tissue alert perhaps.
I've noted this quote before:
If you want to stop, then stop.
If you are seeking a time when you will be finished,
you will never be done.
Deborah Morris Coryell writes in the epilogue:
"...we never "complete" our grieving. We are never finished with it. Our grief lives as long as we live.
"It changes. It has rhythms. Sometimes it is present in its absence and sometimes it is absence that makes our grief present. Sometimes we are strong and fearless in the face of our grief, and sometimes we are frightened and vulnerable. It is all part of the tapestry of our livlesl and by the very act of weaving our losses into that tapestry, we ensure that our losses are part of our wholeness. And so we heal."
Marking the passage of time:
today is 15 weeks since Linda died.
today is 17 weeks since we saw Carrie Fisher in Berkeley.
today is 10 weeks since the celebration of Linda's life.
today is 9 years and 2 weeks since Linda and I first connected online.
i think that's 470 weeks.
so in the scheme of things, 15 as a fraction of 470 is still pretty small.
15 weeks is still so recent.
it is impossible for me, now, to think in terms of actually using months and then years to measure the passage of time.
Back to page 42 in "Good Grief":
"Healing our grief means continuing to love in the face of loss. The face of loss -- what we see -- is that someone or something is gone. The heart of loss teaches us that nothing -- no thing -- we have every known can be lost. What we have known we have taken into ourselves in such a way that it has become part of the very fabric of our being. It is part of who we are, and as long as we are alive we have the capability to continue to love even that which is no longer a part of our daily reality."
and it is still weird
and sometimes it is still really hard.
ps newspaper retrieved. carrie fisher got a very good review in the lifestyle section.
