Author: Copy Chick

creative diva. copy chick. idea junkie who likes to color outside the lines. I’ve learned well that anything can happen – and if we wait long enough, pretty much everything does. It’s what we do in between that counts. When I began my first blog, writebrainwidow.blog, I was a devastated widow attempting to make sense of the unthinkable. Well, THAT quest was a bust, but the journey and all that it demanded was not. I’m still here, I’m still writing, still persisting and resisting — with my sense of humor intact. I'll continue to drop more words and thoughts into the "other shoe" so if it DOES fall – it might just be a kickass, backless heel. A girl can hope.
Grief is Grief

You…. COMPLETE ME.

Copy Chick

phantom-limb-painPhantom Limb. The name given to that piece of the body that’s been amputated from the rest of its parts — yet its presence is still felt. At times, it feels as if it is still attached and in sync with other body parts. It feels like it’s still moving, still part of you – except it isn’t.

I can’t help but think that’s a pretty apt description of the loss of a spouse, don’t you? Ripping off a vital part of your being without warning is beyond shock; beyond comprehension.  Living within that unreality is painful to the max. Like a treasured limb, its absence is unthinkable.

HIS absence is unthinkable. His skin, his body, his voice was as familiar as my own. I knew every hill and valley of his shoulders, chest, back. We moved in sync and shadowed each other in so many ways. I could move my arm and his came to meet it. When my back faced his chest, instinctively his hands massaged my aching shoulders in unspoken need. I knew every nuance of his expressions, some of pure enjoyment, some an expression of inner boredom, some a plastic arrangement of smile to cover hurt or emotional pain. Crossing a city street, his hand came instinctively to meet mine. Continue reading “You…. COMPLETE ME.” →

Grief is Grief

Life ISN’T a Box of Chocolates . . .

Copy Chick

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“Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, “Why me?” Then a voice answers, “Nothing personal . . . your name just happened to come up.”     Charlie Brown

Life just IS. At times, it can be sweet, surprising (the good kind) and rewarding. Other times, the sucky ones, we get gobsmacked with bitter taste or whopping sick from that 365 variety box of life. Unfortunately, it’s those we remember most. Yet, somehow, we still keep reaching for the next piece — and the next, always hoping for the one with the cherry surprise.

When we get married, we want the whole damn gift-wrapped box of chocolate – every sweet bite we can stuff in our faces. Sometimes, we could nearly eat our way through the whole box before finding the one we THOUGHT was gooey cream actually has the hard, chewy filling. And that one leaves a rotten aftertaste (or a broken crown!)

We got that hard, jaw-breaking piece before the wedding. A cancer diagnosis does that. Optimistic as always, we still decided to go for it, with the unreasonable trust of children. Some would call it naivete or supreme optimism. We just called it love. Continue reading “Life ISN’T a Box of Chocolates . . .” →

Politics and other awkward stuff

A rainbow of grief

Copy Chick

7b47cba0-12f0-0134-e753-0a315da82319All the colors of humanity, of love, of loss. We saw each in Orlando in terrifying technicolor this weekend. Sons, daughters, brothers, sisters – lost. Each of us, who’ve lost the person closest to us, know well the journey their families now will take. Those families, those parents, siblings, grandparents had their hearts ripped out in a second of senseless violence. San Bernadino, Newtown, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook. Adults, children all cut down in the business of living.

Plumbing the depth of my own loss, the slicing off of an artery in your heart without warning, I can’t help but think about the people grieving this week. Many years ago, my young brother died at 19 of leukemia. His loss was immeasurable and I saw my parents nearly destroyed by it. A life that never got to be lived. Watching the mother weeping uncontrollably for news of the son she couldn’t find in the melee, I recognized the anguish. And knew the bottomless pain she now will swim through.

Her son did not survive.

I usually write of my own trip through loss that I never packed for, but tonight my words are for Orlando, the latest headline from hell. There is way too much talk of hate, of exclusion, of retribution – and no healing, no coming together, no real answers. I’m angry, frustrated that weapons of war (um, you don’t need an assault rifle for hunting deer – or PEOPLE!) are available at ANY level especially for the unstable, violent or disenfranchised.  The time has come to listen for truth within the rhetoric and for more than tears and talk. I can only hope it is now.

We need to remember the trusting children who left for school, those who went to work, or a casual night of celebration — and never returned home. And we need to remember the families whose new normal will be mourning.

I have questions and no answers. Maybe all we can do is think carefully about Mahatma Gandi’s words “The future depends on what we do in the present” because if we do nothing – there will be no future.

 

 

 

 

Grief is Grief

Four Funerals and a Wedding

Copy Chick

Happy couple in their new home concept

Nope, not the Hugh Grant comedy.  Jill Smolowe’s book, Four Funerals and a Wedding, is pretty much anything but comedic. Her book chronicles not only her personal grief journey but how she coped and grew along the way. In one chapter she mentions how her therapist suggested that her grief began on the first day of her husband’s diagnosis. That struck me as pretty profound.  Given that my husband’s diagnosis was levied 3 months before we were even married, I realized it would not be at all surprising that unconscious grief followed us through those years. Even as we lived and loved as fully as we possibly could, we grieved by inches.

How do you measure the knowledge, however much you stash it in the closet or ‘put on a happy face’, that many dreams just won’t come true? No, my mind never went in the direction of Charlie Brown’s Sally who said “She didn’t want to live and threw herself in front of a Zamboni”. It was just that gray leaden feeling, a sense that no matter what your plans, there would always be an expiration date that coexisted with the daily business of living. Where cancer lives, everything becomes more complicated and layered. All of life takes on a different hue. Continue reading “Four Funerals and a Wedding” →