Permitted Grief - Part One

Today is a difficult day for me, it's the the first anniversary of the day that I was frantically trying to get to England, willing the miles to pass faster while I pleaded with whomever you plead with in these situations, all while desperately hoping that everything was in fact just a mistake and Vikki would actually be ok. It's easier to occupy your mind with such fantasies than it is to analyze the shock you've just had, or to let the pain get too big. We're British you know, stiff upper lip and all, brave face in public, etc. I wonder how many of us are actually emotionally damaged because of that one particular cultural directive. I know I am, but that is a another post all in itself. For this post I want to talk about how grief is regarded in our Canadian society. Mostly because I am struggling with so much grief of varying levels of pain, and I'm not sure where to start untangling everything.

I'm somewhat embarrassed about this state that I found myself in. I KNOW I am not supposed to feel shame for having a mental health crisis. I know that we SAY that mental health is important. I'm just worried that isn't really the truth. What will they think of me at work? When I go back, will I still be considered capable? Will this affect future promotions or opportunities? Will they see ME?

I asked my therapist what he would call my "state." He said he would call it a Major PTSD Depressive episode with Adjustment Disorder due to grief" but then he said "You are not your grief. I've known you for a long time, and I see YOU."

I don't know how many people actually see me. 

I can be honest with people, but I find that they don't actually want the truth. They want me to say "I'm fine," or "living the dream." My children know parts of my childhood were hard, but I wouldn't share the details with them. My husband knows some of the more intricate details, but I am loathe to burden him or add to his struggles with the demons inside of me. My best friend Dawn witnessed some of my childhood abuse, but she's been distant lately, and we are far apart. I know I can say anything to my therapist. I know these people are people who do see me. I try to craft whatever façade is needed for the other people I am interacting with. One of my first signs that I was going downhill should have been when I stopped doing this. I started saying things like "I'm not doing well," or "I feel sad." But these types of conversations make people feel uncomfortable and, in turn, their reactions increased my isolation. And I started noticing people would comment that I was always being so negative, rather than sit with me and ask me if they could help. Not everyone, mind you, I have some very supportive friends who love me despite of me being me. But this still leaves me trying to discern what amount of grief and grieving time is proper, and what types of grief are permitted. The answer should be all grief is valid, but we all know that's not the truth. 

People respond differently to the types of loss they experience, each loss is unique. But the way we respond to them is based on an unwritten societal hierarchy that defines how much someone should be upset and grieve, and for how long. It's stupid. I don't like using that word, but come on, why do we make our own lives harder in the name of society? Many cultures honour death and grief much better than we do. In Vietnam each death is mourned for a year, and there are certain rituals and points along the way where you still connect with your loved ones and your memories. Here, it feels like once a funeral is done, you should be over it. Back to work, smile, be productive and don't be a downer. Is it any wonder we bury our emotions until they are to large to contain? And that when it bursts, we break apart?

I guess it gives my therapist a job to do. Look at me, supporting my local businesses!

So one of my losses that still affect me quite a bit is when my dog died. Yes, I said my dog. Most people do not recognize grief from pet loss, so it's a very isolating journey. I got Luna as a puppy in BC the day after my brother's funeral. She changed my life. I don't have a PTSD dog, but she was always there when I needed her. She lived a long life, longer than what is normal for her breed. Luna blessed us for 15 years - her entire lifetime. My kids grew up with her. I am pretty sure she hung on so long because I was going through my Mom's drawn out death, and I needed her. I DID need her. That dog lived for so long she was blind and deaf by the end. We'd even scheduled an in home vet appointment so she could die with us in her home, but she rallied and we cancelled it. We did heap lots of attention and treats on her. But when her death came it was not a good death. It was very traumatizing for me. Something had happened in her brain, and she had siezures all the way to the emergency vet at 2am. It's not easy to hang on to a medium size dog having seizures, but I was not going to abandon her on this last final car ride, so I sat in the rear seat with her so she'd have room to move as needed. By the time we got to the vet, the pressure in her head was so much her eyes were bulging out of her head. I couldn't carry her into the vet because of the seizures, they had to bring a contraption to take her in on. We went straight to the back into a surgery room, but I KNEW this was the end. The vet dallied with his consult of my precious Luna, and my heart was breaking with each passing second. I told him to put her down, because I knew I'd already lost her and I couldn't bear to see her in anymore pain. He killed her right there, in my arms, on that operating table. 

She took part of me with her, all those times that she comforted me when it was just her and I. Our adventures together. The tears she would lick away. It's the same parts of me that everyone takes with them upon death - the memories of who I was in life with just that person, and the stories they had of me. It's hard to lose that, I am sure there is a grief term for that loss, but you are suddenly forever different. 

So my dog died. She was 15 years old, an age where no one has any sympathy for you, or they have a limited sympathy that is not really permitted to be longer than just that conversation. 

Because she was "just a dog" and I could "get another one."

But she wasn't just a dog. She was MY dog, and she came into my life at exactly the time I needed her to. She was born a street dog in Thailand, a descendant of the great Thai Ridgeback, and was in a live animal food market. To be food. A Canadian tourist saw them there and bought the whole litter. An animal rights organization in Thailand helped her get all the dogs to BC, where she took them to the SPCA for adoption. It was, by happenstance, the SPCA my best friend worked at, and she phoned me and told me she'd found the dog I needed. And she was right.

Luna died 5 years ago now. I didn't get a new dog. I didn't want any dog but Luna. Maybe the term is don't, because whenever I think of bringing a dog home my heart skips a beat and happily says "YES, lets bring Luna home!!!!"   

I still grieve the loss of my dog. But that's not actually a "permitted grief." I can't say to someone I am sad because my dog died ... 5 years ago. I have registered in a grief therapy program that starts in January, and on the website it says, specifically, pet loss is not a loss that can qualify you for the program. 

BUT IT'S STILL GRIEF. Honestly my grief journey with Luna's passing has been as real to me as any other loss I've had. So on the hierarchy of permitted grief, pets are at the bottom, only above the loss of a job, or relationship. So that's why I started Part One of Permitted Grief with the story of Luna.

                                                                       

All You Need Is Love

My Therapist gave me some homework to do before our next session. He said to read up on Attachment Injuries so I'd have the words to talk about what I need to talk about. 

So, what is childhood attachment injury?

Google tells me this: "Attachment trauma is a disruption in the important process of bonding between a baby or child and his or her primary caregiver. That trauma may be overt abuse or neglect, or it may be less obvious—lack of affection or response from the caregiver."

Ah, I see. 

You know, I would never have wished Mom's abuse to be directed at you; I probably actually consoled myself at points that if it was me, it wasn't you. But I don't understand why our childhoods were so different despite living in the same family and house. Mom loved you so much, and you loved her back. Mom would do, and did do, everything you ever asked for. I might still be a bit bitter of how she bought you a brand new car after I had worked to buy my first second hand car. But that's a post for another day. 

Your Mother was not the Mother I knew. Everyone loved your Mother. 

She was a different person to me; I never knew the Mom that you had. But I really wanted to. 

Despite opportunities to reconcile at times through my adult life, she took her reasons to the grave. After she died, and I was going through her stuff to clean up her apartment, letters from you to her, cards that people sent her... I finally realized that it was just me. There was no mental health diagnosis for me to understand or find solace in. My Mother just didn't love me. ME. She never even really liked me. 

I found this picture of Dad and I the other day.

I wanted a childhood full of this. I wanted to be touched and held in a loving manner by my Mother.

This is not something my Mother did with me. I have little to no memory of her showing me any genuine kindness (except for the time when I was small and upset I remember being in her lap while she gently stroked my ear to calm me down). I think I remember it so well because I wanted it so bad. There are no pictures of my mother holding me, whilst in contrast, there are many pictures of you and her, and she is always beaming in those photos. She was fiercely protective and proud of you. Your Mother was the Mother I wish I'd had.

She was always angry at me, disappointed, complaining about me, punishing me, or poisoning me. Sometimes she was indifferent to me and other times she'd lock me in the basement or my closet. She always said she wanted to put a lock on the outside of my bedroom door, but Dad wouldn't let her. 

There were times when her rage towards me was so... intense.

I remember a story Dad used to tell, he thought it was a funny anecdote. He said that one day he and the neighbour heard this little voice saying "Help me, I'm trapped. I'm being held prisoner." So they looked everywhere and finally my Dad found me in my room hanging from the window sill so I could reach the open screen. He thought it was a funny story to tell at Christmas times. But I was a baby still, maybe three or four years old. It wasn't a joke.

So now I have learned a new term. It's called Trauma Bonding.

I don't know how to reconcile any of that. I guess I am about to learn a new skill I wish I never had to need. 

I Could Skate Away

Oh I wish I had a river so long

I would teach my feet to fly

Oh I wish I had a river
That I could skate away on

Apparently I never learned how to grieve in the manner that other humans somehow instinctively know how to.

My therapist said it's like I have a river of grief inside of me that I have frozen solid so I don't have to feel it. And as we all know, that river is pretty full. There have been times when that river has overrun it's banks and threatened to drown me. It's what I do, respond to a loss and then pack it away and get back to the business of living, as I believed was expected. I didn't know that this would happen. I didn't know that one day, a future me would be brought to her knees by an enormity of grief and trauma that is still running rampant and unchecked through my nervous system. 

I am in the midst of the worst mental health crisis I've ever had. For someone with an ACE score of 7, with PTSD, and who has in the past been hospitalized for being suicidal, that is saying something. 

I'll spare you the gory details, but sometimes I forget what I am saying - in mid sentence. I have two months of laundry I still can't get to, and I am still waking up screaming - despite the new drugs my Doctor has put me on. I can't remember those dreams - all I get when I try to recall them is a black wall. My brain doesn't want me to see them. It's protecting me. 

Honestly I am terrified. 

What could be this horrific that my brain thinks it is best if I don't remember it? It lets me remember some pretty alarming trauma, often in vivid detail. So what can it be?

My therapist says I have to start letting the river thaw. I told him how much I was scared of that pain, and he reminded me that it always hurts to thaw out, but after the pain you feel better again. I appreciate this analogy, it works for me in understanding what I have to do to get better.

I'm terrified of how big the pain inside me is. I have a high tolerance for physical pain, and I've had my fair share of that. But this pain is so enormous. Sometimes it leaks out and even just that little bit feels so overwhelming. I don't know if I can survive it. 

I might die from this. Just skate away...

Death comes for everyone, doesn't it? 

But maybe, just maybe, if I am strong enough, this journey of grief will become a heroic tale of healing and recovery. 

The Grief is Unrelenting

I made a mistake.

I tried to just label my griefs as finished instead of processing them. I jumped back into work. I focused on helping other people. 

Pretty soon I was just going through the steps, one foot in the front of the other, even if my feet seemed made of lead. 

I don't know if I can fully blame myself. I did want to be a good employee and I was grateful for the time my employer had given me to grieve and I felt like I needed to repay that by "getting over it" and appearing strong and dependable. I wanted to appear "self reliant," and resilient. I thought I could do it on my own. Because, increasingly, you guys keep leaving me on my own...

I forgot that there is no "getting over it."

Vikki's death hurt so much. It still hurts and I am afraid of what will happen if I let it all out too quickly. I wish she had told me that she was dying. I wouldn't have put off my plans to see her. I would have gone earlier. I would have held her hand as she left and kissed her gently. 

I deserved that. But we all know how life isn't fair. 

So it finally happened that I pushed too far into burnout and ignored some signs I shouldn't have, and I stopped taking care of myself and I started thinking about driving my car into trees on the way to work. I became a human puddle. One day I felt so afraid of leaving the house and I called the doctor and finally said something. 

I'm also so very worried about Kate. She is also not doing well either and has access to far less supports than I do. I am afraid that she will die. I am afraid she won't survive such a hard loss of losing her twin. It is both anticipatory grief and extreme worry for her wellness. She's in pain too. Every time the phone rings I worry. If you get a chance to look in on her please do.

I hope you don't mind me writing in our blog here about all the many losses I have had in the past 5 years. I know this blog was always intended just for you and I, but I also never believed I would be left behind by so many. Too many. Sorry but I will be dragging you along in this grief journey and my therapist says that journaling is a good place to start, and it did help me with you, so here we are. 

The Years Start Coming...

 ... and they don't stop coming.

Time is relentless. 

Time is aggressive and unforgiving. 

But it is also a beautiful gift. 

A lot has happened since I last wrote to you. It took me a while to be ok to be sharing the news I have to share.   

Vikki died just before Christmas. I tried to get there to say goodbye, but it was not meant to be.

She left much in the same way you did. No warning. No way to be prepared. No way to shelter my heart before. Full frontal assault. More sibling loss grief.

It turns out that Vikki knew that she was ill but decided not to share that info, which is fine, I can't be mad at her for just trying to live her life in the way she needed too. But I struggle to reconcile the plans we had and the future that we looked forward to. Just like I did with you, I thought that we had many years yet to share together. I made the mistake again of trusting time. It's hard not too. 

I know you have dream walked with Kate, it's lovely to know that you are still visiting when you can.

Auntie Vi also died, she passed last summer peacefully. It wasn't unexpected of course, given that she had reached the ripe old age of 96... but I was not prepared for it. My heart refused to consider it when I tried to broach the subject, so I just had to face it as it happened. Which was hard. For me, Auntie Vi was always my favourite Auntie, but for many years much more of a mother to me than our own mother was. But I found saying good bye to her was a bit like losing everyone - Nana and Poppy, Dad, Uncle Ron. She had kind of kept all of them alive for me, held all those memories and stories and while I am grateful for her life and my time in it, I was very sad to see her go.