If the damn bursts then we'll all be swept away

[kirmy]

There is something to be said for being an emotionless automaton. It gets you through but then it leaves you wondering if you are a sociopath and have succumbed to the nature/ nurture thing when being raised by a narcissist. I've been thinking that I'm incapable of true feeling. I've been looking at my internal emotional landscape like a bug in a bell jar. I tap the glass occasionally to see if it still lives.

Today I'm hungover. Last night I attended a Marie Curie/ cancer research fundraiser and had a laugh with some fantastic survivors. I had more than one passing thought about my relatives lost over the last two years. I toasted them a lot. Surprising I made it home with my shoes still on. I did fall asleep eating a crunchie.

About a fortnight ago I was walking through the house looking for the cup of tea I put down when I had a crystal clear thought; "I will never hear my fathers voice ever again"! I felt a pain just over my sternum. It was like a burn, sudden, sharp and painful but over quickly. I actually said "ow"! It was a physical pain. Again automaton came to the rescue and looked at it from a medical perspective, tapped the bell jar, determined the insect was still alive and prepared to study it further.

Over the last few weeks every day I think of Dad. It is always brief but in passing and it always is the clear notion that I will never see his hands again nor smell him, nor hear his laugh at something crude I've said. Our in jokes are purely my own memories now. Again it is clinical. Yes....this is how it is, did I buy fabric softener?

Today I drove home from Kinlochleven through the wild and amazing Glen Coe. The blizzards followed me through the mountain high country and passes. I was hungover and tired and reflecting on my dear friends as I picked though the storm imagining Dad somehow looking out for me. I'd never see his big hands again or the Jean Harlow S waves of his thick hair.

I fell in through the door moody and tired and once bathed and dressed in my pajamas threw myself on the couch to serially watch " the C word". It is about a woman with cancer and it is funny and fantastic. It is also about loss and grief. And there it was...the transference. I mean it was sad but I was howling. Seriously howling, and then I realised I was howling for my Dad. I wanted him back and I missed him, just like the shows male lead missed her as she died before he could return to her.

And suddenly the numbness that scared me was gone and in its place an exhausting raw wound. And I'm stopping here for a while because finally I'm human and I'm actually marking the passing of a man I loved deeply and consistently all of my life. I can manifest the enormity of my loss.

Although they are very small I have my fathers rough work hardened hands. I hope that one day they make someone feel safe when I hold their hand the way my father did for me. For now however I'm lighting a little candle in my heart and tending it so it won't gutter and go out again. I'm terribly sad. It is not a functioning thing not like being an automaton but it will do for now.

Pain is indeed the human condition and in its own profound way it is extremely beautiful. I will listen to this pain and hear the memories and the regrets, after all they are mine and they are beautifully human.

The tin man has a heart after all and this too is a relief.

 

[southernlady]

Kirmy...beautifully written. We each have our own way of grieving and like other things, there is a season. Losing a beloved parent leaves a hole in your heart. The hole does stop bleeding but it will always be there...and can bleed again if the conditions are right.

I'm coming up on 13 years without my Mother...and there are many times I still grieve like it was this afternoon. And just a couple of weeks ago as I was getting a haircut, I saw her reflected back at me.

 

[DianaCox]

As always, a wonderful, deep and beautifully written post. Hugs to you Kirmy.

Grief is such a personal and individual thing, and each grief for each person is different too. I am a very weepy teary person (tears well up just writing that), and my kids make fun of me because I cry at Hallmark commercials. I cannot attend funerals, even for someone I barely know, because I make an utter fool of myself blubbering and blowing snot. And in a work situation, I cannot get angry without crying (for some reason, with my loved ones, I can be angry dry-eyed and cold - go figure).

But I remember when my grandmother died when I was 16. Although she lived with us, she had been in the hospital for some time (at least 2-3 weeks? maybe more) and nobody had told me she was dying nor offered to let me go see her. According the Jewish tradition (or convenience, since nobody in the family was religious), she was planted the next day - and I didn't cry at the very small and brief funeral, and didn't really process it. I tried to cry afterwards for weeks, but couldn't. Then, a few months later, I had one of those vivid extremely realistic dreams, in which she came to me and told me she still had some sort of existence, and had been granted permission to come say goodbye to me because we didn't have that chance before she died. I woke up weeping uncontrollably (and 45 years later, am doing so again), but felt better afterwards.

I think crying does something physiological to us, but many of us have learned to control it - but when it comes, it can be a flood, as pent-up emotions over all sorts of losses and other hurts, big and small, are released at once. I think it can be therapeutic to have that triggered by a sad movie, in a controlled environment.

Three weeks ago, the people across the street (I refuse to call them neighbors) found my Loki, dead in their garage. When they knocked at the door to tell us they had found a dead cat in their garage, Charles answered it, and I was still in the bedroom. Charles came back and told me he was going to look at the body. I sat on the bed, scrunched in an upright fetal position, rocking and trembling and saying no no no no ... when he came back to confirm it was Loki, the dam burst and I couldn't stop crying on and off for several hours. And I'm still getting a knot in my stomach thinking about it.

But on Tuesday this week, as my mother went into surgery with a significant chance of not surviving it, I was calm-ish, controlled, and while terrified, kept my emotions at a distance. The relief of learning she had survived didn't cause the floodgates to open either. I'm still waiting to feel the true sense of that fear and potential loss - knowing it is coming soon, and this was a trial run. I haven't lost her yet, but she's so far away, and I have such mixed emotions - they feel better stifled for now.

 

[duh_Mom]

wow ladies, I cannot write anything that beautiful or eloquent so I'll just send hugs to let you know I care

 

[hilary1617]

Kirmy, I can only wish you strength to carry you through your sorrow. I believe that those who shaped us are always with us, even when they are no longer physically by our sides. May wonderful memories provide you comfort and may you carry forward the torch with honor.

 

[brooklyngirl]

Hugs, Kirmy!

 

[more2adore]

Every post you write is a gift to the world, Kirmy, as your father must have been. Thank you for writing that. While one person can never fully understand how another person feels in grief (too individual), I lost my father (well, grandfather, technically - but he raised me in my father's absence) years ago and felt much the same. Hugs. It's a damned lie that time heals all wounds. It takes the littlest thing, still, to make me start crying about my grandfather, even 9 years later. But you'll make it.

 

[Spiky Bugger]

Each in our own way, in our own time. It was, apparently, your time.

But I disagree a little. You will ALWAYS see his hands and you'll smile, or at least smirk, at those "in" jokes.

My mom died over two years ago, and we "lost" her to dementia years earlier. Yet I still quote her, and there are times I still think I need to pick up the phone to ask or tell her something. And every once in a while, as I turn around in the bathroom or somewhere else a mirror is present...just for a moment...and that goofy old biddy is looking back at me.

Don't be surprised if your dad occasionally lurks on the other side of nearby mirrors!

 

[robs477]

Yet another beautifully piece of writing, so thought provoking. I can only ever hope and aspire to be the Father to my Daughter that your Father obviously was to you. My heart goes out to you.

 

[newanatomy]

Beautiful relief through grief. Hugs!

 

[DuodenalSwitchaRoo]

You are one of the most poetic and eloquent people I know. And strong. Very strong. Nothing I say can take the pain away or bring your dad back, but you are loved and thought of. Hope peace finds you. *hugs*