Grief

 My husband passed away in my arms. He had been in hospital for a little over a month. The end was fast and in retrospect, when he understood that he wasn't going to recover, when he lost hope, he was ready to die.

There was no specific conversation around saying 'goodbye' to one another. However, in many ways that goodbye took place in specific moments starting on the Thursday and ending on Sunday evening. I had been in the city and arrived at the hospital on the edge of the city late lunch time. He was asleep and I hovered about the room until he became aware of my presence and opened his eyes.

He immediately, and for the first time, took out of the bed sheets his right arm. He had had a stroke and was paralyzed down the left side of his body. He brought his hand up to meet my hand and together, holding holds, he said, 'I missed you.'

'I won't leave again,' I told him. Later in the evening I told him I was going home by Uber to gather some things, and I would be back in an hour.

When I arrived back, he was asleep but the nurse on duty told me that she had told him where I had gone and that I would be back soon. She had asked him where he was, and he had correctly told her where he was. This was the first time he could do that. Up until then he had been on a plane, in another country, in Indonesia. He had been anywhere and everywhere except that hospital.

In fact, I had slept with him on a mattress on the floor for several days prior to this but I had caught a virus in there and was coughing and very unwell, so I had gone home to sleep in my bed, returning to the hospital each day by tram to spend the day with him.

Now, I was there until the end.

I think it was Friday when I climbed into bed with him. I had to wiggle into the smallest space beside him so that I didn't hurt him. He woke. It was very difficult for him to form words, but I clearly heard him say,

'I love you so much.'

And then he said, 'You are strong'.

Knowing that all he could do at this point was to reassure me that I would be all right on my own, that's what he said. That's my interpretation.

Everyone came to say goodbye. Of course. My daughter discharged herself early from having her daughter to show the babe to her father. We smothered him with love in every way we knew how. I told him that only good men get this much love.  I never stopped touching him, massaging his neck, holding his hand.

When the children had said their final goodbyes, we were left in the room alone until the nurses came to change his position. He stopped breathing and then he started breathing again and then I held him in my arms.

'I love you, I love you. I love you' I kept saying as he gasped, took his final breath and passed away.

Grief is an extraordinary thing. We gave him the best send off. We all talked about him in the church - me first, his children, his six siblings. It was a glorious send off as the coffin was lifted from the church to the bagpiper playing 'Scotland the Brave'.

At first, I thought I would get through this all right. Feelings were under control, until they weren't, until the loss was felt over the past few days, the enormity of it.

He was my Protector. My love. My life.

I know he would want me to be all right, for us to all be all right. And we shall be. My grief ebbs and flows. Today I am a mess, a sobbing mess, but it feels right to really feel into it. To acknowledge the loss. He was my soulmate by just shy of 50 years and I miss him sorely. This is love. This is what it is to be human.

Anticipatory Grief

 I think about being in a storm, not quite sure where you are or what's the correct direction; what, in fact, to do.

I think about the advice, told in so many ways and by so many people, not to focus on the past or worry about the future, but simply to focus on the present moment.

I remind myself that control is an illusion and that life will play out regardless of my input. I can control all sorts of little outcomes but the big outcomes, other people's decisions, for example, are well beyond my control.

I think the tough part for me is not knowing, are we going backwards or forwards?

For the vast majority of people with cancer, there is a team who supports. The person may not take all the advice offered by them, but overall, there's a strategy in place, often a cocktail of strategies, and thus there is a plan. 

My husband has tended towards being a lone ranger in so many capacities and his cancer journey is no different. He doesn't want me at the appointments with the oncologist - says the guy is too dark and there is no upside in me hearing what he has to say - and thus I don't have the opportunity to hear what he has to offer.

I find myself listening for the bits and pieces of information offered to me, trying to make sense of them, sort of attempting to put them together to see if I can make a tapestry. 

I cannot honestly say if I know or even think, if he is going forwards or backwards because the information I have is too disparate and even contradictory.

I have noticed that I am feeling numb about it all, perhaps I am not sitting with any story that could or would ground me. I mentioned this to AI and the response was that numbness is to be expected, a way of coping. I suppose it is. If you don't have the data what else is there to do?

I think when it 'all falls apart' there's a solace and a strength that comes from a return to meditation and to the sense of equanimity in meditation. When I was guiding meditation groups, I almost always used the imagery of taking two steps back from the mind so you could observe it more clearly. This immediately puts one in the seat of the witness and in that seat the mind quite naturally starts to slow a bit. You can see the thought(s), almost like picking something up in your hand. 

In fact, it occurred to me just now, it's a companionable thing to do too. There's you, the compassionate observer, and there's the mind, dancing not too graciously.

When I was in Bali last year, the love meditation my husband and I did in a group had a very lasting impression on me. If I need comfort I go back to that room in my mind. We were invited to feel into the deepest love we had for another person and then, with the most divine music playing, to take that love and give it to ourselves. This was a magical moment for me and so I repeat it alone as required. I pour the love inside myself, like taking a jug of healing water and pouring it over my body.

It's a strange walk, the cancer experience, both for the person with cancer and the person accompanying the person with cancer. AI called it 'anticipatory grief' and encouraged me to reach out to a group of people going through a similar experience. I will think about it.

Purpose

 Due to some hypnotic work of recent times, I have felt calm, in spite of the turbulence, both close and far. There's no doubt that the trances worked for me and I know this is very special work because I hear hypnotists on the Internet in various places like Spotify and it does nothing.

Even so, I do have my moments when my world can feel like it is blowing up. My husband will return home from seeing his oncologist. He speaks to me matter of factly, and I sit there as his active listener. But last evening there came a moment when my body reacted in a way that I had to notice. I suppose you would call it a panic attack.

"Can I ask you to pause for a moment? My body is overloaded."

In fact, it didn't last long, and I was soon breathing freely again. I think by acknowledging the bodily reaction and giving it some attention, things settled down.

I am not sure whether to call it 'anticipatory grief', or catastrophic thinking or something else, but maybe it's just a natural thing to be a bit panicked about difficult news.

I am proud of the way my husband handles his cancer. If one avenue closes, he simply looks for a new route, all the while staying positive and believing that he can make a difference to the outcome. This makes it much easier for me than for many other spouses.

He is also remarkable in the way that he continues to enjoy all the little joys of life. I had moved the Fiddle Fig to the front of the house where it gets more light. He noticed the abundantly healthy new growth this morning and was genuinely excited about seeing the progress of the plant. He is an infectiously positive person. He has fallen too many times to count, got up and dusted himself off just as many times.

My life, our lives, may well have changed forever. My husband said he would like to return to our hotel in Bali. This is an ideal destination for a holiday because we can go to the Pyramids of Chi for meditations every day if we choose. I started to make arrangements, considered dates and so forth. He was keen but at the same time he sees the oncologist again in six weeks and he may wish to begin a new treatment that requires him being here. Scheduling something has become something outside of our control.

In the meantime, we work away at putting our lives in place. He's actually expanding his business rather than starting to close it down and this is in line with the fact that he has never thought the idea of retirement is for him.

I am completely aware that my life has always and will always spin around my husband. It's the relationship, our dynamic; the way that suits us both. There is no changing this.

There's a bit of a trick they use in psychology, in couples therapy, where they might get one of you to do the opposite of where they want you to go ultimately. That's what happened to me a while back. My submission was removed (I am here to tell you they can do that!). 

When I finally accepted that this is what had happened to me, not a trick of the mind, but absolutely a state of mind where I no longer had access to even my erotic fantasies, I screamed bloody murder. I did not go quietly into that good night. My submission is so very much an embodied and enduring part of me that I was rageful about it, until it was returned to me, at a deeper level. Then, I was fine.

I have had some pretty confusing and confronting situations over my life, but nothing was quite so confronting as those ten weeks when I felt like what maybe a regular girl feels like. No, it was worse than that. It felt like I was in a desert without water supply.

There's another trick of the psychology trade where they might put the work into creating change in the quiet one (comparatively quiet, that is). That also happened to me, this time at my request. When I changed, everything changed. Somebody has to be willing to stand up and say, 'I can do this. Choose me.' That's how a 'system', a marriage, can evolve.

In a few days it is Mother's Day here and I am fortunate to say that I have four children of which I am immensely proud and five divine dear grandchildren. 

Over the past few years, I have learned to let judgment go; to just consider that we are all doing our best, except the manipulators, thieves and cheats. They need to do better.

My purpose has been to love; nothing more, nothing less. I do what I do with that intention, knowing that to grieve is to love. They come to us cap in hand. That's the journey. That's the human experience. The sooner we understand this, the better.

Grief and sadness

 Do you ever wonder how someone really feels about you? Do you ever find yourself thinking someone's behavior is a little strange, and put some judgment around that?

We can play ducks and drakes with someone for years, barely giving them a hint that we like them, or care about them or would miss them if they vanished.

I wonder why that is. We all have our reasons, but I am guessing it is often about not wanting to be embarrassed, or rejected, or scorned.

Maybe there's good evidence to the fact that they actually like you, but do they like you enough to do only something, but not enough to do something else. 

You are caught in the cross hairs. What does it all mean??

A dominant man, as in a really dominant man, dominant down to his bones, has, as far as I can tell, an agenda. It might be naughty, it might be nice; it might be to help, it might be to please themselves. 

The thing is they don't share their agendas really, so you don't really know what's behind the facade.

You know, you have all the terminology. 'Good girl' What does that even mean? That you pleased them? That you are going along with the unsaid plan? That you don't raise objections?

It can get even more obtuse. 'Be your best self'. 'Operate for your highest good'.

I looked that one up, the last one, and nobody can define that one, because it means something specific to each person, if they have thought about it at all.

I'm not criticizing exactly, but these unsaid plans seem to be based around change, maybe transformation. On one level, it's all good, but what if the limitations of the humble man are also those of the dominant? Just maybe he doesn't have the power to alter the Universe's plan. Maybe, there isn't a win: win in this scenario.

I like it right here in the present moment, one simple breath at a time: expecting nothing. There's nothing to hope for, to wish for, to adjust and adapt. It's just what is. It's me as the observer, simply noticing.

There's all this striving you can do in the hope of wonderful outcomes, or there's no striving in particular, apart from what one really must do. You decide.

As I wrote that last line I realized, 'ah yes, that's the submissive's sweet spot.' Just sit right here and let it all play out. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go.

David, my dear blog friend David, who passed on some years ago, once said to me about submission, 'you give everything up and you see what you get back'.

I'd be happy with that deal except that there are times as a submissive when it hurts too much. I mean it hurts too much when the connection is lost or supposedly requires severing for a time.

There's been a lot of severing over time. I never knew there could be quite so much of it.

I heard an explanation of grief recently. It never goes away they said but if your life is a big circle and the grief starts off as nearly as big a circle as your life, over time the circle will become smaller. It will find its place in your life and in that way, whilst you will always have the grief, it will be more comfortable, and you'll manage better.

I think I prefer this idea. You hear a knock at your door. You answer it. 

'Ah grief, you're back, old friend. Please do come in and sit with me for a while. Turns out it is one of those days for you to visit.'

In a while, you will walk grief to the door and thank her for coming, knowing that she will return another day.

'Thank you for coming, grief. I know you need to do this, and I won't shun you no matter how many times you need to visit. Take care. Goodbye for now.'

A sad day rolls over me. I accept it. This is the way it is for we humans. 

'

Grief

 Grief, as we now know has various stages, not necessarily linear. When I first heard the news D had died, there was no 'I can't believe it' stage for me. I think that came a day or two later, when I wrote those words to his sister, 'I still can't quite believe it.' No, immediately, I knew it was absolutely true. I was gutted; quietly emotional; reduced to a flood of tears.

Of course, like so many other thousands of people who are or have been in grief, I played the 'if only' game with myself. If only I had been in touch on chat in the last few months; if only I had been more persistent, more loving. I finally realized that I don't have and never did have that sort of control. This sort of thinking and feeling is like the bargaining stage.

There was a bit of anger in the mix. Why couldn't he have taken better care of himself? I had tried in any number of ways to achieve that goal. Grief has a component of desire for something to happen, so I wasn't without some desire, but protected from that physical expectation that usually associates grief.

What I didn't have to contend with, as his partner now has to do, is the expectation that he would walk through the door sometime soon. I only had to contend with the fact that he would never answer my final email to him; that our chats were now over forever.

Depression is another stage of grief and I suppose my waking at odd times in the night is associated with that stage. I think it's all part of the acceptance stage and trying to make sense of these things that happen. In the right circumstances he had another fifty years to live, to love, and to achieve more great things for the communities he had served to date.

Although it hasn't been a long time since his death, I have in large part accepted what happened. I think I had some time to prepare for this knowing what I knew for some time. I think, and I am trying to pry open the door of my subconscious here, it is why I didn't communicate so often in these past few months; I expected it and found it too painful to watch too closely. I wanted to believe the song I had been sung; that all was well and I could do that better with some distance.

So, my grieving is also about giving myself some self-compassion. I tried valiantly to protect and I failed. But, I did try and I did care. I find myself with profound compassion for those professional people who work with people who have experienced terrible things.

A final stage of grief has been added to the model of the five stages of grief and that is meaning. There is no meaning in his death but there was great meaning in his life. He loved and was loved by a great many people. He was frustrating at times, bloody stubborn in moments, but he was a very lovable character who vehemently worked to make the world a better place. His time on this Earth had great meaning for many, many people, including me.

He was someone who was tolerant of difference and deeply caring of people; particularly those underprivileged. I once told him it seemed he was trying to carry the weight of the world and maybe he needed to take a rest. No, no, he said, there was too much work to do. The world had to be made a better place.

As his mother wrote, he was overcome by beautiful women. It wasn't easy for him to see the entirety of a woman because he was besotted with love; not necessarily romantic love, but the deep caring a compassionate woman could provide. Mostly, I think he felt safe with a caring woman of any age.

We both appreciated Ricky Gervais's 'After Life' and discussed it one day this year in quite a lot of detail. He wrote to me, 'Do you know the female character that sits with him (Tony) in the graveyard?' Yes, I did. 'She reminds me of you.' 'Oh?', I replied, though I had a fair idea what he was meaning. 'She listens to him and she cares about him. But she calls him on his bullshit too.'

Of course, I smiled. It meant a lot to me. My more strident comments didn't appear to be well received and I didn't make them often,but I carried on when I felt the need. This was his acknowledgment of them as a form of my care and it felt good to be seen in that way.

All he ever really wanted was peace. When I would ask him what he wanted, and I must have asked a half dozen times over the years, it was always the same; just the one word, 'peace'.

May his ashes fertilize the landscape where he grew up. May he find the peace he so richly deserves

Finding peace

Whilst I was at the retreat I had several conversations with Deirdre. She is a 72 year old woman who has had more to bear than most of us. She lost two daughters in separate accidents and her surviving daughter has a severe intellectual disability. Recently, a space became available in a good home for her and she has had the added emotional difficulty of placing her only surviving daughter there after a lifetime of looking after her twenty-four hours a day. Her husband divorced her many years ago but there relationship is reasonably amicable. He owns the home in which she lives and checks up on her, so that's a good thing.

A few years ago Deirdre developed cancer of the pelvic or stomach region. I was happy to let her talk to me and I didn't want to delve too far into asking questions. She wanted to heal the situation herself and at this time she is cancer free. She meditates, has a simple but content lifestyle in a beautiful and temperate area of Australia. She lost considerable weight when diagnosed and is now slim. She watches carefully what she eats - no dairy or meat or sugar - and she takes handfuls of supplements.

I noticed that Deirdre was able to tell me her story almost as if it had happened to someone else. She is a positive person, enjoys her life and her routines. The retreat may not have been the best idea for her. She wondered if she had done the right thing, the stress of meeting planes and buses, and of leaving her lovely weather and daily activities - a  morning walk to the marina and a coffee made by a woman who welcomes her and knows her well - for heavy rain and cloud in New Zealand.

It went through my head, 'but how do you live that life and not come out demented?' But, she'd done it. She was a pleasure to talk to and although she was clearly a bit anxious out of her milieu, she was coping fine.

One day, she had a one on one psychotherapy session and after that, she wasn't herself. She told me it had been a mistake.  'Oh?' I offered. 'She wanted to go back to the deaths of the girls. She said that I was holding onto trauma. But, why dig up the past like that? I feel so upset now,' she said.

It's a conversation that stayed with me. I wondered myself, was it indeed such a good idea to go back to the past and dig it all up? I get where the therapist was coming from. We can hold onto emotional pain in our bodies and we do need to process it all, but this was decades ago that these accidents happened. Deirdre was living her life on her own terms. She didn't want to return to the grief of the past and I couldn't blame her for feeling that way. She wasn't in denial about how hard it had been. She just didn't want to relive it in this way.

I listened to a podcast this morning that reminded me of this conversation. Catherine Ingram made the point, why do we need to rummage through the trash of our past over and over? Why not see those unpleasant thoughts as thoughts that will come and go, not requiring us to hold on to any attachment to them? Recognize them, notice them, but not necessarily allow them to disrupt our peace of mind; to derail us from having a relatively tranquil day?

That Deirdre has had a difficult life is most likely picked up by those who interact with her. She is an old looking 72 year old and she grumbles about little things like a much older person. But, given the circumstances of her life she is doing amazingly well.

I can't say that the retreat was a particularly worthwhile experience for her. She had sorted out her life, created a life where her peace of mind was as intact as it was ever going to be. She was a survivor on her own terms.

This leads me to tell you a little about a surgeon who attended the retreat and was deeply curious to learn. He had endured physical pain and depression and he saw the week as an opportunity to learn another way to approach his circumstances. Over the week he shared more and more with me and towards the end he asked me if he should teach his wife about meditation and the spiritual life. He shared that she was a naturally happy and optimistic person, enjoyed spending time in nature, with the children and animals. Nothing really could bring her down.

'Why bother?' I said. 'She has the natural gift of happiness. Let her be.' He nodded his head in agreement.

If you are born with a nature such that you don't particularly like your mind, wouldn't have chosen it, aren't happy about the way it over thinks and stresses, you're more likely to go looking for answers to the dilemma. You might find that BDSM provides you respite, or dancing, or swimming, or meditating, or gardening, or making movies.

Notice when your mind is at peace. Repeat often. There is no one right way.

Perfectionism

I'm not at all sure that I am or ever was representative of women of this modern era. There is a certain blitheness about the way I go about life. In my younger days I was fairly 'live and let live' in my disposition towards others, so although I noted certain characteristics inconsistent with the way I'd do things, I wasn't particularly troubled by them. If it was wildly outside what I considered fair or reasonable I might question something perhaps, but I was in no way demanding. To use other terms, I was what is considered  as without boundaries.

Having said that, I remember telling my husband off one time in my mid twenties when I'd been waiting at the appointed spot for considerable time; a spot that wasn't comfortable to be waiting in. His sense of time was something that I had difficulty understanding. He'd say that he'd be a couple of hours when in reality he needed more like a couple of days. Or, he'd say he was coming to bed "soon" and rock up in the wee small hours of the night. He often underestimated the time it took to do something and even though he could give assurances freely that he could get something done for me, he'd struggle to tear himself away from the project at hand, or the thing that held his interest. When he did attend to the task it seemed to take an endless amount of time, for only a perfect job was satisfactory in his eyes.

The washing of the dishes was a strange affair. When we married he rushed out to buy a dishwasher, as if the lack of a dishwasher somehow implied that he had some unwanted involvement in the chore. The event stood out because making decisions was something that he often labored over for fear of making the wrong decision. When he occasionally did do the dishes it reminded me of a surgeon preparing for heart surgery. It seemed a job done with meticulous care and attention. My attempts felt sloppy in comparison, as was my packing of the dishwasher apparently for he often noted that something hadn't been done quite right.

It soon became clear that his relationship with workmen wasn't a happy one. Invariably he found fault in their attempts and he was much happier doing it himself, even if it might take a decade longer. He'd assure me we'd saved a fortune, though, as you might imagine, I  didn't see it that way. Recently an oven sat in the middle of the kitchen for 9 months as he got his head around installing it and framing it in the absolutely right way.

You'd be correct if you assumed that this has caused me a great deal of frustration over the decades. Trying to explain my frustration to him is like talking to someone from another planet. It simply doesn't compute. What matters is his sense of the fitness of things and this is determined through his own particular lens of perfectionism and obsessiveness.

Things reached a head several years ago when I found myself having the occasional conniption. I think the frustration had built to such a level that I demanded that he understand what he was doing to me. He'd apologize that he'd upset me, but then he'd talk me around to seeing things from his point of view. There was no winning this war. There was no change of perspective to be had; no recognition that he was sending his wife mad.

Naturally, I reached a point where I researched this dilemma and bit by bit I filled in the dots and created an accurate picture of what was going on. Then, I looked for solutions. Modern psychology was brutally honest with me. The person to change was me because I was the person who was able to change.

I needed boundaries. I need to express my feelings in particular ways and/or state what I needed at the particular time and in a direct but neutral way. I needed to be proactive. I needed to buy out of circular arguments. I needed to do things for myself where possible. I needed to keep in close communication and enjoy time together with him, but I also needed to understand that I had to be a free agent; to find joy in ways other than in the ways that I had intended and expected when I agreed to his marital proposal; to any marital proposal.

To my eyes, his priorities would often seem misplaced, but these were my eyes, and the common theme that remains to this day is that he was doing things in a completely necessary way and at a depth of detail that was absolutely essential for our benefit. If the need for a perfect outcome meant that the outcome was delayed, perhaps permanently, then this was the way it was.

It became a process of wrapping my head around the fact that there would be little meeting of the ways, but rather that I learn to 'let go' of certain expectations of life, of a certain living standard, of certain marital expectations, and instead focus on other ways to be  a happy, stable and fulfilled human being.

This is the face of perfectionism and of being married to a person with an obsessive-compulsive, anal retentive, perfectionist personality. If someone told me ahead of time the rocky road ahead, well, I'd have been a fool to do anything else than to find another highway. But, that's rarely the way it works out. We discover our partner's traits as we progress down the road and after the time it is easy to do a U turn.

The  five stages of grieving as outlined by Kubler-Ross are accurate; not necessarily experienced in the same order as the next person, but still, we do go through all the stages, and complete the cycle at the stage of acceptance. I have learned to accept that no change will take place. I've adapted my life, my mindset and my pursuit of happiness around it. I am at peace. I am loved, and happy. I live a good life even when, to the fly on the wall, it can look pretty darn odd. It is what it is. Come hell or high water, a perfectionist, full of love as he may be for his wife, and who attempts to make up for his oddities in other ways, is unable to change.

Remembering

A few days ago I had the sad task of telling my brother, currently living on the other side of the world, that our Uncle, my mother's brother had passed away. I knew he'd be sad. Thirty-six hours passed and  I received a beautiful email, telling me stories of their exploits together when he was just a boy, stories that I hadn't heard before. The tendency was for my brother to spend time with his Uncle whilst I spent time with my mother's sister and mother. I hadn't thought about this much until now, but that's the way it happened.  I'm currently seeing if I can read his message at the Service because it tells the beautiful story of a deeply caring and fun loving man and the impact he had on his young nephew.

As fate would have it my brother was able to see the very good, fantastical and even magical aspect of his Uncle, whilst a few of his many children only saw the bad and stayed away from him in the last years of his life. I didn't see him often myself but my mother remained a wonderful Sister until his dying moments and I often tagged along with her for a visit or he tagged along with my mother for a visit when she came to see me. He was a good man, his heart was in the right place and there's no doubt that he was a natural oral storyteller. His son is a very famous playwright. We all have, on my mother's side, what my father referred to as "the gift of the gab" in some measure or another.

There is so much I could say at this time but blog posts are meant to be pithy, aren't they, so let me get to the point. After death, there's nothing but a void. There are no last chances, no more opportunities to make the peace, to say what you should have said years before, to be kind, to care, to say goodbye. We are here and then we are gone.Take your opportunities whilst you have them and use them well.

I am very pleased to say that my Uncle's youngest daughter has been very kind in the past year or so and she held an 85th birthday party for him and many of his children and siblings came to that; not all. There were a few notable absences, but this is life. We make our decisions and we must live with them.

He wasn't a particularly notable person - a businessman, a father and a husband who always did his best - but he made the most of every situation, thought the best of everyone and stayed positive in spite of enormous setbacks and difficulties.  My uncle once sent some stories of his younger days to his son, the famous one. He returned them, explaining as tactfully as he could I am sure, that they weren't stories but reminiscences. Of course, there is nothing to stop a good story teller like him making use of those memories and turning them into stories. Now that he has passed over, I have my fingers crossed that this is exactly what will happen to them.

Grief

Grief is tricky. We lost one of our puppies due to illness a few months ago and it was only a week or so ago that the thought occurred to me that I was coming out of my grief. I was in the park running along with the little girl and it struck me that I felt a lot less sad. I still think of him constantly, mind you, especially in the park where he took it upon himself to be my protector, but I was out there a bit more regularly. It felt good to be back on track with life.

Over the weekend, we had a few days away in the country; a blessed relief from the fast whirl of life. Then, immediately back to expectations, responsibilities and a fast pace of life; the wild and woolly run up to the end of the year.

It didn't pass me by that I began the first day of the final term of the school year agitated. Little things. I didn't actually realize that my anxiety was evident until someone close to me pointed it out. There was perhaps a moment of defensiveness and then I saw it like he saw it: ANXIETY! DANGER! DANGER!

Registering it for what it was I took the necessary steps to aid myself and felt better. Got through Tuesday all right in the end. Wednesday, I did something that brings me pleasure but the self-esteem was down. It troubled me that I still wasn't on top of it. Why? No idea. I simply rode it out as best I could. It would pass soon.

Wednesday afternoon, I knew that something was wrong but I couldn't exactly put my finger on it. Thursday morning and it was clear that my son's anxiety was through the roof. He wasn't getting ready for school in the usual way and we sat there in his room and talked.

Was it about the English essay overdue? Maybe I could sit and talk him through it? No. No. It wasn't that, he said. He knew how to do them, he said. Got one back yesterday and got a very high score. He could have done it last night but he was too upset to do so. He'd talked with friends on the Internet about his feelings but it hadn't helped. He didn't know what it was.

Okay, I said, I'm going to hug you. He wrapped his arms around me as if holding on for dear life. The tears came in great sheets of grief.

"It''s B", he sobbed, "I miss him so much. "He was the best dog in the world."

"Grief has it's own logic, darling. I know. Just let it out."

I suggested he go back to sleep and he asked for the little girl to be with him. Soon he'll wake, shower, eat the breakfast I cook him and we'll be back on track.

There is an end to the stages of grief and we all, in our own good time, end up in the final stage: acceptance. There are good days and bad days and ultimately we accept and drive on. Such is life.