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    Tuesday, April 03, 2007

    Denial and Grief

    I realize now that my family wasn't refusing to be realistic, they were beginning the grieving process, and were in denial. I realize also that the post I wrote not so long ago was my own form of denial. Wanting him to get better and walk again wasn't silly so much as it was dreaming and wishing for what I desperately wanted to happen.

    I am learning a lot about death and greiving. So much I didn't know that I didn't know. Death is an alien country, a foreign land you visit when someone in your life leaves forever. I float free in an odd locale where I am completly lost. I do not know this place, these feelings, these rituals I am expected to perform. My elders are looking to me for support, confiding in me, and asking for my wisdom on a subject I know nothing about firsthand. It is strange not knowing. I am the "five minute expert", finding all the answers on the internet or in books in less time than it finds most people to form the question... But here, this time, I am nothing, I have nothing. So tiny, so helpless, adrift in an ocean of possibilities, but with no land in sight.

    I never knew, for instance, that greiving a death usually begins before the passing of a loved one. I didn't know that you can still enjoy a person's life and company while you mourn their pending loss. I would never have thought that it was okay to laugh near a death, to joke and make merry with family in the days leading up to and following a passing, the day before or after the funeral...

    Still I learn.

    1 comment:

    Anonymous said...

    {{{{Kryistina}}}}
    Your wisdom has already expanded.
    This post brought tears to my eyes.
    You've got it.
    Exactly right.

    A foreign country indeed.