Lots of folks at Daily Kos are grieving every day.
Some are grieving recent deaths. Some are grieving deaths that happened around this time of year.
Some are grieving family and friends who died in uniform.
Still others are pre-grieving deaths expected to happen in the near future, or feeling the loss of loved ones to dementia.
Some are heartbroken at the loss of the unconditional love of a furbaby.
Some are having a birthday without Mom, a wedding without Dad, or another life milestone with a very important person missing.
Still others wake up every morning missing someone who died too young, or who died after many years of marriage, or who died after a lifetime of friendship.
Whatever your reason for grief is, you are welcome to share it here.
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@
Welcome, fellow travelers on the grief journey
and a special welcome to anyone new to The Grieving Room.
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.
We can't solve each other's problems,
but we can be a sounding board and a place of connection.
Unlike a private journal,
here, you know: your words are read by people who
have been through their own hell.
There's no need to pretty it up or tone it down.
It just is.
This is a hard, hard day.
For some of us, this is the last day of the Loneliness Pentathalon: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day. A grueling third of the year to struggle through alone.
Sometimes I wonder if this is how people who don’t celebrate Christmas feel about December: engulfed, surrounded, no way to escape.
Folks who say “it's just a Hallmark holiday, don’t make a big deal out of it” have not spent a lifetime on the outside looking in.
We know the importance of love just as deeply as those who have been blessed with it.
There is a stigma attached to admitting to loneliness, admitting to shyness, admitting to being afraid to get close to people while all the time craving that same closeness. Some have said there is a loneliness epidemic in the world right now.
I’ve heard a lot of “jokes” today about being alone on February 14. Snarky memes and cards are everywhere. I don’t know how to respond to them. It almost feels like joking about someone with a serious illness. Come to think of it, people do joke about folks with serious illness too—maybe it is like laughing at the man who slips on a banana peel: you laugh because on some level you are just grateful that the pain is not happening to you.
In my book, loneliness is not to be joked about or laughed at. Loneliness kills people. It is literally as serious as a heart attack.
So if you are alone tonight binge watching television or binge eating potato chips and trying not to think about a lost love you are grieving—whether because of death or divorce, sexual orientation or some other sort of rejection—here is a place we can gather and get through the last few hours of this “meaningless” “Hallmark holiday” together.
While writing this I stumbled upon this Psychology Today article on the seven types of loneliness.
I was not surprised to see that poor sleep habits are connected to loneliness, but it did seem counter-intuitive to suggest that getting more sleep might make a person feel less lonely. Since I need all the encouragement I can get to improve my sleep hygiene, I will take it to heart.
There are other practical suggestions in the article for ways to cope with loneliness effectively. Maybe they are obvious, but I know I have been inconsistent about doing them, so if I want 2020 to be different I have to make every effort to approach life in a new way in 2019.
About the only good thing I can say is that I was so exhausted and busy on my mom’s death anniversary last Saturday that I got through the day unscathed; and this was in spite of attending an actual funeral on that day, where the congregation even sang the hymn I was singing to her at the moment she died. Score one for synchronicity.
But I was fine. Not a tear shed on Saturday.
Not from missing my mom anyway.
After twelve years that aspect of my grief is finally just part of the background noise.
That’s a big deal and worth noting in TGR after all my previous diaries about her. Time heals all wounds—not completely, but enough that eventually the scars are hardly noticeable and the pain is more or less bearable.
So here is an impulsively posted Valentine’s Day edition of The Grieving Room. I don’t know if I have the energy in this Father McKenzie mood to tend the diary closely, but I hope anyone who needs it will feel free to share whatever they need to share. Post songs, poems, and remembrances of the departed, whatever is getting you through the last few hours of this day.
Or just say the name of that person you longed for from afar and never dared to speak to, for that is also a kind of grief on a day like this.
Participating here is an act of trust between blogfriends who know each other, and between people who have never met.
We send our needs, our cries for help, our poems of loss and recovery, our honest emotions, out into the blogosphere.
We trust that someone reading our words has been in a similar place and truly understands.
We read without judgment and offer presence, not advice.
We trust that someone out there will offer a kind word and stand beside us as we rant and rage about the unfairness of it all.