RE: L.A. Guitar Quartet - 4 Variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - Music
Funny, that is exactly what happened to me after my "Longest Winter," when I lost three of the people closest to me, in short order. I guess I'll have to post "My Longest Winter's Ending," the poem I wrote about that period. Who knows, it may help someone going through something similar.
I was an empath before any of it started, and my family always had a healthy viewpoint toward death, as part of life, so when my dad died, followed shortly by my mother-in-law, to whom I was close, I was "okay," and functioning, albeit on a very basic level.
And, really, I was barely functioning at all. as I was paying my dad's final bills, and those of my husband's company, but my own I was shoving into a drawer, even though we had the money in the bank to pay everything. I just couldn't deal with it all. And, even though my meditation group was there through it all with me, on another level, I felt very much alone.
And then the September 11th attacks laid us all low for a time. I remember awakening out of sorts, though I didn't know yet what had happened, and most of my meditation group reported the same. We all knew, on a basic, fundamental level, that something was off.
And then, before I had had the chance to heal, came the death I hadn't expected, a former lover who had become one of my closest friends and confidants, and the closest thing I ever had to a true mentor. I was devastated, and suddenly thrust into abject existential grief, where I considered my heart a traitor for continuing to beat.
And yet, I had a husband at home, rightfully expecting me to continue being a wife, but I no longer knew how.
They say that grief takes a full year to get over, but mine took me three years, before I was really worth being around again, and not completely wrapped up in my own pain and suffering. And, ironically, one of the few people who truly understood what I was going through, was my then-husband, who did his best to help me through it, even though it was breaking his own heart to do so.
Although he was always basically a good guy, I give him an immense amount of credit for being a far bigger man, then, than I thought he was capable of being. And even though our marriage disintegrated in the process, as I began to realize how much of myself I had given away, and began taking my life back in bits and pieces, I was grateful that he was willing to remain my friend through it all, at least until I moved to Tennessee.
I considered my heart a traitor for continuing to beat - that's a poem in itself!
Three years to recover (to function again, in the ways we must, on a daily basis) - that's intense. Sometimes I think I have never recovered (functioned properly) in the aftermath of those "phoenix" events Skenazy writes of. Some people rise above it all, stronger and more altruistic. Others merely cope. And some go to pieces. (See "Rachel's Contrition" by Michelle Buckman.) I hope you're saving up all these posts (replies), Cory - yours are always keepers!
Thank you, @carolkean.
Yes, with that line I was actually quoting myself, from I piece I wrote about a year and a half after his death, that was not a poem, but did wind up being a spoken word piece I read publicly a couple of times.
I did it as an exercise in metaphor for a nature writing course I was taking online.
It was the usual high school exercise; take a word from Column A and a word from Column B, and form your own unique metaphor, with a paragraph or two in explanation. And while it wasn't called a freewrite, in essence that's what it turned out to be, as it was pure stream of consciousness for twenty or thirty minutes.
And, once I had written it, there, finally, was what I had been trying to say all along. It just poured out of me onto the paper. I have changed it very little from that day.
My resulting metaphor was "Death is Like an Avalanche," which I posted here on Steemit about two weeks ago.
And yes, I went through all the responses to grief you've mentioned. But that's for my next post, and thanks for the inspiration, yet again. ;-)
"I considered my heart a traitor for continuing to beat -" no surprise that the line has struck a chord in others, and you'd written it and read it publicly long before the words resonated here at Steeemit. You have so, so, so many stories to tell! Have you read @tygertyger's family history? Somehow I sense you both have something in common as writers - a sense of history, family, place, passion, and culture - hers may be mostly Russian, partly Czech, but nationality isn't the common element. The gift of story is.
I wasn't aware of @tygertyger's family history, but I've come across her posts from time to time, including yesterday.
Clearly there is a reason for that, and I thank you for bringing her to my attention, as I will make a point of seeing more of her work. And interesting, as my husband is Polish, one of my best friends is Ukrainian, and one of my sister's daughter's-in-law is Czech, so that part of the world has long been on my personal radar.
Thanks again.