Up from Grieving~
"The mystery of tomorrow is always worth discovering."
I am healing. That’s what I want to tell you. Anyone that reads this, you might be wondering, “What is she healing from?”
GRIEF This word doesn’t make sense in America. In a society where grieving should be done in less than three days after the funeral and the wake is over, I am proud of my own self in knowing how to “Go within” and stay away and until my heart healed from losing loved ones in 2010.
When you lose someone you love, especially a very close friend or wife, a child or a relative, it’s almost as if you have been stricken with a disease. Those that normally loved you or adored your normal “Aura” may fade back into the recesses of your past, just like a childhood friend. Maybe it could be YOU that’s changed after this traumatic loss and others sense the change and follow your vibrations. Whatever it might be, just know that grieving is natural and it’s not something that is finished in one week.
My own personal experience with grief in 2010 taught important lessons and also showed relative flaws in our natural acceptance of others feelings. What I miss about living in Hollywood and being an actress is the sensitivity level most of the core group of individuals I hung out with there had naturally.
Actors/Actresses/Artists/Musicians, you name it, they are looking to feel, and that includes pain and sadness as well as the peaks of sheer joy. Feeling gives us a rare perception that without our emotion we could not decipher or recognize important moments or thoughts we might miss, if we just numbed ourselves to the ups and downs.
Albeit with that out and my big stamp of approval for artists out there, I found myself completely collapsed from the inside-out last year during the holidays with others merely looking at me wondering, “Hey, where’s that party girl that knows how to set up the parties?” That party girl, fun loving social friend found herself in 2010 watching a good friend die in a hospice at the age of 37 from pancreatic cancer. That girl found herself wondering why that happened. With a sense of dread that something awful can happen outside my door that year, I began to say a prayer for my husband each day before he left to go anywhere because I had grown so hypersensitive to death.
Only a few short months later, another wonderful friend of my committed suicide. An unexpected shock for most that knew this person. His life had resembled no outward signs or signals to this ending. With only a few short months in between these two events, I found myself going within, and avoiding the normal life I had because there was nowhere for THE NEW emerged me to be in my suddenly changed world.
Everyone kept expecting that fun loving girl once again…
What can I tell you? After one year, I actually truly laughed a real zany laugh the other night! I was startled by the freedom in such a raw hearty laugh. The sky was dark as my husband, son and I were driving over Del Dios Highway next to Lake Hodges, as the stars twinkled across the water. I had a glimpse of the regular “Me” again. I was becoming the girl I was once was, you know, the believer in dreams. The person that loved to socialize, see friends and find new things to write and talk about. I was on the mend…finally.
After one year, this is my story to you: Those that are grieving, feeling, wishing that unbearable pain of loss will subside. If you don’t run from you emotion but truly go through it–I mean cry all you can, be sad alone, tell the friend that truly will listen, surround yourself with a support group, but also protect your soul in the meantime–there will come that day for you when you can reach up and find a glimmer of your soul that you once were before you lost that person you cherished so much. It will happen. I didn’t think so, but yes, with time, we can rebuild our hearts and minds.
Grief is a natural process in life. There is nothing wrong with feeling pain or for being sad or wanting to stay close to what you lost. But just know that with time, action and truly dealing with your what you feel, that day will come when you will be surprised to hear yourself laugh again. There will be a glimmer, a small light that ignites your soul. You will then find the courage again to dream and to believe in miracles after the sadness washes away with your own ability to make sure you take care of yourself, your health and anything else before moving forward.
Because what we leave behind, stays with us and who we are today is up for us to decide. Grief is real and so are our souls. We can endure so much, rebuild nations, lose, love, and find a new hope still exists in the dark mystery of tomorrow.
Books that I read that helped me with GRIEF: “Up from Grief,” by Bernadine Kreis and Alice Pattie and “Good Grief,” by Lolly Winston. (The first book is a nonfiction and the second a fiction book. Both deal with grief and how to survive it.)
Birthday’s and Beatitudes
Sunset-Cardiff, California~photo taken November 2, 2010
With age comes knowledge of things we wish to say but cannot because life truly does not work out like that. It’s more of a simple thing really. Life is, I mean. A few lines here and there and “How-are-you-kind-of- thing,” but no one truly wants to know the dark details. I don’t know what’s happened to me, but two deaths in one year has me reading more books than usual and staying at home more than before my friends had died. Both were under the age of 37 in 2010. One died from pancreatic cancer and the other suicide.
With grief and loss, I seemed to have developed a quiet retrospect to life, almost like a deeper understanding that cannot be removed from my day to day life now. Somehow what we learn changes us…I am wondering though when the girl I was will come out to play again. I realize in time, life does heal all wounds and there is room for laughter again. There is room for celebration. I have always been the one to throw the parties; organize the happenings…and this year?
I don’t feel like celebrating too much lately. To learn about hurt, death and love close up just takes my breath away. A once, wonderful group of friends have disbanded so rapidly since my one friend’s suicide, I cannot seem to find the words or the want to organize a party again. Or figure out how to patch up its ending. I have loss my ability to be that PR girl that keeps everyone in contact, social and always scheduling the next gathering.
Instead, I have found myself looking…in.
I think that I will make a comeback eventually. I know in time a soul will find it’s way back into the sun after grieving. A soul if it’s willing to live and be alive has aright fight for happiness on this earth. I believe in ‘acting as if’, and eventually you will be that way again. A Norman Vincent Peale philosophy that I have lived with and has actually worked in the past.
Maybe it’s age and time making me ponder the seconds on the clock, the moments at work..if you are not happy where you are change your surroundings. I am very good on knowing how to do this. Ask me on this, I know. I am not one afraid of shifting, bending, willing to learn, willing to live, to grow, to extend into another part of my soul that I might have not recognized if I didn’t have the courage to leap. I can do that no problem.
Leap and fall. Live and breathe. Read. I say read until you can no longer read. Books have been my friends, my teachers for years. I find more peace and understanding in characters sometimes than the realness this life has to offer. I have some of those friends that like to compare and compare and compare, who has this, who has that, and who is looking better these days…life is not perfect. There is no perfection on either side of the sand where the line was drawn. Marked imperfections are everywhere, from me to you to those with money and to the man standing on the street with a sign.
I think my dad is right when he says, ‘if you can figure out how to deal with your emotions in this life and make it through it, it’s a pretty good life.’ My dad was a marine in the 60’s and fought in the frontline in Vietnam, so I’ll take that advice from him any day. Thanks, Dad. This is just me telling you basically, there is no party to throw this year for my birthday because I cannot find the will to want to celebrate after last year, and honestly I think that is just fine for this occasion. It’s okay to take a break and go away once for your birthday. It’s okay to turn 40, to remember, to be, to live, to cry, to go within, to be a mother, a wife, a writer, a reader, a runner and most of a child of God still just learning how to walk all over again.
Just when you think you have it all figured out, the world can tip sideways and the sunsets are never the same again. But….I know there is joy in here and I am aware of this precious life, and I’ve never ever been more grateful for all that I have had, lost, loved, won, given, been, cherished, or regretted. Life is just absolutely breath-takingly devestatingly, beautiful isn’t it?
I find there is so much to still discover, to remember and to be. I am finding there is that wise woman inside me that has more than party organizing abilities, and it’s okay to be her on occasion. It’s okay to take a break and remember to take care of ourselves.
~personal writings shared originally in February 2011
is precious to us….
“Losing Someone You Love”
“Losing someone you love”
This story was originally published in the Rancho Santa Fe News in April, 2010.
How do we move on after we lose a loved one?
I have a close friend that is dying of pancreatic cancer. I didn’t think I would write about this, but it’s the only thing occupying my mind. We always think that tomorrow is coming. We count on it, we believe in it…However, when you see your 36 year old friend withering away with only a few weeks left to live, you begin to question your own mortality.
You begin to wonder why such things happen. You wonder why you are spared death and must soon live in a world without your friend. You wonder in 10 years if you will be able to remember all of your favorite things about your dear loved one. You want to remember the smallest details that seemed to matter…
You think of time, precious time and how you want the clock to slow down so they can live one more day longer. You feel guilty for being healthy. You wish that you could do anything to give them something you cannot give them—their future.
I’m angry that my friend has to die. I am angry that she does not get to be married, have children or experience all of those wondrous moments most women touch upon during their lives. I want her to feel the joy of turning 40…an age my friend will never reach. I am angry that life must continue on, while she is stuck in a hospice with gifts. Everyone is bringing things to her like chocolates, strawberries, fruits and candies. All of her favorite things. However, she can’t really eat any of it becaus she is dying from pancreatic cancer. All of these things are now cluttering her room. The gifts that we bring her will not keep her alive. I sit with her sisters and wonder why this must happen? I’ve never watched someone close to my age be taken so swiftly, without warning. There is nothing we can do except bring things that we think will make her smile, find moments of bliss is simple things that can give her comfort.
When it happens to your friend and you’re on the sidelines watching, the feeling are too surreal. There is no way to process the amount of grief you feel on the inside. If anything, being a believer (in God) makes this situation harder to understand. I’ve never lost a friend this close to me and so young, either.
Forgive me, I am just so unsettled by this wave of bereavement, I need to share it.
I am at a loss.
My beautiful friend will be leaving me shortly and there is nothing that can change this. After walking in and out of a hospice in San Diego, I do not know why my friend is dying of cancer. There is no answer in the blue sky above to explain any reason of why she must die. I drive away dazed by the harsh sunlight. I look at others driving and wonder if they are losing a loved one, too. I try to comprehend how to make sense of why this is happening. I drive away and remember each fun moment we ever had. I am smiling at our fun times, our laughs, her amazing spirit. I don’t know how to keep her here. I just know I want her to live.
Why?
I don’t want to be angry anymore. I will seek my solace in prayer. I will think of what my friend has said to me over the last few weeks (in so many words) and her guided wisdom:
“Be more present with all of those that you love. Don’t short yourself on your own journey. Make sure you realize the beauty of it all. The beauty of your trials, your loved ones and the moments we create between morning and night. Make sure you are counting your every blessing.”
She is so wise like that, you know.
She is still here! That is what I am thinking. I can slow down the time with her each day, each moment. I will ferociously take them. I will focus on these last few days. She is like an angel here on earth. She would tell me, “Machel, I have had a wonderful life! Be happy, my dear friend.”
Yes, I will try to remember her words of wisdom. I will remember her vivacious spirit. I will count myself blessed by her soul and sharing what time we did have and still do together.
Tomorrow, I will make the phone call I do each day. I find out if I will have one more precious day with my friend.
***Heidi Cruz passed away in the later part of April at the hospice in San Diego. She was surrounded by many loved ones and her one true love that never left her side at the end of her last few days. Machel writes often about Heidi Cruz and is very thankful that her beautiful spirit is at peace and she is no longer in pain.
