Grief

There are many kinds of grief. First, there is the grief of the loss of ones youth. I experienced this when I turned 20,30,40,50,60. I have already done this. Does this grief ever completely go away. No.

Then there is the grief of the empty nest syndrome when all of your children grow up and move away sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles from you and start their own families. This is sort of like watching your own arms and legs starting their own lives and getting married thousands of miles from you while you are left bereft and alone.

Then there is the really profound grief of a breakup after 6 months with someone you truly love which young people sometimes don't physically survive or the death of a marriage after 5,10,15,or 20 or more years which often adults don't survive mentally or physically.

Then there is the death of a loved one close to your or your significant other or husband or wife or yourself. This is the deadliest kind of grief as you or your loved one will never see this person ever again except in your dreams waking or sleeping or in an afterlife if you believe in heaven.

It is this last kind of grief I want to speak about here. At 60 I have experienced most of these different kinds of grief at one point or another in my life. However, now I've lost my last father figure in my life. I will likely never have another father figure in my life because my own father passed on when I was 37 in 1985. His death gave my son asthma so severe the shock was for my son when he was 12. Even though my son is now 34 he does better living in the desert because of this.

But now, I no longer can have any illusions that I am young anymore. I am the patriarch of my extended family and there is no other. I feel like I am falling through space with no where to turn to someone older and wiser except for God.
And with so many people running around saying God is an imaginary friend that doesn't exist today, even that can be difficult to hold on to sometimes, even though I fully understand that even if God didn't exist people would still create one just like Tom Hanks in the movie "Cast Away" created "Wilson" the volleyball into a blood stained hand print friend to survive the ordeal of 4 or more years alone on a small island alone.

I must have watched parts of that movie up to 50 times. It helped me get over my divorce in 1994 and my near death experience during 1998 and 1999. The amazing thing about grief in those experiences was that accepting death and accepting my divorce were the same thing. Accepting that you will die will increase your lifetime. If you already died nothing can really kill you then because you become fearless. Death has no meaning. Suffering might have meaning but death loses its sting.

Even though I remarried in 1995 and had another child in 1996, having been married 15 years before and raising 4 children and then divorcing was a hell I didn't at the time believe I could survive but I did. For all of you wondering if you can survive another day who are going through this hell. Just remember two things,
1. Take in one day one second at a time.
2. There are no problems only opportunities.

If you only take these two things to heart it is possible to recover and eventually have a good life again. It takes time but it is possible. Remember that always.