Having lost my wife, Linda, nine months ago and my daughter, Katherine, in 1992, I am writing a series of short Blogs about the experience.
With Katherine, she inspired me to write the fantasy series, The Ur Legend, to give her a life she never got to live since she dies at seven months old.
The experience of losing Linda has been different. She was my soulmate and mindmate for almost 50 years. However, as I have said, everyone deals with Loss differently and with each Loss differently. Since Linda was such a large part of my life I have confronted her death by developing strategies and concepts to help me heal. Not a big surprise since I happen to be quite analytical.
Many, maybe most, call the experience of Loss, Grief or Grieving. I’ve developed my own viewpoint and lexicon. But that’s okay. As Megan Devine says in her book, It’s Okay that you’re Not Okay, there is no ‘right way’ to handle Loss.
For me Loss is the landscape in which or on which Grief, Sadness and Depression sit. Ideally with Sadness, in my last post, I have found it to be a balm for me. When I am sad it is often about happy times spent together. If not, in any event, since I can no longer touch her or speak with her it is the only way to let her know I love her.
A therapist I have been working with said many people say they would rather be ‘depressed’ than sad. He wasn’t saying being it was a good thing to be depressed it was merely a choice in the hierarchy of strategies. He was merely saying that sometimes ‘depression’, with a small “d” (not horrid big ‘D’ Bipolar type), allows people to numb themselves for a while and take an emotional break from the trauma caused by Loss. It is a sort of psychological Lidocaine. It can be understood, at least I experience it, as a ‘flat’ feeling. The quiddities of everyday existence aren’t uplifting, nor are they ‘downers’. I don’t personally care for the feeling but when it hits it’s not something I can control. I just accept it.
