I know as an English major that the title of this blahg is not grammatically correct.
I’m going to ignore that rule because in this scenario I want to come before my grief. I have to have top billing. It’s selfish I know but I’ve had a hell of a couple of months and I need things to be this way. This blahg is about my grief. It’s dirty and sad and all the things I don’t want to put into a blahg but it’s part of my healing process.
I’m going to post a new poem below about my grief. It’s what I want to say and I’ve drafted it to the point where it summarizes, at least for me, everything that I’ve been through. The poem is words expressed the way I want them to be. They’re clipped and short and concise but this blahg will flesh them out for those of you who don’t understand or don’t enjoy my poetry.
Before I start though, I want to point back to a couple of blahgs. Obviously this is about the loss of my Father which you can read about in “The Passing Of George Henderson” but some of this also links back to a blahg from three years ago “The Balancing Act“. It would probably be very helpful to all of you if you read both of those posts because they add a great deal of context and bring things full circle to this blahg.
My Father, George Arthur Henderson, passed away on January 19th, 2019. I had to make the tough decision to let him go because there was no quality of life and dad wouldn’t have wanted that. It was a sad few days and we all got through it but there were things to be done and I powered through them and went back to work. Work was always a place I could go to for the “white noise” of everyone and everything else that I could focus on while I healed. For a time that worked. I got things done at work and at home but all the little things about handling the estate, banking, life insurance, wills, government forms, some of which I’m still working on, began to take a toll on me.
In mid-February we had a tragedy at work where one of the clients I worked closely with killed another of my clients. It was devastating and it sent the world of our work reeling and we could focus on nothing else. A grief counsellor, Yvette, was brought in to meet with our team but I only saw her for five minutes before the call of business as usual pulled me away. I had only started to tell her about losing my Father in January and I was a little weepy. That morning I had to take another client to the hospital for some tests and it was the first time I had been to the hospital since my dad died. It naturally brought up some sad lingering feelings about his passing.
What happened next was something for which I was not prepared. Grief fell over me and for the next few weeks I found myself drowning in sorrow. In my job I do some counselling and sometimes I relate a story to some of my clients who are struggling. I talk about an episode of the early 1990s show “Get A Life” with comic Chris Elliott. The episode is appropriately titled “Pile of Death”. The description for the episode is “To save his childhood park, Chris raises money by trying to break the world record for having things piled on you.” Chris lies on the ground in the park and people come along and pile things on top of him. At some point the representative from the Guinness Book of World Records comes along and tells Chris
there’s no record for the most things piled on top of yourself. Chris points out a particular picture in the book but the representative tells him that’s an after photo of when the pile for the most things stacked up fell on top of the person trying to stack them. So I tell my clients there’s no prize for piling things on top of yourself. The prize is for stacking them up to the side and then dealing with them so they don’t fall on top of you.
I thought I was dealing with my pile. I kept working and tackling those things I had to deal with as a result of dad’s death. At some point that pile became unmanageable and it came crashing down on me and trapped me underneath. That’s when the grief kicked into overdrive and I felt sad and angry all of the time and crying because I didn’t know what else to do. With everyone at work trying to make sense of the homicide and how it affected each of us, I found that was something near the top of the pile that I couldn’t process because I still was dealing with dad’s death.
I began to play the same song over and over in my vehicle like a death dirge because I didn’t want to be happy. I wanted to continue to pile everything on top of me even though I knew there was no prize. The song I played was “Why It Matters” by Sara Groves:
I don’t know what Sara Groves meant by the lyrics but in my grief I needed to know why anything mattered. I didn’t have time for anyone else’s pain and sorrow at work and when I came home I didn’t want to talk to my daughter or my wife about any of this. My grief was mine alone and I wasn’t just trapped in it, I gave into it willingly and let it swallow me.
It would be about ten days before I could get a chance to sit down with Yvette again. I had reached out to her myself because I knew I needed something. Her schedule didn’t allow her a chance to meet with me until then so I kept on going. Things kept being added to the pile that was on top of me and I couldn’t tell people to stop because I’d always been a source of strength to others and they needed to give me their stuff. So I accepted all of their stuff but kept telling people I didn’t want to talk about anything because I would just be spewing until I got a chance to talk to Yvette. Little bits came out and people reacted but I kept asking them not to react because I was still processing everything. It was a tough time.
The weekend before I met again with Yvette, I had a bit of a breakdown and told my wife that I needed to spew and for her to just listen to me. She had been sick that week and so physical intimacy wasn’t there. I cried and told her about all the grief and the pain and how I was feeling and she just listened and rubbed my back. It was better for a few days but then I had to go back to work and that chaos came flying at me all over again. Eventually I sat down with Yvette and for two hours I gave her all of the back story of my dad and my sorrow and my grief. There had been no memorial services for dad so part of talking with Yvette was sharing with her everything I felt about my dad and how his death was threatening to swallow me up. I can tell you there’s nothing like someone not connected to your life, listening and hearing what you need to get out.
I felt better after I talked to Yvette. Part of her challenge to me was to find a way to express everything I was feeling. I told her about my blahgs and she said it sounded like writing was a release for me and that maybe I could find a way to release everything else through my writing. I thought about that and I thought a blahg might help but words began to swirl in my brain and I knew they were words trying to come out as a poem. I was at work for two more days and things felt a little better. I was then given a week off to deal with things and I gladly took that time, being Spring Break and my wife being off for that week, to connect with my wife and make that part of my life better. We did. I also allowed the poem to develop and this is how it came out:
when my father died
when my father died
sorrow eluded me
the anger at an unexpected
yet accepted passing
two day decline
to death
shadowed
by the chaos
of this life
and to do
forcing the stack
higher
pushed to the side
hoping for each thing
to be swallowed
as natural compost
when my father died
there were no services
no prolonged goodbye
no chance at words
an anagram perhaps
of a life summed up
rearranged to a sign post
that way onward for him
or this way for the living
when my father died
I carried on
tackled some things
tossed others to the tower
tried facing forwards
sometimes a sideways glance
to the pile
checking that it was still there
all the things that still bound me
to my father
weeks passed
after he passed
and the pile shifted
fell
trapping me beneath
grief appearing
finally
again unexpected
yet accepted
all consuming
a sad song
purposefully on repeat
all things
that were just things
collapsing over me
grief and I became close
buried together
hating and fighting
biting and scratching
hating mostly
everything and everyone
selfishness and pain
my true friends
nothing else
then someone sat with me
learned of
his death
my struggles
heard the spewing
took it all in
listened
to the stories
and all the grief
given out
in gasping breaths
until it had been shared
and the rubble was just
rubble
flotsam
easier to pick through
sort into importance
or not
when my father died
I had no time
no
made no time
to break
to grieve
to fashion truths
into a grave marker
or a trail marker
when my father died
I accepted
what needed to be done
the list
at once unmountable
but somehow
manageable
until that last thing done
releases him from me
and all I have
is memories
and my grief
that guides me
from here to there
this place to that place
where he has gone
and sends his beacon
It took a few days of editing to get it just right. I lived with it for a few more then I went to see Yvette again. She had asked me to see her again before I went back to work after my week off and was to bring my wife. I assured my wife it wasn’t couple counselling. It wasn’t. It was about my grief and how I was getting through it and how my wife was on that journey with me. At the end of the session I pulled out the above poem. But before I read it, I read another poem “the balancing act”, which you can read in my previous blahg “The Balancing Act“. See, everything links back.
In that blahg I talked about attending a workshop in 2016 on Grief and Loss. Yvette had been the main speaker at that event. I found that I wasn’t really connected to the topic because I hadn’t had anyone close die on me in about forty years. Most had been relatives who had aged out or pets that were part of my family but allowed me to open our heart and home for our new pets. The last real death was a friend who died tragically in high-school. I moved past that a long time ago and have had nothing to draw on since. So I didn’t take to the grief and loss section but when I heard about “the tree of life” section I was inspired. I told that to Yvette and then read “the balancing act” and “when my father died”. Both Yvette and Jeanette had tears in their eyes. At last all the spewing and sharing had been summed up and set free. Grief was still with me but more like a companion than part of that great big pile.
I know there will be deaths again in my life and now I’ll have something to draw on when grief looms large again. I’m still pecking away at all of those tasks still to be done but I’ve realized why there was so much anger attached to those tasks. One day, I think next year when I file dad’s last tax return, the final task will be done and all those tasks that bound me to him will be done and it will just be memories of my dad. That’s what the poem says best.
In my first blahg of this year, Welcome 2019…I’m Ready For You!, I said I was ready for 2019. That dip in the frigid lake seems so long ago but it really didn’t prepare me for what was to come. Maybe I’m not ready for the rest of 2019 but having made it through the first three months and an all consuming grief, I’m readier. Is that even a word? When I told my dad that we were going to release him and he would die in a few days, he indicated he was ready. He’s gone on his final journey but I’ve still got more journeys to come. And I’ll draw from the lyrics of one of Paul Quarrington’s last songs, “Are You Ready?” One of the last lines of that song is “Am I ready? I believe I am.”
Am I ready? Hell no, probably not if I think about it. But sometimes it’s not about thinking about it too much. It’s a leap a faith. Some kind of belief that with new experiences I’m readier than I’ll ever be. Am I ready? I believe I am.