Grief Story on the Hoof ~ Entry 4

Orb Hunting a Lovely Distraction ...

Grieving is the hardest day's work I have ever done, and for sure grief is work for it has a purpose an outworking! I am learning all the time, like you cannot move on from grief it is something you have to go through! You might have already detected my feeling a need to move on from the previous post, but I have realised there is no sidestepping grief, this is not an option.  Grief is attached to the thing or person loved and lost, the bigger the attachment the deeper the grief! Like the saying "grief is the price you pay for loving".  I said at the beginning I wanted to document my experience here in the darkest place I've been so far and to be honest with myself and readers. So this is no place for flowery speech or for setting grief in the middle of a rose garden, much of this is raw stuff! Having said that hope does orbit around me and sitting in a rose garden would certainly help too! 

I am no stranger to depression, I have had my share of this sometimes soul destroying mental condition.  I have come across coping tools but, nothing actually takes depression away as has been well documented recently by the death of depression sufferer Robin Williams.  However, one tool that does help is distraction. I am well used to this tool, that is one reason I blog and seek expression through this media. Also photography which in itself is a marvelous aid for not only focusing in the moment but also as a means to usher gratitude into the perspective.

I learned quite a while ago now, through my study of Buddhism actually that the practice of gratitude is a very good way to cope when you are overwhelmed by depressing situations, to actively seek gratitude.  This was not a new thought to me at the time, being brought up on the Christian concept of counting your blessings one by one, but this had actually gone over my head for some years probably because it was not the right time for me to appreciate this wisdom.  After reading how gratitude can transform your day I got to think about the numerical semantics of this practice and it dawned on me that if you can fill your head-space with reasons to be grateful then it is logical that there will be less space for other more negative thoughts to take seed and inevitably make depression more difficult to bear.

Just now I am making use of these tools knowing I am given to depressive periods anyway and my intention is to make this situation more bearable through distraction and gratitude practice, but I know full-well when I go back to normal everyday activities the same feelings of grief will return.  The feelings come out of the blue in waves, not always through bad thoughts though like the way my love suffered so before he died, but after the happy flashbacks to things we did together, I seem to get many of these at random times in the day then as always the grief comes flooding back, the yearning for that which cannot be.

I will be visiting a support worker from the hospice where my husband died next week, I may need extra counselling they said because of the trauma surrounding his death so I am going to take all of the help I can, not with a victim frame of mind but in curious way, for I am aware grieving is natural and I am interested in the subject.  I have vowed along the 'Warrior Path' and I know it is possible to turn this experience into something valuable for both myself and others.