Day Fifty-Eight: Blind Grief and Angry Good-byes

This entry was taken from one of my personal journals, written 30 June 2010, one month after the day that I came close to meeting my Maker:

Grief, like love, is blind. In the grips of our own grief, we can't fully see the pain of another or the pain we may be causing another. As with love, we must give the other person the benefit of the doubt and hope that the added pain is unintentional.

Grief works in both directions. The people that will be left behind grieve, sure, but the person that knows that they are dying and leaving them behind grieves as well. This can cause tense moments, moments of poor judgment, moments of downright anger and resentment…from both sides.

One of the self-destruct modes of my life has been to have leavings on a bad note…it seems easier perhaps, in a grief-filled mind, to deal with the loss when anger is involved than to lose them, knowing they aren’t coming back, and miss them so much. We don’t miss what we can’t stand.

It is a false economy of sorts. We still love the person; we still want to be with them. We are angry and hurt by the separation and we miss them terribly. We may be able to change our masks on a dime, but the heart is an entirely different matter.

When you are faced with a loss, how do you cope with it? Do you push the person further away to seemingly make the loss easier to bear? Does it really work?

58. I am thankful for that delayed "good-bye". I am sorry that I wasn't there to tell Grandma and Granny "good-bye", but very thankful for the time that I had with them. I am thankful for those that listen to my middle of life ramblings and still love me, even though they think I am insane (in reality or in jest, I am not sure!). I am thankful for the laughter that is returning to our home.

One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are