A Grief Turducken – aka Stuffing Your Feelings

This is going to seem like a downer but as I sit to write this, I’m filled with hope and clarity and realize I’m already healing as we speak. So fear not, anything is possible.

The first massive lost in my life was a dear friend and sudo father figure, although, he’d hate for me to insinuate he was that old.  Greg Snyder, just typing the name makes me smile.  I have his flawless signature (he had the most beautiful penmanship for a man) with the words “see me” as a tattoo that I was able to show him before he died, and he loved it.   In his words “that will be so great for you later”.  He knew he was dying, and he was sad mostly for the rest of us because he had to “leave the party early”.  He left behind children, the love of his life, who I also loved, friends, family and so many others who no longer had the absolute joy of his humor, his talents, his wit, his wisdom, and endless generosity. I was so lucky to have known him at all, let alone BE loved by him.  Man, he was cool.  Man, I was devastated.  This was the first.

I had to get to work, wanted to show up for his family in any way I could, help with details, the memorial, sorting through pictures, his belongings, I guess I put my love and loss for him into action, not fully letting it be. Never really feeling the same ever again. That painless innocence of youth, was gone.  Moving on. Clean cup, move down.

Then my mom a year later.  Unlike Greg, my mom was sudden, shocking, a real yanking of the rug out from underneath me kinda deal.  It started with my sister’s frantic call of “I’m at the sugar shack (our name for our parent’s temporary home during the covid pandemic) and mom is not responding at all.” I flew down the street and ran inside to find my mom on the floor and my sister giving her chest compressions while the 911 operator yelled directions over the speaker phone.  I dropped to my mom’s side and just tried to keep eye contact and tell her how great she was doing and that she was going to be ok.  Not realizing I was lying to her.  I watched her eyes focus on me, flicker with recognition and relief and then dilate and then roll back in her head.  She never opened them again.  It would be years before I would process that scene into anything I could comprehend.  Again, things to do. I had to tell my kids, my dad, grieve wildly with my sisters and family, plan a memorial, sort through mounds of photos, pick out music, an outfit, endless chores. Moving on. Clean cup, move down.

Then Divorce.  This was a slow burn but just as devastating as my mom’s sudden collapse.  I reached a point of no return, when, no matter how much love I had for my husband, I could see the pain we were causing each other, I was trying to break down a wall between us that wouldn’t budge.  I was hurt, exhausted and completely out of options.  I broke for space.  Before I could change my mind about what I KNEW without a doubt was what needed to happen before any healing could start, I cast him out of my life.  Knowing it was a move for not only us, but for the kids, I took a deep breathe and shut the door on our marriage, hard.  After years of therapy, begging, crying, pounding on his walls until my knuckles bled, I had finally had enough.  I yanked his photos from the wall, any shred of evidence that I was giving up on the love of my life, had to go.  I tossed photographs, my favorite flannel of his that I lived in when I was sad, his books, his shoes, everything that could go, went out of sight.  If only so that I could sit and breathe, letting, what I knew, would be the biggest heartbreak yet, to start ripping through me.

It was at this point that a friend told me he saw my grief as a turducken.  A chicken, shoved into a duck, stuffed into a turkey.  I minimized most of it and only let out tiny bits of pressure at a time, so now with this final tragic chapter leaving a hole in my heart, I was finally forced to face the leveling.

After my mom died, I had done some work with EMDR and a gifted woman, I will remember and be grateful for, for the rest of my life.  I’m so lucky to have processed some of that trauma, because so much more was on it’s way.

My Daddy.  Dad was 94 and ready, is what I tell people.  And I, once again, got to be there as my parent drifted out of consciousness, surrounded by my sisters and a sudden giant “Duke” sized hole in the world. My ex came, I wanted him to.  I needed him to, even if it stung, in the best way possible.  He carried the casket along with a pack of fine, handsome men I’m proud to call family. The service, with a gun salute and a flag folding ceremony deserving of the finest vet to ever serve, took place on a beautiful afternoon in the hills of Chatsworth on a gorgeous California day on the first of August.

I balled, I raged.  I laughed AND cried, both uncontrollably, I panicked, I slept, I ate my weight in See’s candy.  This is what grief looked like for me and I did it PERFECTLY! Did I make every right move? Not even close.  Am I a grief expert? No, that’s my bff.  But I’m a grief expert, you are a grief expert.  Maybe anyone who has trudged down this road and pushed and shoved their way through to the other side, can call themselves that.  Anyone willing to do the work, look at feelings instead of stuff them, express, share, journal, pray, phone a friend and cry on the nearest shoulder can eventually find out that, yeah birds DO sing again, you start to shed a little of that dark, shadowy undercurrent  surrounding every move you make.  Reality becomes something you can peek at, instead of hiding from.  Learning to put the harmful coping tools down, and leave them there.  I didn’t drink, I didnt use, I breathed.

I’m still in transition, I still feel heartbreak, I’m still devastated in quiet moments of reflection.  But I allow it.  I send my loved ones, both living and dead such love and light and then, move on with me.

Clean Cup, Move Down.