my apologies to anyone who is bothered by text being left on a reply, however, i wanted to honour the experiences of the writers in this instance by leaving their words right where they are. i am intrigued by this subject and while reading about grief/dying/death i am compelled to share some thoughts written by a Canadian physician, Dr.Robert Buckman on grief: "grief is all about letting go and saying goodbye. losing someone close to us hurts a lot. it hurts because of the ties we make with that person. " those ties are what getting close to someone is all about. generally, we only let a few people get that close to us. when we lose them or realize we might lose them, it is those ties that cause us pain. grieving normally reduces the hurt". "grieving is a continuous process. it is continuous just as the transition a patient makes from being healthy to facing the end of life is continuous. As with accepting bad news, people in grief go backwards and forwards, as emotions come and go in waves. " some of my thoughts: coping with grief is a very personal, individual journey. how sad that some of us feel so alone when confronting this most painful part of the circle of life. death is something that is not often talked about openly in my experience. it is as though death is not a part of being alive. as if death is something that happens to everyone else, but not 'me'. i feel privileged that in my life i was able to travel very closely to my father's journey toward his death which took only two weeks from diagnosis to the moment when he uttered his last breath in the early hours of the morning. my youngest brother mark stayed with him overnight in answer to a premonition that he was going to die, that night. i heard the phone ring. the news entered my left ear at 4:30 that thursday morning. like a robot, i got dressed, shaking like a leaf. i was driven to the hospital. we ran every red light in our path. i walked toward the hospital. i felt as if i had left my body. shock does that. i know about shock. my old friend. it protects me from the hurt. from the reality of what i am about to face when i walk into that hospital room and see my own father lying there, still. no longer fighting for his life. his body has given in. he has stopped moving, complete. his body silent. it took me a very long time to believe that he was really gone and yet many times before he died, i used to wake in the middle of the night frightened by the very real dreams of what his death would feel like. and it felt just like that. like a heavy steel door slamming shut and that horrible echo resounding inside my head, again and again until finally, one day i noticed it had faded into the distance beyond my ability to hear it ever again. i miss my dad still, very much so. grief does indeed come and go in waves, oceans of waves. mags. Bree Mcdonough <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:>What I wanted to see, was: how do you REALLY cope with >grief? When it really keeps hurting without surprise solutions, when you >don't have a deus ex machine hopping along?
>Grief is a very personal experience. You cannot "see" what grief is like >on a film. My closest grief experience was on the death of my mother in >May 2000. her death was unexpected as she was carried away by some >unexpected recurrence of a medical problem (not cancer) and she died..... >she just died... 12 days start to finish and she was gone. Its like being >in a glass tunnel. You are in there shouting and banging the walls that >"hey! my mother, my poet, my artist, my wonderfully batty and very >irritable mother has died.. Hey!" bang bang bang on the walls and all the >time the world just goes on moving past you and you think you wont ever >re-join the days of other beings. Its like being stuck in treacle and you >just cannot move for the shock of it. "I walked a mile with gladness she chattered all the way but left me none the wiser for all she had to say I walked a mile with sorrow and ne'er a word said she But oh, the things I learned from her when sorrow walked with me" My sister died suddenly three years ago. She walked into the emergency room..and died two hours later. She was young, 47..fit..a marathon runner (ran and completed thirty in her life) the brightest star in my life!. Yes..loved Joni.( introduced me to Joni..took me to a concert back in 1976) Autopsy showed nothing. Getting on that plane and going to California was surreal. Why.. I thought, is the world going on? Why are people laughing? Why are fucking people laughing?!!! When I would see runners on the street sometimes I would have to turn and look away. It hurt too much! She loved running so much it was in her blood..her release..why can't she still be out there doing her thing? Why? SO yes..greif is a very personal thing. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences. Bree >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus You open my heart, you do. Yes you do. - JM Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
