (I think I've mentioned all this before), I had some type of an "episode" that sent me to intensive care w/ electrodes on my head and monitors all around. At that point we were all really scared and unsure if I'd make it so when my daughters came into the room and saw me like that, they started to cry, which made me cry, or maybe I started, which caused them to follow suit. Mom was on my left side w/ the girls, and my sister was on the right side of my bed. Mom told me not to cry that I needed to be strong for my daughters. My sister disagreed w/ her, and said that I shouldn't be afraid to let my children see me cry. I think Mom always felt, from the time she was a little girl, that she had to be tough and strong, and that openly crying was a sign of weakness. I think her motto was, "Big girls don't cry" so I grew up thinking the same. I'm not suggesting crying my way through life, but I wonder if I cried less in private and more openly w/ my family that I'd be less stressed and therefore less likely to have these meltdowns. But then again, I did start tonight's post saying that I'm full of crap so what do I know?
I guess what I do know is that I'm starting to have more hours of happiness than I do of sadness, and maybe I should start writing more about that. You know, the happiness-breeds-happiness concept. I guess I've felt like if I talked about the happy parts of my life, I'd somehow seem like I wasn't in mourning. I still wonder when people see me laughing and having fun if they think I'm doing my mother an injustice. Mom was a happy person, at least she gave every outward appearance of it since I rarely saw her cry, so I know she'd want me to be happy. In fact, now that I think of it, that's how she usually ended every telephone conversation when I was first living on my own. I need to take her advice. "Be happy, Mari."
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