TheBanyanTree: Pieces of memories....

[Laura]

On 15 Jul 2004 , Sachet made this statement:

> Some would say that grieving is a passing stage. All neat and tidy,
> tucked away. But there are those of us that would disagree. Because
> every great once in awhile, we know a different reality. So today I am
> embracing, instead of pushing away, all the feelings of loss, sorrow &
> pain. 

We are preparing for a week away.  Not for vacation, but to clear out the 
house of a woman who was the center of our family.  For months, we have 
been pushing away the loss, sorrow, and pain.  This week we will confront 
them again, and keep trying to push them away.  It will be much harder 
this week than usual, touching the things she loved, selling them, giving 
them away, throwing them out.  If we don't fight these feelings, we will 
lose this battle, and not be able to do the work we *must* do.  So we 
will fight them, and push them aside, and do our work.

Later, much later, when the siblings and relations and lawyers are all 
done, and all evidence of the life that was lived is gone - dead and 
buried like the body that housed the soul, we will grieve.

There will be mementos of course.  The painting she bought in Belize, the 
wall hangings she got in China.  The books she loved that we will adopt.  
The painting of my husband and his sister as children, done by a neighbor 
who emigrated from China, and thought the little pink children were so 
beautiful.

But these things are not *her*.  They only revive memories which live 
within us anyway.  They are not a center around which we can revolve.

We have another family, my extended family.  We were a nuclear family 
revolving around two centers, swinging happily in an elliptical orbit 
around the two, until March, when one of our centers disappeared, and now 
we swing wildly, off kilter, wobbling around our single center.  
Eventually, our lives will settle down, and our orbit stabilize.  Then 
the loss, sorrow and pain will sneak back in, and we will stop fighting 
it.  We will grieve.

-- 
Laura
wolfljsh at insightbb.com
http://home.insightbb.com/~wolfljsh/index.html