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Post by paulette on May 15, 2018 11:02:36 GMT -6
I know that I've added bits on to others' posts but I thought I'd put this out on a new thread.
My friend Butch (who I've written about here) is in a long hard protracted dying. He can barely get out of bed anymore. Soon, he said, he will not be posting because he does that sitting up at his computer in his comfortable chair. I think about him and in the stage he is in every day, many times a day. He says, "I'll call you." He promised me that he would tell his housekeeper and friend to call me as things deteriorated further or if he died suddenly. She might or might not. His brother eventually will tell me.
Meanwhile, I had heard on the news that a guy on a motorcycle here in Courtenay had hit a truck and died. "Too bad," I thought. Turned out that he was a rock club friend of mine. I had gone on field trips with him, and sat and manned a table at our clubs. He, Peter, was a gentle man - not competitive on field trips (dashing ahead to find the best bit before someone else got there but rather walking slowing a finding little treasures that others missed. He had not been active in the club for awhile - I wondered if his health was affected.
So here's one man I care about trapped in a Ground Hog Day of dying every day (but waking up the next day.) He's in pain, weak, can't enjoy anything, and still his tough old body perserves. Peter, who could scramble up and down steep trails, is suddenly missing.
I am in two stages of grieving simultaneously. Pre-grieving Butch's eventual leaving and also his current suffering. Grieving Peter, whose brother merely sent the club contact person an email. "My brother is dead; take him off your records."
Peter had many rocks that he had picked up one at a time on his trips to Sask. He had camped in a gravel pit (for a small fee) and picked up agate and jasper. I suspect that were I to look outside of his old house, they'd be behind the fence. In two weeks his brother had everything cleared out and had it listed. And his storage locked area.
I grieve that his interests became worthless items to be disposed of. (Our club and other clubs often are called to take away rocks - and either auction them off and provide most of the money to the family, or just pass them on and acknowledge where they came from. That way, they continue on to someone else's hand to be enjoyed and maybe turned into personal adornment. I wish I had just one rock of Peter's....
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Post by skywalker on May 15, 2018 11:15:40 GMT -6
Perhaps you should go look behind his house before somebody else moves in. You never know what you might find.
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Post by jcurio on May 17, 2018 10:46:58 GMT -6
Now, maybe even something “left” just for you. Since you basically put this request “out to the universe”. 😊
You know to pray for protection as you go on this land... even if it is now open to the public. 🤔
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Post by paulette on May 25, 2018 22:11:49 GMT -6
My friend Butch died. I don't know when. His brother posted a RIP my brother today. No details. I felt that he was leaving yesterday. Maybe he was. I was doing Crisis management for a group of people who had a suicide in their midst. I kept telling any and all...find someone who will support you. Your husband may not be the one who can. I came home, looked at FB and got the news. I told my husband and he said, "Well, you knew he was going to die." And went back to watching his TV show.
I went to some friends who had had to put down their old beloved but now sick, deaf, and blind cat. They were grieving. We looked at pictures of Argo and I talked about some splendid times I had had with Butch. They both left their old worn-out bodies behind. It was as it should be.
I am still very sad.
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Post by skywalker on May 25, 2018 23:21:55 GMT -6
So sorry to hear that, Paulette. This is what sucks about getting older. You start losing all the people you care about.
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Post by jojustjo on May 26, 2018 10:14:07 GMT -6
Paulette I am so very sorry for your loss and I truly can empathize. I am not sorry for his passing because you have described a miserable shell of a life that he had.
I feel the same way about my son...I miss him like words are impossible and I will love him forever BUT...I know there is another level of consciousness..another and another reality..I KNOW we go from here to other dimensions so they are not gone...they are just not with us and that is the hard part and the part we the living have to deal with. I'm not easy yet with discussing 'shared' memories of my son other than with my daughter and other son and we don't do that often because the ache is still horrendous for the son left, who was his best friend even when they weren't getting along, they had one another's back. I know it's even harder for him than for me but slowly he's managing to go through his brothers things.
We all need to grieve. To find what we can accept and move on with our lives. I don't think there is a 'death' just a moving forward and in your friends case...think of the wonderful explorations in store! Not final frontier's just very new ones.
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Post by auntym on May 26, 2018 12:53:38 GMT -6
i hate losing friends...may yours R.I.P...
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Post by plutronus on May 30, 2018 9:04:58 GMT -6
Paulette I am so very sorry for your loss and I truly can empathize. I am not sorry for his passing because you have described a miserable shell of a life that he had. I feel the same way about my son...I miss him like words are impossible and I will love him forever BUT...I know there is another level of consciousness..another and another reality..I KNOW we go from here to other dimensions so they are not gone...they are just not with us and that is the hard part and the part we the living have to deal with. I'm not easy yet with discussing 'shared' memories of my son other than with my daughter and other son and we don't do that often because the ache is still horrendous for the son left, who was his best friend even when they weren't getting along, they had one another's back. I know it's even harder for him than for me but slowly he's managing to go through his brothers things. We all need to grieve. To find what we can accept and move on with our lives. I don't think there is a 'death' just a moving forward and in your friends case...think of the wonderful explorations in store! Not final frontier's just very new ones. One of things that is so hard to wrap our minds around is that...well...we can still feel them and we know deep within ourself that they are still 'around' but so unreachable. Its almost as though one can reach out and touch'm...but where? Death is so final. It creates a hole that only the Beautiful Light of God can fill, thankfully. But its still there, always. And in time the connection silently drifts away. <sigh> After time, I no longer can see them or sense them or feel them. Its not that they are no longer there, but that they have risen to a higher frequency than I can receive...
plutronus
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Post by jojustjo on May 30, 2018 10:00:38 GMT -6
What I like about you most Plutronus...you're a scientist...a man with a good brain and a great education AND a wonderful spirituality. That's a full house and a very rare thing indeed.
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Post by paulette on May 31, 2018 10:38:59 GMT -6
We all need to grieve. To find what we can accept and move on with our lives. I don't think there is a 'death' just a moving forward and in your friends case...think of the wonderful explorations in store! Not final frontier's just very new ones.[/quote] One of things that is so hard to wrap our minds around is that...well...we can still feel them and we know deep within ourself that they are still 'around' but so unreachable. Its almost as though one can reach out and touch'm...but where? Death is so final. It creates a hole that only the Beautiful Light of God can fill, thankfully. But its still there, always. And in time the connection silently drifts away. <sigh> After time, I no longer can see them or sense them or feel them. Its not that they are no longer there, but that they have risen to a higher frequency than I can receive...
plutronus
[/quote] Here's a piece of grieving that actually surprised me (Why? I can intuit and/or see only a tiny piece of this reality.) The night that my friend died (and I didn't find out until the late afternoon of the next day) I was doing a "Crisis Management Response" for a large employee assistance company. It was (maybe all of them are) tricky in that there had been a suicide and all the management and staff of this place knew it. Some had slightly known the person, some had not but reverberated to the fact of a suicide due to their personal histories. Anger and bewilderment - anger largely aimed at the person holding it. They had no idea the one who suicided was so troubled. Could they have done more (or less) this or that? Even, what am I supposed to feel? I did two days of small groups and individuals who walked in seeking company or clarity. I have my own history of losing people close to me to suicide. Very close to me. But it was mostly in my early twenties. Much time lay between those memories and me now. However. I should have known better. The memories would come, or maybe, the people themselves came. In my mind's eye they were slouched around in chairs in the back, taking in what I was saying or not saying. Curious maybe. Maybe they wanted to be sure that I talked for them (generally) when I discussed a young woman that noone had known very well...and someone should have. So it had been for them in some version. One lover in my past had told me that he had to leave. That he wasn't OK and didn't want to be close to anyone in that state. I thought he had come up with an easy out to get away from me. I railed against him. We had opened a business (Karate Dojo) and a restaurant. They went bankrupt and left us adrift with our broken dreams. Oh..and I was pregnant. After his pronouncement, my friends sat me down and talked about what next? I had an abortion in Mexico. I knew I was not mother material at that point in my life. Awhile later, I heard that my lover's brother (who seemed schizoprenic to me) committed suicide. Then a few years later, my lover (who I was no longer in contact with) did as well. Their father (who was brilliant and left his widow with a LOT of money - he invented the gas chromatography device - also had committed suicide.) I could have had a baby that later committed suicide. Jack was one of unseen-to-others figures in the room as I worked. But I didn't feel judged or harassed (or frightened) by them. They were just curious to see how honest I was in holding the line between official platitudes and being real. They were like advisors... I felt, at the end of two long days, wrung out, but satisfied enough with what I had done. I had been present. I had stayed present. I had no judgements, voiced or unvoiced. I once had been the one that perhaps hadn't loved well enough or who had to realize that my love wasn't the primary part of the pain, nor could it fix it. None of my friends/lovers made gestures. They got it right the first time. So had this woman. No ambiquity. And it is always a choice to be made. Whatever shambles of expectation and remorse is left behind for the rest of us to deal with. That's what I brought to this assignment, whether spoken or unspoken, seen or unseen. And it was, I hope, enough...
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