Wednesday, November 15, 2006

It's been 12 days since my father died. He was my biggest motivator for writing this blog. Every day he'd check and if there was nothing new he'd rag on me. The last two entries felt alien, like I was writing to no one.

The first ten days after his death I'd realize, out of the blue, that I'd been pacing. Looking out the window, walking across the house to look out another window, wandering upstairs and down. I didn't give it much thought, but later I read in a book about grief that this type of behavior is known as searching. Though a person's intellect understands that the missing person is gone, the subconscious does not and thus searches, endlessly. When I read that, I thought how sad that sounds - searching, wandering, hoping that next time you look, the person you love so much will be there. I guess you spend so much time being, well, conscious for lack of a better word that you don't even realize there's more to your brain than just that. I guess it's like, out of consciousness out of mind.

7 comments:

kris said...

Keep writing babe... it's theraputic and I hear Heaven has a great wi-fi connection.

*hugs*

P.H. said...

Excellent post. Keep writing.

Idiot Cook said...

Yep. I echo what the top posters said.

Anonymous said...

When my mother died I had recurring dreams of seeing her in a crowd and chasing after her but never making the connection. It's been 24 years now and every so often I still have those dreams. The good news is that while they seem like sad dreams, they're familiar and hopeful and comforting.

Some people may look at it as a way to accept a terrible loss. For me, it's simply the way that my subconscious mind strives to keep her memory alive.

Hang in there. And don't necessarily pay attention to everything the books say. Each person's experience is his or her own unique journey.

Anonymous said...

I remember my parents' cat searching for our dog, after he died. My parents got the cat very young, so she thought the dog was mom. They used to sleep together. She was lost without him.

Anonymous said...

My best friend's mother died last week of a sudden cardiac arrest. At her funeral, the priest talked about the importance of grieving and also the importance of celebrating the passing of her spirit to a better place. I hadn't been to a funeral for quite some time and didn't know what to expect. What I found was that her spirit most definitely filled the room. We all felt sorrow but also celebrated so many great things about her mother, through stories told and hundreds of pictures. Hang in there and know that your father is still there in spirit with your blogging and daily life.

Anonymous said...

Your blogging buddies aren't the same without your pearls of wisdom.