This is one of my more heavier posts in many months. But ultimately, it is a timely post as we get ready to welcome a new year. I always love the advance of a new year. There are so many possibilities ahead, so many avenues and opportunities for life in all of us.
For the last several months I have been working with life coach Janet Greene of Greene's Release, through some issues that had lain dormant, unbeknownst to me, in the last five or six years. I guess some of the upwelling of emotional dramas I had been feeling this month were undealt with shocks and memories from the past. Certain events seems to bring these emotional dramas close to the surface; resulting in a feeling of being stuck in place, annoyance, resignation and even a sense of apathy and regression.
I received a small gift in the mail at the beginning of December from a well meaning person. The gift set off this chain of thoughts and unexpected feelings, stirring memories that had remained buried for many years. There's a book out called Feelings Buried Alive Never Die and without having read that book, that would be the gist of this post today. Sometimes we feel the need to bury feelings so we can go on living day-to-day. We're not always aware we've buried them. At times it feels like the easist thing we can do for ourselves is ignore pain that rips at us, just let it be and hope it will go away with time.
Well, this is five years down the road and it just so happens this month some of that buried emotion started to unbury itself and I felt like I was literally being swamped all over again, in grief. I didn't understand what was happening and I didn't want to even look at what was causing the problem -- but I had to. So I made the decision to address what the heck was going on. I felt I had come so far in my life on my life after loss journey, and yet December I learned I hadn't sorted through everything in regards to this loss.
My friend of 18 years passed away at 53 years of age the week before Christmas. Since I'd known she was sick with cancer in February of this year, I had a heavy feeling for the outcome. I wondered did I have that feeling because my husband had died from cancer also? She had endometrial cancer and it was quite advanced. The doctors gave her a variety of mixed outcomes, but in my mind I felt it was the end.
I supported her as best I could, but all the time I was peddling toward what I feared was the inevitable outcome of this disease for her. She did everything the doctors suggested, the treatments they set up for her, beginning in March. They operated, they did the chemo and the protocols. My friend grew progressively weaker. One of the many times I went to see her in the hospital -- I thought I was in the wrong room. I didn't recognize her. I am glad she was asleep and didn't know of my instinctive move to back out of the room.
She remained cheerful and upbeat, even though she said to me several times she didn't think she was going to make it. Immediately after the chemo treatments, which went on for months, the doctors said she was in remission. This did not make sense to me, given her weak, debilitated state. My friend wondered about that also, but continued to trust in her doctor's care. What else could she do? She refused to have hospice, she said to her it was like giving up. I explained that my husband had been on hospice for pain control for seven months, and if they wanted to help her, let them have someone with her during the day to help her. It was a difficult situation for her, from my perspective. She was proud, independent and had always been very self-sufficient, raising 5 kids on her own. Now, she was dependent on others for her care and it remained difficult for her to accept that care, even to the point where at times I could see she pushed her family away.
In the end, her family and friends were with her in the hospital when she died. I was there the last hour also. I had driven that night, making the 3 hour round trip. I was going to wait until the next day but something inside urged me to go that night. I arrived to find her comatose, hooked up to a respirator. I could see it was pumping the oxygen into her. The only time she responded was when her son told her he was going to bring her dog in to see her. My friend had always had an incredible rapport with and love of her animals. This is the only time I saw her open her eyes when they mentioned her dog. I said my goodbye to her and told her I would miss her, and then knowing they were going to remove the life support, I left. She died as I was half way home, I later found out. I went to her funeral and it was a nice service with people getting up and speaking of my friend in honest and thoughtful ways. As I sat there the hot tears came to my eyes went down my cheeks. I pondered the loss and said the final goodbye, knowing she was somewhere in that church.
That same week my neighbor's pregnant daughter lost her baby in childbirth. They did everything they could to save the baby boy, but his organs were failing and he had been deprived of oxygen and nutrients inutero. It was incredibly sad to think of this young couple, the week before glowing with anticipatory happiness of the impending birth. I felt sad for my neighbors, the grandparents, because they too had lost a child many years before at birth. I sometimes wonder how this all works out in each of our lives -- the ripple effects it has on each of us, not only immediately but many years later. The sadness of loss is so very real and deep. But it gets deeper when we bury it within ourselves. It comes out in various ways through the years in actions and emotions -- and we're not always aware of the source of these emotions. When the emotional shock isn't dealt with, it festers beneath the surface, an unscabbed, unhealed wound.
The little gift I received triggered something within me this month, followed by the two deaths one upon each other. The gift was a keepsake ornament given to me by someone who had a good heart but mistakenly
thought this would be of comfort to me. It was meant to hang on a tree or in your house and you insert a picture of your loved one and it says "Remember me".
I felt this gift was out of place in my life, after five years. I had moved my life forward, the emotions looked at and dissected fully, and to have this ornament show up now stirred up the remnants of tears and emotions as yet undealt with.
I will donate the gift to someone newly bereaved, because it is not something that I need any longer. I have a small area in my house where there are pictures of my husband, myself and my kids. The loss no longer hurts but is a gentle remembrance of a life that has changed and evolved to who we are as individuals and as a family today.
I am through this month being bogged down with vague feelings of depression and fear, facing the tears inside that I've left uncried, the feelings that I've let go unacknowledged. Feeling these buried emotions, letting them speak fully to me, is a gift to myself for a new year of new beginnings. I am free of the chains of my emotional enslavement. The fears which held me are dissolved and blown away.
Janet Greene is a Life Coach who developed the Greene's Release method. You can learn to release what's holding you back from being truly happy and successful and living your true potential. She can be found at http://www.greenesrelease.com">
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