My Blogs Today

My Blogs Today

Isn’t it something…as I have been doing my research for my book, ‘the book’ I am presently writing about ‘grieving those you lost.’ I have gone back to read the first blogs Olgie wrote.  As I read the first blogs which were posted on this site years ago…I can clearly feel the emotions of the woman who wrote these blogs.  I cannot help but feel the heartache the author was desperately trying to convey to her audience, and I see all the grammatical errors written by Olgie in her state of absolute desolation.  Oh yes...I feel her emotions as I read her blogs…the blogs written by her in her moments of complete sorrow.  As I read, and continued to re-read these blogs I cry, tears flow down my cheeks uncontrollably.  As my eyes sweep across each word, I am made to feel as though I am walking in her shoes…going through the same grief she was experiencing at the moment the blogs were written.  Anyone who has taken the time to read these blogs, hard as they are to read…can visualize the emotions the author of this blog was, and still is trying desperately to get across to her audience.   In looking back at myself, as the original and only writer of these blogs…I now see how very far I have come in my grief.  I have come to a place in my life where I know I will not die of this broken heart…I know my relationship with all those people who stayed away in my sorrow will never again be as it once was…I know I will forever see those who grieve, in a different light…I know I will not commit suicide due to the depths of this sorrow…I know I must put one foot in front of the other and do all that I can to keep moving forward...and I now know…I will for the rest of my life, grieve the loss of my son.

Yesterday at work…a song came on my music station…(the song ‘Hurt’ by Johnny Cash, was my go to song in the early years of my grief)...the second this song came on the station, and as though on queue, tears began to flow down my face irrepressibly.  There was nothing I could do to stop them, nothing.  I was sitting in front of my computer with tears flowing down my face like a small stream.  This is the face and actions of true grief.  This really is what grief looks like, functions like, and feels like.  Absolutely irrepressible!

I was talking to a colleague at work not long ago.  In our conversation he said to me, “Tomorrow is Veterans Day.  I will be taking off tomorrow as it also happens to be the day I lost my father.”

I let him talk…he continued, “My father died 11 years ago, and still...some days it feels like I just lost him.  In all these years, the thing I miss most about my father are his answers to all my questions.  He was my ‘go to’ person whenever I needed someone to talk to, my father was the person I went to.  I miss him as much today, as I did the day he died.“  

I could see the tears welling up in my colleague’s face as he talked, tears welling up on the face of a 60 year old man.  I could clearly see his pain, and I understood his grief.

“You know Olgie, I really miss my father.”  He said as he walked away.

He was right…I have found in my own grief, everything he said, every word...was the same thing I have discovered in my own sorrow.  We don’t really think about death…most people don’t talk aloud about it.  I think people have a sense of fear when it comes to death or knowing someone who is dying.  It is almost like they are afraid if they get too close it will happen to them.  My colleague was correct in his description of missing his father.  This is also the conclusion I have come to after losing Steve, after losing Jeff…one does not merely ‘get over it’ as so many people have been wanting me to do.  And one cannot just get better ‘if they really want to’ as I have been told by a friend. 

"If you really want to be happy Olgie, you can be happy...you just have to think positive," she said. "Any therapist will tell you the same thing.  There are plenty of books written about it.  If you think positive and want to be happy, you can be happy.”    

Unbelievable…I just really hope this person never takes a step in my shoes…she would not be able to walk this same path…no…she would no doubt, fall on her face, and as much as she will try to follow the advice of all the therapeutic books on grief...she will not be able to.  I only hope she will not remember her own words whilst walking in those imaginary shoes.  When you lose someone you love, the average person will never…I will never...‘get over it,’ as she says.

This is the conclusion I have found…after grieving all these years, one does not stop grieving.  This grief lives within you each and every day.  I have learned to keep moving.  I continue to take one step at a time, each and every day…but I will never stop missing my son.  My heart continues to ache…but I have learned to live in spite of the pain.  My book, the book I am currently writing will focus on my own grief, and on all these things I have learned during my bereavement.  My hopes is that this book I am writing will be helpful to someone down the road.  My hope is that all these blogs that have been written by me…in my '‘moment to moment’ grief, will be helpful in some way, to everyone who reads it.  And if these blogs only helped one person in this vast world...it has been worth the energy it has taken to write.