Grief

So this is rapidly becoming a grief blog. Huh.

A friend of mine started blogging after the death of her daughter. She also had the foresight to get herself into therapy immediately. Both of which were either not an option (blogging) or not something I realized one did after a death (therapy). Instead of starting therapy, I bounced in and out of my doctor's offices, freaking out about this ailment or that one, convinced I was going to need an appendectomy, or that I was coming down with bowel cancer, or that I had systematic candidiasis. I finally found an internist who patiently scheduled me for tests and then said "I can't find anything wrong with you, perhaps it's time for therapy?"

I was actually relieved. Oh, this could all be in my mind? Phew. And then confused -- why, now, after the death of my mother (I hear you rolling your eyes, smacking your forheads, Duh!) was this happening? I was relieved she was gone. No more ridiculous battles that were about to culminate in me cutting her out of my life. No more tense phone calls as she tried to talk to me as if nothing was wrong. No more sobbing into Mr. LSG's shoulder after a confrontation. Gone was the overarching feeling of being grossly misunderstood, by my own mother.

My therapist did what therapists are supposed to do, I suppose. I cried. She listened. I raged. She listened. And one day, I looked out of the window and saw... sunlight. Blue skies. Puffy White Clouds. That's the day I stopped seeing that therapist.

There have been other therapists since then, and I now know what to do in the event someone else dies. But I can't help wondering, if blogs were around when Dad died, would I have been able to use this as a grief tool as well? I could have gotten the poisonous thoughts out. Mom's all-too-brief courtship of her second husband and hasty chucking-out of all things Dad, my wedding, my first relocation to London and Mom's final bout with melanoma all would have been rather juicy topics, and frankly, things I would like to have written about then so I could look back now.

I thought this blog was going to be about my life now, but almost every time I write something it comes out through my grief filter, which makes me realize I have unfinished business. It's not like I don't know that, as I watch an Alzheimer's drug ad and think about how I will never (get? have?) to go through that with my parents, or every time I see one of those crown air fresheners in the back of a car I think of my Dad and one of the last conversations I had with him ("What the heck *are* those things, anyway?").

Interesting.