Why this is YOUR fault.

 

My foot - Apologies if you were considering eating something any time soon...

Like many of you, last week I read a facebook post by the fabulous Michele in which she confessed to being irritate with her dead husband (not her lovely, living one....)

Went for a run this morning, and my legs were feeling heavy and slow. Phil is never far from my mind when I run (especially in August), and as I struggled with the miles I silently asked him for a little mojo. I picked up my pace a bit, and heard his voice so clearly in my mind say, "No whining." I responded (yes, all this IS going on in my head!) "Could you be a bit more positive?" He said, "Sheesh, I wasn't even pushing you that hard." I continued my run, irritated with my dead husband.

And you wonder if I am normal. 

Well, I'm here to tell you Michele (and everybody else who may be wondering)  that I think you are completely and  absolutely normal.


The following is a run-down on my week as told by me to my dead husband.....

Why this is SO YOUR FAULT!

If you hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have had to fight for insurance money to help care for our children.

If I hadn’t had to fight for insurance money, I would not have been sent the forms that had to be witnessed by a Justice of the Peace.

If I hadn’t had to have my signature witnessed by a JP I would never have been bitten (“mouthed”) by his dog.

If his gumby dog hadn’t clipped my thumb with its tooth when I bent down to pat it, I wouldn’t have got an infected hand.

If I didn’t have an infected hand, I wouldn’t have had a fever.

If I didn’t have a fever, I wouldn’t have taken a day off work.

If I hadn’t taken the day off work, I would have been rushing to get ready instead of going  outside with the rubbish that morning and in doing so, spraining my ankle (badly) by falling down a single step.

If I hadn’t sprained my ankle, I wouldn’t have gone to the doctor.

If I hadn’t gone to the doctor, she wouldn’t have asked about my infected hand.

If she didn’t ask about my infected hand, she wouldn’t have given me antibiotics.

If she hadn’t given me antibiotics, I wouldn’t be sitting here with nausea, intermittent diarrhea and expecting the third side effect to be hitting me any time soon.

So that’s why being beached on the couch with a buggered ankle, vomit bucket and intermittent mad, limping dashes to the toilet is YOUR FAULT.

At least my hand is not infected anymore.

I miss you.
I love you.
XA

See - normal.  Completely and utterly normal.

Grief Vs Depression

I have been involved in an argument on facebook about "grief" this afternoon (very mature, I know - there were some classic lines that I should send Supa for "shit-people-say-to-widows").

But it actually turned out to be a misunderstanding where the other person had confused grief with depression.

To me, grief is something that I live with everyday.
It is simple: I miss Greg. I wish he was here. I feel sad about the loss of the life we should have had. It makes me feel fearful and anxious at times and at other times, it helps me to feel compassion and understanding.
Talking about it here (and on facebook and letting the demons out on my personal blog) has really helped me to learn to live with it.
It lives with me, it bites sometimes, but it no longer controls me: I hold down a job, I care for my children and I watch them develop into decent, caring human beings.

Depression is something very different. I have tasted it. I have spent evenings wallowing in it. I have tried constructing "exit plans" at two in the morning (which were destined to fail).
I have contemplated drinking myself into oblivion on more than one occasion (but haven't - somebody has to be the parent here).
I'm fairly sure most of us have felt depression's darkness at some point.

But I recovered from it.

I know I wont ever "recover" from grief.
...and I don't really want to.
Grief is as much a part of my life as joy is.

The darkness and the light sit side by side.




PS - Sorry if you were expecting a valentine's lament today, but we never really fell in for the hype, so it's not something I think about enough to construct a post on.