GROWING AROUND OUR GRIEF: LEARNING ABOUT GRIEF IN COMMUNITY

"People tend to believe that grief shrinks over time.  What really happens is that we grow around our grief. "

I have had this image on the wall in my office for some time now.  It has reminded me of the core understanding of the grief process.  This very concept was introduced in the first meeting of a Calmar community grief support group I have been a part of during the month of April.  

Every Tuesday morning for the last month, I have walked to the local community centre in my town to gather with other grievers from the surrounding communities.  We have averaged about 8-11 people every meeting with two facilitators: a registered psychologist and a community social worker.  It has been a transformative time for me and for the others.  

This has been the first time I have been in a in-person grief support group of any kind.  It offers a very different dynamic in the grief recovery process.  

"It's easier to talk to a stranger, than it is to my family members" 

This was mentioned in one of the meetings and I would agree with it.  I didn't know anyone in that room one month ago, and I have been able to pour out some of the depths of my heartache to them.  It has been encouraging and uplifting.  

Today is our last day together officially.  I don't know what happens after this morning.  Will any of us want to stay connected, or is the magic in the group that will dissipate after today.  

We have all learned a great deal thanks to the wisdom from great teachers that our facilitator Amy has brought to us.  I have been in several grief training seminars, and some of what Amy gave us was new and enlightening.  

It is tempting to walk alone in grief, because of the feeling that "no one understands me or my pain".  But what I have discovered this month is that sharing a common loss is not as necessary as sharing our loss and being in community with other grievers who understand what it is like to lose someone precious.  My heart can go out to someone who has lost a mother or a spouse, even through I still have both in my life.  Broken hearts don't need identification as much as they need compassion.  

I will end off this post with some of the grief wisdom that Amy shared with us in our class.  

“Grief is not a problem to be solved; it is an experience to be carried”- Megan Devine

“The brain cannot think its way out of grief. We must feel our way through.” -Gordon Neufeld

"We don’t need to feel all the time, but we all need the time to feel”- Gordon Neufeld

"Our brains are like Teflon for the positive experiences, and like Velcro for the negative experiences." Rick Hanson 

"The mind would rather be guilty than helpless."- David Kessler. 

"Guilt can become a burden too heavy to bear, and can keep us stuck in our grieving process." - David Kessler

“Real self-care is creating a life we don’t need to escape”- Anne Lamott

• We don’t get over our grief, our grief goes with us because it is how we love our person.
• Grief is not a linear process. We will oscillate between grieving and living in our new way of life.
• No feeling is final. No feeling is fatal.
• Grief is love with no where to go.
• Beating ourselves up over “what-ifs” does not move us forward.

MISSING THE MANY ALONG WITH THE MAN

When people ask me what I miss about Emco... I always say... the people.  It is really the only thing I miss.  I don't miss the drive. I don't miss time away from my home and family. I don't miss repetitive tasks that had me wondering of my purpose.  I don't miss the corporate machine.  I don't miss the move away from personal customer service towards automated answers.  I miss the people.  I miss the interactions I had with my coworkers and the customers.  I miss the social environment that I was a part of every week day.  I miss the casual interactions along with the deep conversations.  

I left Emco in 2020.  Along with leaving the company, the paycheque, the job... I left a family that I was unable to say goodbye to.  That was painful.  It took a few years before I found myself entering the doors again.  Even then, I only saw a handful of my former coworkers.  I had lost so much.  

On my last trip, I discovered that one of my coworkers, a man by the name of Brian, was in an automobile accident.  He was driving with another coworker and something happened to him that caused him to loose control of the wheel.  I can't remember all the details. I think he went unconscious while driving.  Joe was riding shotgun and had to get control of the vehicle.  When I last visited Emco, the story was that he was in a coma in the hospital.  I didn't hear anything more until yesterday.  

My husband and I were delivering heaters to a customer in Edmonton and I bumped into one of their employees that I knew from my customer interactions at Emco.  Tim recognized me and we chatted a bit.  He then asked me if I had heard about Brian.  I told him I heard Brian was in an accident.   

"No, Brian passed away."

That I didn't hear.  I did a google search for Brian's obituary and discovered that he died on March 26 which was over two weeks ago.  The immediate loss I felt, however,  was not for Brian, but for my disconnection from my former family that would allow two weeks to go by and no news of his death to reach my ears.   I found out, quite by chance, from a customer... not a former coworker.  

I tried to refocus my energy on Brian and how I felt about his dying.  I didn't really feel free to cry in that moment, but found solace in my sadness.  I read his obituary and discovered a few more things I didn't know about the man I worked with for more than a decade.  One hardly learns of the personal details of one's coworker's lives at work.  

I had a chance to connect outside of the workplace once with Brian.  It was at the Edmonton Rock Festival.  My husband's band was part of the lineup that weekend, and I saw Brian in the stands, so I went over to talk with him.  I discovered that he liked attending music shows.  He was a regular attendee at the Emco Blues Festival.  We had a nice visit.  

I was trying to rack my brain about Brian's qualities so I could share them on the obituary. What I came up with was caring.  I realized that maybe I didn't know him as well as I hoped.  But I remember that he valued his customers and co-workers.  I got to have an ear on his frustrations every once in a while, but he didn't take his frustrations out on his customers or his coworkers.  

As much as Brian's death is sad for me, the sadness is wrapped around my greater loss of the family that we were both a part of for so many years.  Had I still been a part of that family, I would now have a place to grieve and share that loss.  Now I don't know how to grieve and wonder if I am still grieving the loss of my Emco family.  

I have a video I made after my departure from Emco.  During Covid, the Emco teammates were sharing photos with each other.  I collected those photos along with some that I had from work and I made a video of my Emco Family.  I watched that video three times yesterday.  It's been four years and there are teammates that I have forgotten, but there are teammates that I greatly miss, (some not even alive anymore).   The song I chose was "The Living Years" from Mike and the Mechanics.  

I realize that in my grief for one person,  there is often a bigger picture and more losses that make the sadness for that one person even greater.  Do I miss Brian or my Emco Family or both?  Emotions are a strange thing to map out.  I do miss them both.  I miss each person, and I miss the team and family.  I am glad now that I am where I am and with whom I am with.  There are no regrets there.  Just a whole lot of sadness right now.  I am missing them all over again.  

* * * 

"Grief is hard work"  Rebecca Sorrells

 

THE SONGS THAT SHARE SPACE IN SUFFERING

It seems a strange place to find myself crying with songs that my sister never listened to. 

Shortly after Jennifer died, I assembled a collection of songs into a playlist entitled "Jennifer".  I needed a musical oasis to go to when I felt like I needed to feel her loss.  At first I tried to find songs that connected me to the loss itself, but as the list grew, I found myself throwing songs in the list for various reasons.  

Some of the songs from the Grease Soundtrack made it in, because Jennifer went to see that movie in the theatre with her Grade 7 class. I added Bon Jovi, because that was one of her favourite bands.   I threw country songs in because she was a farmer.  I included a lot of eighties music that she might have listened to forty years ago.  I found love songs that made me cry when I listened to them.  Some songs more than others bring emotion to the surface and some just help me imagine the two of us singing along with them.  

The more I listen to the playlist, I realize it is about me more than her.  Sometimes I need to cry, sometimes I need the passion of rock and roll just to get me to the next moment in my life.  Music came back to my world after she died.  I had taken a break from listening to music because I couldn't find myself in the songs I was listening to.  But when I look at my "Jennifer" playlist... there are songs I still can't find myself in, but they still somehow share space with me in my loss. I may ask myself "Why did I put that song in?' one day, and then the next time I listen to it, I understand that it has a place there.  

I still need to feel the loss.  I need to wade in the waters a little longer so that I can embrace this new life with authenticity.  I'm not going to move along just because the world is done crying.  I may have to wait until it's me in my truck with my playlist turned up before I can be that authentic, but I will find the space to be real.  I am grateful for the artists that are sharing space with me on this journey, including:  Tim Minchin, Anne Murray, Lucy Thomas, Il Divo, Reo Speedwagon, Chicago, Air Supply, Bryan Adams, Bon Jovi, Boston, Journey, John Denver,  Garth Brooks... and the list keeps growing. 

In the end, it doesn't matter what song comes up.  Jennifer loved music from such an early age.  It seems fitting that I would remember her between each note and lyric.  

* * * 

There is a song from my playlist that I want to share with you.  It is the only song that has my sister singing in it.  

Forty-one years ago (1982) , my sister was part of a high school choir.  One of the songs they did was a musical number called "Samson and Delilah".  My Dad had his tape recorder handy and recorded the choir singing it.   Four years later when I was in choir, our director chose the same musical to sing.  I found the recording that Dad made and shared it with the choir.  We had a lot of fun with that song.  It was the only song where we could ditch our choir robes and somber stance and have fun acting it out.  

Samson and Delilah 

“Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life.”

―Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

FINDING COMMON GROUND IN GRIEF

Today is one month.  One month since July 18; one month since my sister died; one month of being an only child.  

On the last day of July, I stood up at the front of her church and described our relationship in these words:  "We were polar opposites".  I even made a list in my iPhone of all the differences and they were many.  It's not hard to find my sister and I on very different planets of existence... and now more than ever.  

Here are a few that stick out that I had on my list: 

Jennifer                                Ruby

White Chocolate               Dark Chocolate

Farm dweller                      Small Town resident

Fiction reader                   Non Fiction reader

Mother                            Auntie

Size 6 feet                            Size 11 feet

Hated shopping                Loved shopping

Queen bed                         King Bed

Musician                               Poet/Writer

Dog Grandma                   Cat Mom

Christian                             Agnostic Atheist

It's not hard to find the differences, it's what divided us for fifty five years.  We were never best friends.  I think for the most part of my life, I felt like I was tolerated by her.  She put up with me because we shared the same parents.  But something happened when she became a mother.  She shared her gift with me.   I felt included in her life when her sons came along.  They became the part of her that found space with me.  They were the first experience of common ground with us.  Those boys brought us together in a way we couldn't do before they came.  We found a common affection and a common love for two human beings that changed our lives.  

How does the journey look now that she doesn't breathe anymore?  Now I get to keep looking for common ground.  I found a piece of that puzzle yesterday.  My cousin emailed me Jennifer's graduation picture.  I didn't have it in my vast library of photos, so I was very grateful to get it.  I dug out my graduation photo and put them together.  It was stunning how the similarities mixed well with the differences.  So much of the stories lined up.  We had the same photographer (Dad); we had similar styles of dresses; complementary and differing colours; the trees were the chosen backdrop for the photos.  

Maybe this journey of grief will uncover more common ground for my sister and I.  Even through her feet aren't around to walk on it, maybe I can still find her "Footprints in the Sand".  

"To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die." Thomas Campbell

MY FOUR LEGGED GRIEF PARTNER

A phone call from my sister today brought news of the death of a dear friend and family member.  Gunnar was my nephew Ben's Rottweiler.  I still remember as we drove up to the trailer where everyone was gathered that evening of the day Ben died.  There was Gunnar, waiting on the deck for his "Papa".  So many people had gathered at the trailer and some were strangers to Gunnar.  He wasn't going to move from his post.  He saw all these people walk into Ben's trailer and he only had eyes waiting for one man to come home.  

Gunnar was the first one that night that got a tearstained hug from me.  That dog lost so much that night, and he didn't even know it.  Maybe he had a sense of something. It is hard to understand what animals pick up from humans.  But I was told that he didn't move off the deck for at least a week.  He kept waiting.  

I spent this afternoon compiling pictures of Gunnar and discovered that most of them were taken from 2017 and later... after Ben died.  It was then that I realized that all the time I spent with Gunnar was in response to loss and grief.  I didn't know who needed who the most, but every chance we got to be together, I had my iPhone handy and I got selfies, videos and pictures of my big brown furry four-legged friend.  I was collecting memories and today, I was amazed at how many I had.  

Gunnar was my connection to Ben.  I could no longer go and see Ben, but Gunnar was there waiting for me.  I could talk to him and share my sadness with him.  He said nothing, but his kisses and companionship were all I needed to be reassured that he understood my pain.  I will never know how and when he started to cry, but a while back he started having problem with his eyes.  Maybe it took a while, but the tears finally caught up for him.  

I miss my friend.  He is more than a memory of my nephew, he is a friend all unto his own.  He is my family and as I say in my video... my best friend in the canine world.  Maybe that is because we found communion together.  

Here is the video that I made for him today. I call it my "Love Letter" to  Gunnar.  

Remembering Gunnar

"Love walks on four legs as much as it walks on two."

  Ruby Neumann