Well, once again I've failed NaNoWriMo. I just couldn't stay focused enough or disciplined enough. Oh well.
But, I did write some good stuff for my Writing on Love and Loss class at Sarah Lawrence. Here's something I procrastinated about writing and then 15 minutes before class started I whipped out most of it, taking some time by not listening to other online students to fine tune it. When I read it aloud, I had three people sending up hearts.
Terri Linton's prompt was "For this week, please think about and write into: grief as a part of daily life."
Here's what I wrote:
Living with grief is knowing that your beloved dead die
every day.
Will and Max
You wake up every morning and there they are – dead.
You do your morning routine and they’re not there.
They are not there when you want to talk about something you like. Sometimes we might imagine them there. A year and a half after my husband’s death I could finally watch film noir again. I’d been avoiding all shared pleasures as they were too much associated with him and thus too hard to consume. But I felt ready to dive into a couple of unseen 1950s gems on the Criterion Channel. As I was watching the black and white movie on my big screen tv, the corner of my eye saw his familiar shape sitting in my new red chair, a piece of furniture he never saw, his legs crossed in that way he had, one foot wiggling.
And I looked at the chair and called his name but he was gone.
I have found out that this is common for those who mourn, imagining seeing the lost.
And having to remember, as one must remember again and again, that the beloved is gone and with him those hunks of the self he made it possible for one to build. Made it possible for me to build.
I am now 35 months from his death I and can go for as long as a couple of weeks without a tear tsunami and think “Well, I’ve moved ahead” only to find myself back in the trenches of loss – loss of self, loss of community, loss of purpose.
Then my grief therapist, like a superhero, swoops in to remind me that heavy grief comes in waves, that I’ve been hurting this much before, and that I have also had wonderful days and will have more in the future.
She also says that I don’t have to be any more functional than I am.
