A special welcome
to anyone new to The Grieving Room.
We meet every Monday evening.
Whether your loss is recent,
or many years ago;
whether you've lost a person,
or a pet;
or even if the person you're "mourning" is still alive,
("pre-grief" can be a very lonely and confusing time),
you can come to this diary
and say
whatever you need to say.
Unlike a private journal,
here,
you know:
your words are read by people who share your values
and have been through their own hell.
There's no need to pretty it up
or tone it down.
It just is.
.....and then eat pie.
Here is the link to all the previous The Grieving Room diaries:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
For those of you reading this who don't know me,
I'm involved with this group
because my first wife, Pam,
died five years ago,
and I used this group
as my only grief support group,
to get me through panic attacks and depression,
for about three years.
My new bride, Tonia,
brought back the fairy tale for me,
two years ago,
when I thought the fairy tale was a bullshit illusion
that was never real in the first place.
The fairy tale I'm writing about here
is the fairy tale of two adults,
smiling at each other,
saying I love you,
kissing passionately,
feeling the lips,
so soft and sensual,
holding,
caressing,
complete surrender,
and feeling completely safe.
That fairy tale.
It turns out,
all it takes to make the fairy tale come alive
is:
give each other all your money,
and simply hold and kiss and say I love you,
etc....
As the old shoe ad said,
just do it.
So,
I'm mostly safe from my old fears and depression.
So,
why would I volunteer
to write a diary for this group?
Dredging up old grief,
just to write a diary for this group,
seems stupid.
But there was a few minutes,
recently,
that made me realize
that the words of wisdom you'll read often in the diaries and comments
of this group,
the words that tell us:
You never know
when the grief will sneak up on you,
and make you cry,
(crying is good for you,
medical fact, as I understand)
in those minutes,
I could see it was true:
You never know when something will make you cry.
It was just a couple of weeks ago,
when Tonia asked me to rub her back,
as she often does,
and she asked me about a song,
"How does that song go, Mark?"
and she gave me some clue,
and I figured out she was talking about
The Rainbow Connection,
from The Muppet Movie,
from the seventies.
I started to sing it,
and it made the chore of rubbing Tonia's back
not a chore at all.
I kept rubbing
and singing
and started crying.....
The line that made me cry was this one:
"Someday we'll find it,
the rainbow connection,
the lovers,
the dreamers,
and me."
The Muppet Movie
`Life is a movie, write your own ending, keep believing, keep pretending...' You don't get that in common fare. If you have kids, this is the most educational exposure you can give them among the kiddie offerings. There's nothing more powerful than the ability to perform abstract reasoning and the foundation of that is the play between what things are and what things represent them. Thanks and God bless you, Jim.
When The Muppet Movie came out in 1979,
Pam and I were newlyweds,
with less than two years of married life in us.
Tonia and I are now newlyweds,
with less than two years of living together.
The Rainbow Connection
I'm not certain that I know precisely why
that song makes me cry.
Maybe I'm an old man,
feeling the pain of knowing I'll never be young again,
I'll never again be a young man making that fairy tale come true with a young woman,
as I was doing with Pam.
But that's not so rational,
since the passions are the same,
when I kiss and caress my new bride,
the same as the passions of 1979.
Of course,
tears are not rational.
(If you are looking for a short quote from this diary,
full of wise sounding words,
I'd pick that:
"Tears are not rational.")
(May not be that wise,
but it has that feel about it.)
I truly feel that the words, "Someday we'll find it,"
those words make me cry
because I think of all the things I've looked for and found,
such as the fairy tale life with Pam,
the fairy tale life with Tonia,
and the things I've looked for and not found,
such as doing something bigger with my life,
and I cry from sorrow at losing the past life I'd built,
sorrow at what I've never done yet,
plus tears of joy at the life I'm now building with Tonia.
Is that the correct explanation?
Maybe it's best to revert to the maybe wise words:
Tears are not rational.
Thanks for reading.