Seasons within Seasons

My little Santolinas are almost all browning. Hopefully the seeds will be easy to harvest. I haven't taken notice the last two years.

Here come Apricots! These are first harvested. I expect a half dozen or so every day for the first few days. Then the ripening takes off and I'll have table full. This year I plan to give them away left and right unless Sis wants some for canning. Otherwise no blanch and peel operation this year.

The next chapter of Eperiencing Grief just like the others is going to take several readings. This one seems to be more affirming and comforting as it illuminates as normal (whew) much of what I've experienced the last few months. I haven't been worried about things not being normal but more curious.

Chapter 2

H Norman Wright's Experiencing Grief: Pain and denial. Well the pain part is easy to identify and obvious. A choir friend's mother died 2 months after mom and she summed it up with, "When your mom dies you're instantly five again." Talk about childlike. There is no processing that loss. You have to get through it until the pain eases a bit.

Denial. I feel like I've been in an imposed denial. At first I was tired of crying but quickly realized putting that aside wasn't helping me. Going back to work, getting back into routines right away. I think that was a mistake. I think our corporate expectations of getting right back in are a mistake. I don't know how to change that but to encourage others to take whatever time they might need. I also think that once I realized the imposition I should have taken another week or so off work. I'm not quite sure how I could have done that given the insane schedule I had but had I put more thought into it I could have made it work.

So, there you go. Yes, pain, yes denial-whoever's denial you wish to define. I'm glad to be in education to have the summer off. It looks busy when I start listing what I've got coming up but I've intentionally kept the list to only things I really want to do. No doing things because I always have or that they're expected. I am jealously guarding my time as mine.

Next chapter: Grief is so disruptive.

The Shy Calla

I had to pull aside quite a bit of leaves to get a nice photo of this one. Very shy, very small yet.


That was this morning. Here is another from this afternoon. Pretty!

I think I'm going to need to read the 2nd chapter of Experiencing Grief a few more times. Topic-Pain and Denial. Them's some powerful emotions for you.

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.

Upward Spiral

It seems to me that my brain is revisiting grief moments. But something is different. While the memories are no less intense my reaction to them is more controllable. I am finding it easier to revisit some things-most of the time. There are still moments and memories that take me back into raw grief. I am learning not to stay there. At the same time the quantity of memories threatens to overwhelm me at times. Getting busy helps. Living in the present helps.

I remembered the term my friends shared after H. Norman Wright spoke at my church. Stabilize. They relayed his thoughts and recent experience that although the grief never goes away our reactions to it stabilize. I have 2 of his books on order.

The pink Calla Lily is up to seven flowers. Here's the latest:

It's a much more delicate pink that the first few. Lovely.

Boom Boom!

I heard the double sonic boom of the Space Shuttle Atlantis re-entry this morning at 8:35! I was able to watch the picture perfect landing on t.v. What a thrill! It's also a bit sad as this may be the last landing at Edwards Air Force base in CA given that there are only three more shuttle missions before the program ends.

Here's a NASA link for the landing: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/ You can see video of the landing from the same page.

Yes, I'm a NASA fan. Dad worked for NASA at Dryden.

Processing?

Or picking at scabs?

I started this blog as a way to keep track of my thoughts and feelings about Mom's death. I think it's been useful so far. And, I like seeing what gathers my attention. But, I somehow got sidetracked during church this evening and was thinking about the usefulness of reviewing the past (not so off track considering it was the point of the message-just not in the way I was thinking about it).

Is the process of recounting this last year as I did recently helpful or just pickin' at scabs? I was quite amazed at how fresh and intense some of my feelings and reactions were just to write it all down. Maybe it's time to read a book or two by H. Norman Wright. I certainly wasn't ready two weeks after Mom died. Maybe I am now.

This evening I was thinking more that all of this could get into "pickin" territory or wallowing if I wasn't careful.

My pink calla lilies put up a new flower today. I'm delighted. View from the top. I would have had to crawl around a tree to get the nicest side.