Tag Archives: Stages of grief

by

Perspective: beneath the clouds

Beloved why?
I am glad for your love
and warmth
and connection
and my cat’s
and my adult children
friends
family
patients
work
and why? Beloved

A high Adverse Childhood Experience Score
Two alcoholic parents
One sick with tuberculosis through pregnancy
Letters from the hospital to her mother
After birth
Never mention me
As if I do not exist

She told a story that she dreamed
she gave birth to kittens
played with them
and gave them away

Not a dream of joyously welcoming her new baby
Me.
Yet I didn’t hate her or my father
My damaged parents
My damaged sister
Who followed their path, not mine
There was nothing I could do
Only three years old when she was born
Try to shield and mother her
As best I could

Why Beloved
I have tried so hard to grow
to love
to forgive
and yet I have no human lover

My cat jumps on my notebook
And interrupts this writing
She is happier to welcome me home
Than any man I’ve ever dated

My daughter’s boyfriend picks her up
at the airport and has made her dinner

If I am a failure at love with a partner
Or too smart or damaged or difficult
To love
For humans
At least my children have both found love
And if I were to choose me or them
Yes, I’d choose them

Is that why, Beloved?
Sacrifice to heal the next generation?
It is worth it.

And yet, that small child part of me
That even as a toddler thought the adults were unpredictable, dangerous, mean when drunk as they laughed.
She is angry at them, Beloved
She is angry at you, Beloved
Or at people
Or at the universe
She still believes in every cell, in her bone marrow, in the vast universe in her mind

that she too could be, should be

loved.

by

Friends forever no matter what

My small child self is happy
Happy inside
She loves who she loves
Living or dead
In contact or fled
Distant or close
She loves who she loves
And I hold her close

My adult self is happy
Happy inside
I love who I love
And the world is so wide
Living or dead
In contact or fled
Loving forever
No matter what happens
I love who I love
My heart holds them close

My small child grieved losses
I hold her close
She loves them all
I guard her from most
She stays friends forever
No matter the grief
She is happy in loving
Her loves shine as stars
The ones who are hurtful
Are loved from afar
She’s held and she’s loved
And her love sings unmarred

_______________________________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: dogwood and for Mother’s Day. Mine died 25 years ago.

by

Content

I never do know where a poem is going when I start it. Usually I start in the dark. To my surprise, those poems will end in the light. Apparently the reverse is true too.

Content

At the moment I am feeling content
deeply content
with monsters

At the moment I don’t need more
then this
me
a few friends
and all the monsters

I can’t fix the monsters
healer, right
the people come
over and over
and won’t admit
their monsters

the monsters sit on the floor
of the exam room
clinging to the person
chained to the person
the monsters wail and cry
while the person
ignores them

It has taken me all these years
to let go of anger
fury
rage
that almost no one
admits to monsters
or tries to heal them

Except the addicts, drunks, crazies
they see them too
many try to destroy their vision
with alcohol or drugs
or persist on telling others
about the monsters
until they are drugged

Yesterday I look on line
for local music
not bluegrass
thinking that I would like
to find a place with grown ups
quiet

I think, how silly I am
to look for grown ups in a bar
and then I try to think
of where to find some grown ups
and I think THERE AREN’T ANY GROWN UPS
it’s all just children
who’ve grown big

I do not like drama
there are no movies
that I want to see

I like clinic
where I try to help a little
sometimes a lot
sometimes a person might remove
one knife
one chain
one arrow
from their traumatized
terrified
bleeding
monster

And really
that is why I am here
and that is all that I can do

__________________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: journey.

Meanwhile, rat joy: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241128-i-taught-rats-to-drive-a-car-and-it-may-help-us-lead-happier-lives.

by

Return again

Return again to friends and home and stumble
My house wraps around me familiar then grief
There is so much grief here: death makes us humble
Mother, marriage, sister, father, time a thief
Has stolen them and more to come, a long lived life
Means loss on loss. Memory wells up, deeps swells
We thought we would be different, wise, no strife
Yet the world burns, children bombed in warring hells
Our children know our failure and our malice
We thought we’d be adults and show the way
Our intentions of a wired on-line palace
Yet anger and greed now rule the day
As a child adults are drunk confusing fools
Now my adult children wonder why we are such rigid tools

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: rigid.

by

Spirit take flight

Death from memory loss is a mixed bag for families.

In the past, the average time to death from Alzheimer’s was 8 years. I don’t find a number on the CDC website, CDC Alzheimer’s. I find these statistics:

  • Alzheimer’s disease is one of the top 10 leading causes of death in the United States.2
  • The 6th leading cause of death among US adults.
  • The 5th leading cause of death among adults aged 65 years or older.3

The site also says that the number of people with Alzheimer’s doubles every five years after age 65. Sigh. Those numbers are the same ones that they taught me years ago, in a different format. 6% at age 60, then 2% more every year. By 70, 26%, by 80, 46%, by 90 66%. Like hypertension, if you live long enough, you may well get it. And yet, I have had patients over 100 years old with intact memories.

The death of a family member with memory loss can have complicated grief. On the one hand, loss and grief. On the other, a burden is lifted. If the person is in memory care, the cost may be very heavy. In our town, the memory care facility costs $7000 per month. That is a heavy burden to carry when the person no longer recognizes the family or speaks. The family may feel hugely relieved when their person passes and at the same time, feel guilty. This is someone that they love and loved. And yet, they are relieved by death. I think of it as a patient of mine described it: “The grief group at the hospital said that my husband isn’t gone. I said, yes he is, he just left his body.” It is very very hard for a family to watch their loved one deteriorate, lose skills, become confused and/or frightened and/or paranoid and the process can happen for years. With an average death at 8 years, some people live beyond 8. Maybe 12 years. It is very hard.

Blessings on those who care for the memory loss people and the families who do their best for them. Alzheimer’s is one sort of dementia, but we now have many. Pick’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s dementia, multi stroke dementia, alcohol induced dementia, illegal drug dementia, primary progressive supranuclear palsy, and others.

The spirit has already taken wing and let the body follow.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: wing.

My son took the photograph while he was visiting.

Here is the top ten causes of death in 2022: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db492.pdf.

by

Matter

If something doesn’t matter, is it anti-matter?

Lily’s person moved two days ago, much closer. Supposedly to a place where Lily the cat can go, but instead of a private room, there is a roommate. It took me a month to get Lily cat to let me pat her, so the roommate won’t work. We are all very very frustrated. And next week daily treatments for Lily’s person start, thirty minutes away, without enough warning to get volunteer drivers. So it will be me. I am tired. But I suppose it’s anti-matter, right? We were given 24 hours notice by the nursing home and by the physicians about both the move and the treatment and they wanted to start the treatment the same day that she was moving. Whether we can provide all the transport seems to be irrelevant.

The stealthie is from Whidby Island. Right, I’m just an irrelevant shadow as far as the medical dysfunctional machine is concerned.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: irrelevant.

by

Clementine

If I lose my memory, at least, if it’s Alzheimer’s, it’s like a trip back through time. People seem to lose recent memory and then they are in past memories, which burn out like small fires. Like matches, taking the neuron with it.

I have joked that if I was in memory care, I would be singing. I know 9 verses of Clementine and I would sing and sing and sing, because my earliest happy memories are singing.

I know the silly add on verses.

“Now all ye boy scouts, learn a lesson
from this dreadful tale of mine
Artificial respiration
would have saved my Clementine.”

“How I missed her, how I missed her,
how I missed my Clementine
‘Til I kissed her little sister
And forgot my Clementine.”

“In my dreams she still doth haunt me
dressed in garments soaked in brine
In my life I would have kissed her
Now she’s dead, I draw the line.”

Here is Pete Seeger, banjo and all.

The words change. Second verse for me is “Light she was and like a feather”. His version is “like a fairy”. It’s lovely to see how the versions change over time. I did not learn the churchyard verse, and he does not sing the three verses that I add above.

Meanwhile, Steeleye Span did not do Clementine, at least not on Youtube. But this is my favorite moral song from their albums. Would you run as, well, you’ll have to listen to the ending to hear the three seven year penance punishments.

Anyhow, I learned to sing at the same time that I learned to talk. Singing was the happy and safe part. That is where I will go if my memory fails me.

The photograph is from my father’s 70th birthday, in 2008. He is the one with the guitar. Andy Makie is on harmonica and CF is in the back. I don’t know what song this was, not Clementine. My friend Maline took this photograph. She died in 2023. My father died in 2013 at age 75. He was not confused when he wore his oxygen. Without it, he sounded drunk.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: dementia.

by

Rumor

Oh, kindness. I think one huge kindness is not to listen to rumors and not to assume that they are correct. Whew. Though if you are ever the victim of a rumor, it will tell you who your real friends are. They will stay present, stay in touch, stay with you. Some will ask about it, others won’t, but they will stay. And you may be amazed by how many people disappear into the woodwork. They are staying “neutral”, they’ll say, but they don’t call, answer calls, or include you any more. Then they may show back up in the future. You will not trust them again. Ok, if they were going through some trauma of their own, but otherwise, no.

Sol Duc is keeping an eye on the neighborhood. She never tells me rumors, ever.

Here are three versions of Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out. I like the Bessie Smith one best. The John Lennon tune is different.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: kindness.

And another:

by

Flooded

Trigger warning: trauma and feelings.

I cry because
the laundry overflowed
the sewer blocked again
we might have to pull up the floor
and lay it down a third time
I hate the laundromat
water runs across the floor
as fast as the tsunami
crossing the fields
crushing the houses
catching the trucks
in Japan

I cry because
I have to ask for help again
Help comes
but the memories of asking
when it didn’t
help didn’t come
and I was abandoned or humiliated
rise up and overwhelm me
I am flooded
I am helpless
someone help those people
The shaking earth is bad enough
But the ocean rolling inland
Over all
Breaking all
Beams to toothpicks
Those are the memories that rise up
And flood me
I think of the soldiers
and victims of wars and disasters
and PTSD
tsunami
of memory

__________________________________

Written before 5/2011. I have posted before, but couldn’t find it on a search. Posted today at a friend’s request.