This IS Normal

My suspicions were right. My instincts on grief are fairly on target, so I read. The intro of H. Norman Wright's Experiencing Grief talks about our society not being so good at grief. I was right! The first little chapter is on the faces of grief. The two analogies are waves and dust storms. I think the wave analogy feels about right for me so far. When you fight the wave you get sucked under, when you yield to the wave's energy it moves around you, it moves you.

Yep, Yep. Felt that. Maybe that's why I sometimes feel like I'm exhausted, laying on the shore, wet and bedraggled. It's why at other times I'm over here when I used to be over there. It is disturbing to read that grief and mourning are "work" and a "lingering process". I feel that but it is not pleasant to see it in writing.

The promise in the book is that this is normal, I am not alone-was not my Savior called "Man of Sorrows?" Others have been and are on this journey, too.

If nothing else the books will keep me honest. I suspect I won't be able to read them without tears. The other two books are Helping Those Who Hurt and Recovering From Losses in Life. I think I'll take them one at a time.

I've been on a reading tear lately. I found a Debbie Macomber Blossom Street Book the other day, Twenty Wishes and devoured it in a few evenings. Nice, light, fluffy read! I finished the fourth in the Charles Stross Merchant Trader series. The fifth is out but I'm going to wait for the paperback.

I bought a friend the first two in Jan Karon's Mitford series this evening and managed to come home with three books for me. I bought Jennifer Chiaverini's The Cross Country Quilters for my vacation novel. I found and bought two more Charles de Lint novels, Forests of the Heart and Widdershins. I'm going to try to save one of them for my back up vacation novel. We'll see how that goes! It's a good thing that school is out.

SCHOOL'S OUT! Whoohoooo! My students went to "fun day" and were gone all day so I finished progress reports, getting them entered into the computer, and distributed to students to take home. My valient assistants packed most of the room. I have a few hours of clutter to take care of tomorrow morning before and after staff breakfast.

And as a parting gift I have to hold an IEP tomorrow. I have a student with declining physical skills (syndrome). We have to have goals and objectives in order to access low incidence funding for equipment. It shouldn't be a long meeting but one more thing new to be learned in a hurry this year.

My little favorites:

Waning Santolinas. I'm going to try to gather some of the seeds in a few weeks and plant them for next year in a different bed.


AND, the calla lily pushed up ANOTHER flower today. My photos didn't come out at all so I'll try again in the morning. It's another more delicate pink like the last. It's no wonder that brides love these flowers.