Grief, mourning and going on with life

My readers know I love animals, especially dogs and horses. My horse, Pretty Thing, lived to be 32 years old and was my darling. My poodle, Brandy, lived to be 19 years old. 

All of our pets except for one, lived to ripe old age. They were treated well, fed well and well-loved. We had the reputation of having pets that lived forever.

But, no matter how old they are, when it is time to let them pass on or when they die unexpectedly as our Nikki did, we grieve. We grieve as we would if any family member was gone. 

Over the years I have made a study of grief and why we grieve more over some and not so much over others although we loved them all.

The first person that I knew well and loved dearly, and who died suddenly in his fifties, was my brother-in-law, Stan. I was about six or seven years old when he burst into our family with his big smile, his boisterous nature, his laughter, and his hugs. I knew and loved him as much as I did any of my brothers for two decades and more. So I grieved and mourned his passing deeply. His presence in my life was far bigger than anyone knew. I think of him as the loving father I didn't have and the big brother who was not embarrassed to show his love for me. His passing left a place that can't be filled. 

Brandy, my black miniature poodle, was the first big loss in my animal family. You can find his shortened story in Paws, Claws, Hooves, Feathers and Fins, Family Pets and God's Other Creatures. This little fellow was a wedding gift to me from my husband, Barry. I liken living with Brandy to raising a wild, but precious boy-child. He was not obedient and was very destructive, causing us to have to move to the country when he demolished our first apartment.

Brandy lived on the edge. When he had the opportunity to take a risk, he did it. The cows grazed quietly in the pasture near our house. They were enclosed by a three-strand barbed-wire fence.  Of course the fence meant nothing to my dog. And the cows looked much to peaceful and content to him. If he was outside his pen, he didn't waste time scooting under the barbed wire and making a bee line for the herd. 

As I stood yelling and screaming at him to come back, Brandy circled the bovines barking at the top of his lungs. At first they ignored him, but, I suppose his noise-making got under their skin. Eventually one of the black and white milk cows had enough. She raised her head, looked at the yapping dog, and headed straight for him. That was the signal, it seemed, for the other cows to do the same. Big heads came up and the entire herd of forty started toward the little black dog.

Back in my yard, I continued to yell at Brandy. Now I was calling, "Brandy, come here" "Brandy run! Run, run, run!"

The mischievous little guy got just what he wanted. Every single cow was now after him, chasing him across the pasture. Brandy knew where he was going and they followed. At times I thought they were gaining and were going to trample him, but he stayed just about ten feet ahead of the lead cow, looking back from time to time, his red tongue hanging out of his mouth. 

He came home just as I wanted, but he brought an entourage of hoof beats from forty beasts pounding right behind him.

I stood rigid, holding my breath, scared senseless, and praying that my little buddy would make it. Afraid to look! I could not stand to see his body mangled by the sharp hooves. 

But Brandy was shrewd. He knew exactly what he was doing, and I am sure he was laughing in his own doggy way.

He slowed down just enough to let the cows think they were going to get him, and then he skittered under the bottom strand of wire with their hot breath on his curly coat. 

He ran around the yard, then jumped up on me. I knew what he was thinking. "See Momma, I didn't get hurt, and I had a lot of fun."

Brandy Beall lived to be nineteen years old, was nearly blind and totally deaf. I found him stretched out on the carpet in my bedroom one rainy afternoon. He didn't wake up.

My days and my nights were not the same without Brandy. I missed him so much I could not speak his name or talk about him to others for months. 

I believe we grieve most those whose lives are entwined with our own, those whose very existence is a part of who we are. Husbands and wives miss each other more because they have become almost one person over the years as my husband and I did. When everywhere you look, everything you see, touch or feel reminds you of your loss, the pain just grows deeper.

I know that Stan, my brother-in-law, made a giant impression on me from the earliest days of knowing him. What made him most special to me, when I was a kid, was he listened to me. I could tell him what vexed me and what made me happy. He knew what I loved and what I did not love, what I feared and what I was not scared of. He approved of me and let me know it. When he didn't approve, he let me know. His death left a hole in my life too big to ever be replaced. 

My little Brandy gave me memories I still cherish and always will. He loved me unconditionally, as our dogs usually do. He and I were so attached that I often think Barry was jealous of my attention to him.

For months I would forget he was gone. I looked for him around me, expecting him to be near me. Then the punch in the gut came, feeling the emptiness when it dawned on me that I had buried him out by the stable. 

They say that tears of grief are just ways of showing you loved someone, and I shed many when I lost my three brothers, my sister, my dear sister-in-law, my parents and my beloved husband.  I didn't think I could endure all those losses of people I love. But I have. What choice do I have?

I have lost my sweet, loving Samoyd, Kodi, and Rocky, the best dog ever.

I grieved more and more. So much sadness, and I still cry over those I loved, human and animal, who have gone on. But each day arrives with new possibilities. 

What will I learn today? What can I do, what will I do, today that might make a difference? I know I will mourn for the rest of my life, but somehow, I found a way to departmentalize grief while going on with living. I hurt for those who cannot do that. 

I hope your holidays will be happy and filled with fun and good memories. Make great memories this year. Don't let petty things from the past cause hurt feelings or sadness. I found that being thankful for my family, my friends and for still being alive on this earth to enjoy each sunrise and each sunset gives me peace. 

When Mourning Comes

This past week has been a sad one for me because I have heard bad news from several sources.

One of my dearest friends has been diagnosed with metastasized breast cancer, stage IV. She is elderly and has had two mastectomies. It breaks my heart. She was my "Guardian Angel" when Barry died. She was never too busy to talk with me, to counsel me about losing your mate, she had gone through it, and going on with your life. She has a delightful personality and finds humor even when things are tough. We used to go out for pizza often, and we always laughed. She is a good person, a great cook who shares her wonderful dishes with anyone who needs them. She has certainly fed me many times. If I took her food I cooked, it would be like taking coals to New Castle. 

The husband of another friend died quite suddenly after a diagnoses of lung cancer. He was not elderly. In fact he was running for sheriff in our county. He was a good man and well respected. I saw his wife, a former student of mine, just a couple of weeks ago, and she said his back had been hurting. She was getting him an appointment to see the doctor. I need to take his campaign sign from in front of my house. 

And the third loss was another friend and member of our writers' network. He went in the hospital for a valve replacement in his heart and was recovering from the surgery. But suddenly he suffered bleeding in his brain. A stroke. His daughter said it was due to his being given too much blood thinner. Mistakes happen, I know. But so many mistakes in hospitals take the lives of people we love. I try to avoid hospitals if I possibly can. I lost too many loved ones, including my dear husband, from mistakes by the medical world.

So, I am sorry if I can't write a cheery bright post today. You deserve better, but I have been too depressed to even get dressed to go out. 

My life has been filled with loss since 1975, losses I had to learn to deal with and had to accept and go on. That year my mother suffered a ruptured aneurysm on a carotid artery, lost her short term memory and was never the same. My sisters' husband, a man I truly loved, died from a doctor's mistake.

Since that time I lost a brother to cancer, two brothers to heart attacks, my mother and my father have died. My oldest sister, June, died from heart problems, and my own beloved died from cancer. 

Each of these seven deaths slammed me to my knees, and I had to pull myself back up and go on. The recent deaths and illness I write about above seem harder because I don't have Barry to talk to, to share with him my feelings and to be comforted by him. 

The men who recently passed away were not that close to me so why do I feel such despair? I feel for their wives, their families because I know that pain of grief that seems to never end. I am more empathetic than most, I'm told, and I feel deeply others' pain. But my feelings for my friend with breast cancer is not only for her and her family, but for me. 

I am sharing a poem I wrote a few years ago. I went to the funeral of a man whose wife I knew. 

For Whom Do I Mourn?

I never met this man who owns

the casket covered in white flowers.

They say he was a craftsman,

hand-built chairs, rivaled scholars

with his logic, his understanding,

though he never finished high school.

.

He entertained his grandchildren,

made funny faces, loved a joke,

was a VIP at church and in his home.

Beside his grave, gray-haired soldiers

fold the flag. That haunting bugle tune

lays him to rest.

Why do my eyes moisten?

Why does my throat constrict?

I cry not for the old soldier,

but for my own, who lie beneath

their stones, under still and leafy oaks

above the pond.

Posts you might want to read:

https://writingthroughcancer.com/

https://profilesandpedigrees.blogspot.com/search?q=Hospice+Doctor

A Poet Named Jane Kenyon

I learned of a poet named Jane Kenyon when I first came to the mountains and began studying poetry with Nancy Simpson. I don’t remember where I found the first poem I read by Jane Kenyon, but I know I immediately felt a kinship for this woman. Her poems spoke to me like no other poems I had read. I bought her poetry books, and I read them over and over. That was in 1996. She was my favorite modern poet.

Jane Kenyon

I learned she was married to noted poet, Donald Hall, and then I learned a terrible fact. I learned she was dead. She died from leukemia in April, 1995, the year before I discovered her. I felt as though I had lost a dear friend, and no one had told me about it. Jane was too young to die, only 47 years old. I realize now that her poems reflected her feelings about her illness. I sensed the depressed woman she was when I read her poems, and I felt such empathy for her.

Donald Hall has written many poems about his wife. He published a collection about her after her death. I hated it. He seemed to be angry, a common emotion after losing a loved one, and I didn't like the foul language he used or the mood he was in when he wrote that book. I felt Jane deserved better. I know from losing my own beloved, that fresh grief doesn't make one the best writer, only a writer who needs to  pour out his pain on paper.

When I discovered the following poem by Hall in a book of  poems collected by GarrisonKeillor, Good Poems, as heard on TheWriter’s Almanac, my displeasure at Donald Hall and his book I had hated, dissipated like early morning fog. I hope you like it.

Her Long Illness

        By Donald Hall

Daybreak until nightfall,

he sat by his wife at the hospital

while chemotherapy dripped

through the catheter into her heart.

He drank coffee and read

the Globe. He paced. He worked

on poems; he rubbed her back

and read aloud. Overcome with dread,

they wept and affirmed

their love for each other, witlessly,

over and over again.

When it snowed one morning, Jane gazed

at the darkness blurred

with flakes. They pushed the IV pump

which she called Igor

slowly past the nurses’ pods, as far

as the outside door

so that she could smell the snowy air.

July 21

Four years ago, early morning, I awoke, exhausted, in a small sparse room in a hospice center where I had stayed round the clock for several days, realizing this would be the last day I'd have with my beloved husband who was transitioning to a better place, leaving me to make it on my own. I remember sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch afterward waiting for others in my family to come and wrap me in their love, take me home with them, and let me sleep.

Four years and still this day brings back such sorrow and so many memories. 

A BALMY DAY IN JANUARY

like none I've seen in years. In the park,
sunshine heals like days I waited urgently
to be free of walls, to tear across the pasture
on my mare, rushing toward fulfilling childhood dreams.

I stroll with Rocky this winter day, warm enough
to over-heat his black fur, his weakened bones.
His unconditional love fills a tiny part of that left empty now.

Women in tennis attire stride toward the courts,
new bags on their shoulders, swinging rackets,
tossing hair, wearing trendy shoes. Love – one.
Love-two, their happy voices sing on brisk air.

Tennis was once our game, long ago,
when a simple quarrel over a match seemed
the end of our world; a gentle world we did not
properly nurture, because we didn’t know
what we didn’t know.
                           --- Glenda C. Beall

Published by Wild Goose Poetry Review, Spring, 2013

http://wildgoosepoetryreview.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/glenda-beall-a-balmy-day-in-january/

Glenda on family tennis court

We are all hurting in some way. What do we need?

This post was written a few weeks ago and saved in Draft. 

Just one year ago, we three sisters had our picture made in front of Gay's lovely mantel. As always we were so happy to be together.

Gay, June, Glenda at Christmas

We never know how long we will have the ones we love. Life is a fragile thing. Parents send their children off to school never imagining they might not return alive at the end of the day.

 We should not miss the opportunity to show our love when we can, in any way we can. Although our own lives become filled with busy projects, work, church, exercise, clubs, and so many things, let us stop and reflect on where our energy might best be spent. It gives me peace to know I am loved by my family and friends, and I want my family and friends to know I love them. Don't take for granted the ones closest to us. We must also take care of ourselves so that we can help take care of those we love.

I hope my sister Gay takes good care of herself in the coming months. I hope my nieces, Lee and Lyn, take care of themselves as well. And I hope Charlie takes care of himself as he makes another move and tries to pick up his life.
They all gave so much of themselves for June's well-being. Now they need special love and care. Caregivers often find it hard to go on with their lives after devoting so much of themselves to another. When I lost my mother after caring for her for a decade, I was bereft, lost in a world where I couldn't find my footing anymore. It took time and work to get myself on track again.

In spite of the horror we have seen the past few days about those precious children and dedicated teachers of Newtown, we must continue to love our fellow man. Try a little random act of kindness.
Everyone is hurting in some way.
It is very hard to be human in this world today.

On Death and Dying Alone

When we lose our loved ones, especially after we begin losing our siblings, our mortality rears up and roars at us. How long do we have left? How will we depart and how long will it take?

Reading the book given by Hospice on what to expect from your loved one as they begin to transition from this world to the next, is almost ghoulish, but I suppose it is something we need to know as we sit with our dying person. They tell us the rasping sounds emanating from the person we love is “normal.” 

Nurses at Hospice know when to call in the family as the last stages of life leave the patient They know when we need to be there to say our last good-byes. They can’t help us with this chore, and they can’t tell us how to do it to make the passing easier for our dear one. But they know all the symptoms of life leaving the body.

My question is how do the writers of this book know? 

As I spoke in my sister’s ear and told her I love her and urged her to sleep well, her breathing became faster and her eyes opened, unfocused, for a moment. I was sorry I spoke to her and wakened her from her journey. Perhaps it is best to leave the traveling to the dying because no matter how many people gather around, we still die alone. 

Even the little book says we withdraw from this world, gradually losing interest in reading, TV, news of the world around us, children and grandchildren, and we become totally self-absorbed. I imagine I would not be interested in the noisy television that seems to be a necessity in every hospital room. My sister said to turn it off.

When read to, she already seemed to be away, just smiling at the reader. My sister June had the nicest smile and the kindest heart. She would not be rude and say, “Stop reading. I don’t want to hear it.” Her smile became a sad expression in those last days as the hopelessness became more apparent. 

After watching death claim my loved ones, I understand that the process of dying is strenuous, is all consuming, and requires total self-absorption. 

Those of us left behind and grieving are just in the way. 

I think my sister would have liked to say to me, “Leave me alone. Go home now. I’m busy dying.”

And she completed that task only fifteen minutes later. 

Three sisters, Glenda, Gay and June in chair

Age is a learning experience that can’t be gained in the best college or university. With age comes wisdom and mature thinking. It is not our number of birthdays that make us wise however, it is the hurts, the losses, the tragedies we face and overcome. It is also the celebrations large and small of successes and how we accept them.


With every loss of someone we love, our lives change in some way. For months I’ve had my brother and his wife on my mind. He died suddenly on a Sunday morning in August and she passed away three months later.

How can my life ever be the same? We die a little bit with the death of our loved ones. But we learn something each time we face the pain. Hopefully we learn something that helps us with the time we have left. In talking with my brother’s daughter, I felt the raw edges of her grief. For months that family watched their mother fighting for her life, tortured with surgeries, and finally she passed away quietly under Hospice care.

The  cremains of this couple, married back in the fifties, are commingled in one urn and  buried in an ancient cemetery near the grave of our great-grandfather under massive oaks gray with moss.

Christmas is coming, but how do the daughters and grandchildren celebrate the holidays with joy when the home their tradition-loving mother filled with light, with delicious family meals, exquisite Christmas trees, and gifts lovingly bought or made, is no longer there. It hits them. You can't go home now because home with Mom and Dad is gone. That unconditional love from their parents is only a memory now.

Wisdom comes with this realization. Once we face the pain ourselves, we don’t judge how others handle grief. Once humbled we realize we have no right to judge. We have had our legs cut out from under us and we barely survived, we feel fortunate to still be here, so how could we judge anyone who is dealing with that pain. Empathy grows in places it never thrived before.

Once I was ignorant about this kind of loss. But I learned as I experienced losses of loved ones. Everyone deals with loss, with mourning, in their own way. No one can tell us how we should behave. No rules apply. No limits apply. We don’t get over it. We go on with our lives, and if we are lucky, we finally have days when we no longer feel that stabbing pain when we think of our loved one. We finally are able to talk about our loss without crying, but that doesn’t mean the hurt is gone. We just bury it deeper inside so we can continue to live in the real world.

Finding a way to reach out and help others seems to work best for healing. Starting a ministry for helping children, using our talents to teach others what we know, supporting Hospice or doing something for others in the name of our loved one gives us peace and comfort. Most of us have a need to keep the name of our loved one alive. “As long as we are remembered by even one person we continue to live.”

As my nieces and their children face life without the guiding light of their strong father and mother, my hope is for healing, and my prayers for peace in their lives are foremost on my mind.

Fears and Phobias

Tonight I watched a man overcome his fear of heights by being hoisted high in the air, and a woman put her hand in a bucket of worms although that was one of her biggest fears. The treatment for those phobias, a fear that is irrational and obsessive, is exposure therapy. It works.
At one time mountain roads terrified me. I clung to the car door or the hand grip in the car when we drove over Blood mountain. I wouldn't look over a precipice. But once I rode my own motorcycle down a steep mountain road, I no longer feared riding that curvy road in a car.
Wow, did that feel good. When we overcome that which held our emotions and our well-being captive, we feel as free as an eagle soaring over an Alaskan bay. We feel shame because of our fears and we don't talk about them, but talking about them and facing them head on is the only way to overcome. Writing about them is sometimes the first step.

  I recently realized that I lived in the fight or flight mode even as a  child.
What was I afraid of as a child? Snakes, the dark, bad people who might come in the night and harm my family, bad weather, and the death of my mother.
I didn't understand that those irrational fears were not normal. I don't know why I had such a fear of my mother's death. I didn't fear for my father.
Of course, I didn't think fear of snakes was uncommon. Mother deliberately frightened us.We lived in the country in south Georgia. Snakes lived in the barn, in the oak tree in our yard, under the smoke house, in the blackberry brambles, and she was scared we would be bitten.
Mother's words to my sister and me, were, "Run like crazy if you see a snake no matter what color or what size."
We saw a snake crawling on the oak tree, and we ran screaming to Mother. She came out and with a hoe chopped the snake to little pieces. We were told to stay clear of the reptile even after she cut off his head.
"Snakes don't completely die until the sun goes down, " She told us.
I admit the more I learned about snakes, the more mesmerized I became. In Sunday School I learned about the evil snake, the devil,  in the bible. My skin crawled when I thought of a snake. It didn't help when my brother played on my fear and tossed a non-poisonous snake at me. He never thought it would wrap around my neck and knock me to the ground. Terrified and breathless, I ran for my mother. My brother still regrets that act and says he never meant for the snake to touch me.

All of my nights were scary. While my little sister slept beside me and my parents snoozed in the next room, I curled into a ball, tense with fear, unable to sleep. When the wind whipped the limbs of the big oak tree outside our window, I was sure a hurricane was coming and the tree was going to fall on our house and kill us.

A jacket hanging on the closet door turned into someone evil waiting for me to close my eyes. The sound of a distant train became the footsteps of an intruder approaching my room. Many nights I didn't fall asleep until the wee hours of the morning, when exhaustion overcame my fears.

I became obsessed about my mother's life when I started school. Something told me I needed to be with her and  everything would be all right. This apprehension continued into my college years.  I am now free of that fear. When she passed away, I was forty years old and I had to face my worst fear. I didn't think I would survive, but I did. 
At this time in my life, I've been exposed to everything I feared, including my fear of flying, and I have survived. Even death has no sting.

Did you have childhood fears? How did you overcome your fears?


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