Pat Bertram's Blog, page 266

Putting Grief into Perspective

In light of all the horrors going on the world today — massive fires, floods, ghastly diseases — talking about my grief seems a bit self-indulgent. In my favor, my intent was never to get people to feel sorry for me, but merely to chronicle one woman’s journey through grief. I wanted to tell what it felt like to lose a life mate/soul mate since I’d never experienced such a massive onslaught of pain, both physical and psychical. In fact, I never even knew such hurt was possible.

Now that my pain has subsided to irritation and sensitivity, mood swings and easily hurt feelings, continuing to blog about my grief does seem a bit over the top as if I’m trying to dramatize myself. But again, that is not my intention. Grief lasts a long time and can cause much damage to the souls of the bereft if not allowed to follow a natural healing cycle, and these more petty side effects of grief are still part of the grieving process. Even when I’m mostly healed and grief assimilated into my life, there will still be the second half of the process to deal with — finding new meaning, new joy, perhaps even a new identity. And all those steps are worth chronicling.

I write this blog mostly for me (and also to show writers the truth about grief since many get it wrong), so any help other grievers glean from my writing is an added blessing. In other words, what I’m writing here in this post today is a reminder for myself of what I am trying to accomplish with these posts as well as trying to put my grieving into perspective.

Sometimes now, I am far removed from the initial pain, and I look back and wonder what the big deal was. So I lost my life mate/soul mate — others have endured such losses and not screamed their pain to the blogosphere. Was it really so hard? Um . . . yeah. It was excruciatingly difficult.

At the same time I marvel that I made such a big deal of my grief, I marvel that within two months of his death I managed to get his funerary arrangements made, his finances tied up, his “effects” and belonging disposed of, the house cleaned, our remaining possessions packed and stored, a new bank account set up, my driver’s license renewed, and make my way 1000 miles from home to look after my 95-year-old father. That’s a lot of work even for a person who isn’t grieving to do by herself. I have no idea how I managed to get all that done within such a short time, especially since I was reeling from a tsunami of agony and anger and angst.

In the two years and three months since his death, others have lost their spouses, their children, their parents, their health, their houses and all they hold dear, and my grief seems pale in comparison, but the truth is, all we can so is our own path. What might seem rosier in another’s life or what might seem more horrific, doesn’t change the truth of our own journey. And this is my path — following grief wherever it might lead me.

Tagged: death and loss, grief and loss, putting grief into perspective, side effects of grief, talking about grief

Lingering Effects of Grief

Even as my pain subsides, even as my memories of a coupled life fade, the effects of grief linger.

When the significant person in your life dies, the tearing away of their presence from your soul creates ripples of changes in your life. In my case, after the death of my life mate/soul mate, I relocated a thousand miles from our home, exchanging a mountainous climate for a desert one. As difficult as that change was, it turned out to be the easiest, probably because my long walks in the desert help me feel connected to the earth. Other changes are harder to deal with, such as loneliness and sorrow, a heightened sense of mortality, and mood swings.

During most of my life, I tried to keep my emotions on an even keel in the belief that what goes up must come down, but now such control seems beyond me.

At the beginning of my grief, I got a newsletter from hospice warning about mood swings and explaining that euphoria followed by despair is common. I didn’t pay much attention to the article because I was not prone to euphoria. I was grief-stricken, heartbroken, and soul-shattered, and I stayed that way for months on end.

Now, though, I can laugh one minute and cry the next. I succumb to irritability more often than I would like. And I am overly sensitive. Things that once I could have taken in stride now bring me to tears, as if something in me, an equalizer, perhaps, is broken. The bloody stump where he was ripped from my psyche is healing, but I am still very tender and sore, and that makes me subject to the vagaries of emotion. (Though I still haven’t experienced any euphoria.)

I don’t like this part of the process. Well, of course not. No part of the grieving process is fun, but there is a big difference between the agony of a soul crying out, “Where are you? Can you hear me?” and the pettiness of a woman upset because someone who promised to call didn’t.

Apparently, part of me believes that I paid my dues with my great loss, and now I deserve to have everything go my way. But life is not like that. Life does not keep a balance sheet.

I know that as I continue to assimilate my grief, I will eventually regain my equilibrium and find a way to deal with the minor heartaches and setbacks of life. But for now, all I can do is cling to the wildly swinging pendulum and hope I can manage to hang on until I find peace once again.

Tagged: effects of grief, grief and loss, heightened sense of mortality, loneliness and grief, mood swings and grief

Life, Grief, and Entropy

For just a moment yesterday, while I was walking in the desert, all seemed clear to me. Well, all as related to my grief that is. I could see that things happened the way they needed to. My life mate/soul mate and I could not continue the life we’d been living. We were trapped in an untenable situation, not just because of his health and our finances, but because the place we were living was stifling us. There was nowhere to walk except a 600-yard-long road, nothing to do we hadn’t already done a hundred times, nothing to see that we hadn’t seen a thousand times, but we couldn’t leave. He was too sick to survive a move. Besides, he was comfortable where he was.

Those years of entrapment seemed to go on forever, the only changes being a continual worsening of his health, a continual increasing of his pain, and a continual deadening of my senses.

We were living a classic example of entropy. Entropy is a measure of the amount of energy that is unavailable to do work, and it tends to increase in closed systems. In other words, in a closed system, things break down and stop working. Because of his health, we could not do anything to stop the entropy of our lives. We could only endure.

And then one day, he was set free from his pain-wracked body and cancer-ridden brain. And I was set free from the horror of entropy.

It seemed to me, yesterday, that our lives worked out as they should have. That in a terrible way, we both got what we needed.

I felt at peace most of the day, but the feeling didn’t hold. Last night, the thought “But he’s dead!” hit me. And so sorrow descended once more.

I can see, though, that such moments of clarity will increase until I can finally accept that yes, he is dead, but so what? Someday, I will be dead, too. Meantime, I live to battle entropy another day.

Tagged: death, death of a soul mate, enlightenment, entropy, grief and loss, life and death

Sundries

Sundries are articles too numerous to be listed separately, and though I am going to list each sundry individually,  none of them need a separate blog post.

First — “sundry” is an adjective meaning “various,” so the way I used it here is wrong though it feels right and fits with “sundries,” which I did use correctly, so I’m leaving “sundry” here. If you want to fight about it, it’s only fair to warn you that my adjectives are stronger than yours. (Sorry, couldn’t resist the silliness, though perhaps I should have.)

Second — Tomorrow is the last day to submit a story to the Second Wind holiday short story contest. You still have time to whip up a tasty treat or to dig out a story you’ve been saving for a special occasion. You can find the submission guidelines and rules here: Invitation to Submit an Entry to Our Short Story Contest

Third — I am being interviewed on Susan Whitfield’s blog today, so be sure to stop by to learn more about me. (Though you probably know everything about me since you’ve been reading this blog for a long time, right?) Cick here for: Pat Bertram’s Light Bringer on Susan Witfield’s blog

Fourth – I am collaborating with six other authors to write a mystery online. Residents of Rubicon Ranch are finding body parts scattered all over the desert. Who was the victim and why did someone want him so very dead? Everyone in this upscale housing development is hiding something. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone’s life will be different after they have encountered the Rubicon. Rubicon Ranch, that is. We don’t know the ending, and will not know until the story is written. So stop by and see the story as it is developing. Welcome to “Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces”

Fifth — I have a fan page on Facebook. Don’t quite know what it’s good for, but if you feel like liking the page, you are welcome do so. Pat Bertram’s Fan Page on Facebook.

Sixth — I have been blogging every day since September 25, 2011, so this is my 278th straight blog post. I originally planned to blog daily for 100 days in a row, but somehow just kept up the habit. Do you think I can keep it up for another 87 days without running out of topics?

Seventh: You can get the latest Second Wind anthology, Change is in the Wind for only $.99 cents on Smashwords. Use the coupon code FC75E when purchasing.

I think that’s a long enough list to be considered sundries. Oh, just one more point — thank you to everyone who has supported this blog and me, especially during the past couple of years. You helped me get trough some hard times.

Tagged: Light Bringer, Rubicon Ranch Necropieces, Second Wind short story contest, sundries, sundry, Susan Whitfield

“A Spark of Heavenly Fire” is a well paced thriller

The following is a review of my novel A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and was written by Dellani Oakes.

***

Kate Cummings works in a medical clinic as a patient advocate. Since the death of her husband, she’s led a quiet, uneventful life. All that changes when a jogger in the park falls on her, hemorrhages and dies. This event is strange enough, but when the same symptoms appear in a woman at the clinic, Kate realizes that something more is going on.

At the park, Kate meets Greg Pullman, a reporter for the newspaper. He’s somewhat younger than she, but they click on many different levels. When his fiancee, Pippi O’Brian, dumps him, he finds friendship and solace with Kate.

Together, Kate and Greg begin investigating the odd circumstances surrounding the deaths of the jogger and the woman at her office. As more and more people get ill, the city of Denver finds itself under military quarantine.

“A Spark of Heavenly Fire” is a well paced thriller. Kate and Greg race against time, trying to find the cause of the outbreak as well as survive in the aftermath. The characters are 3 dimensional and believable. The reader feels a link with them, and hope that they will somehow survive.

I highly recommend “A Spark of Heavenly Fire” for anyone who likes a good mystery with a dash of romance. It’s an excellent book and I look forward to reading Pat Bertram’s other novels – “More Deaths Than One”, “Daughter Am I”, “Lightbringer” and “Grief: The Great Yearning” (non-fiction).

Look for all Ms. Bertram’s books at www.secondwindpublishing.com as well as Amazon.com, BN.com and Smashwords.com

Tagged: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, Colorado quarantine, dellani oakes, mystery, review of A Spark of Heavenly Fire, well-paced plot

Grief: The Twenty-Seventh Twenty-Seventh

My life mate/soul mate died of inoperable kidney cancer on the 27th of March, 2010, and today is the twenty-seventh twenty-seventh I have managed to survive. Some such dates are fading — I no longer count the days or weeks, no longer count my sad Saturdays (he died on a Saturday, and always on Saturday, I feel an upsurge of sorrow), but I am still very aware of the day of the month he died.

This twenty-seventh month marks a big change. For the first time in my long odyssey, I am more grateful for what I had with him than I am sorrowful for what I didn’t have. I can even smile when I think of him, though I don’t think of him as often as I used to. For the first two years of my grief, he consumed my thoughts. It was as if I were afraid to stop thinking of him, lest he disappear completely from life and memory. Despite that vigilance, my memories of him are fading, and while I still feel the sorrow, still feel the immense hole in my life, I am forgetting the particulars. Forgetting, even, what he looked like.

This forgetting seems like a death in itself, but I can’t keep him here by thinking of him. Though I wish with all my being that he were strong and healthy and living, he is gone. And I am not.

In recognition of this, I have put away the only two photos I have of him. I could not bear to look at the pictures for the first fifteen months after he died, but I gradually inured myself to the sight of them. For a while, the images brought me comfort, but now they only remind me of my sadness. Maybe someday I will set out the photos again; meantime, I am learning to survive without this crutch. The photos might not be a crutch so much as a reminder, or maybe simply something to talk to, but whatever these pieces of paper are, they are not him.

I am still beset by tears and fears, and there’s a chance I always will be. His death seemed to open a crack in the EveryThing, and I could almost feel the winds of eternity. Some of the wildness of my grief and the accompanying panic came from this contact with a truth I am not yet capable of understanding. I don’t know what I will become because of the experience, but even though I don’t feel any different, I know I have changed in some fundamental way.

I am weary of trying to find my way, weary of trying to work around the immense hole he left behind, weary of trying to emphasize the good in my life. Perhaps one day, I won’t have to expend so much effort to find ways and reasons to live. I will simply . . . live.

Tagged: death and grief, death of a soul mate, grief and loss, grief at two years, twenty-seven months of grief

Grief: Finally Grateful

Two years and three months after the death of my life mate/soul mate, I am finally beginning to understand that this is my life and my life alone.

Sharing a life with someone might shroud the basic aloneness for a while, but after the person dies, it eventually becomes apparent that your destiny belongs only to you. (Because, obviously, if it belonged to both of you, he would still be here.)

Surviving a mate is hard on many counts. The sheer agony of his being ripped from your life leaving you feeling amputated. The bewilderment and angst that come with confronting death. The collateral losses that go along with losing a mate, such as the loss of one’s connection to the world, the loss of one’s best friend, the loss of someone to share the burden of decisions and chores. But beyond the obvious hardships are the more subtle problems of loving someone who is no longer alive, of continuing to worry about their wellbeing, of feeling bad for them that their life was cut short. (Much of my grief was for him, a posthumous empathy for his suffering and for his dreams that never came to fruition.)

I do not know the truth of his death — perhaps he is sunning himself on some cosmic beach or playing with a couple of galactic cats. Perhaps he is glad to be dead, assuming he even knows that he is. The corollary to this being my life and my life alone is that his life is his alone. Despite all that we did together, all that we shared, all that we were together, I am no longer part of his life.

In some ways, his death set me free. Our lives had become so constrained because of his illness and our financial concerns, that it trapped both of us in a world that was barely tolerable. (I was going to say that it was unbearable, but we did bear it.) His death brought an end to that world for both of us, though losing him catapulted me into the world of grief.

I am not over my grief — I never will be — but my sorrow is being assimilated into my life, and I am coming closer to an acceptance of the gift of freedom he gave me. I am still prone to tears and fears, but finally, after all these months, I am able to think of him and smile, and be grateful that he shared his life with me.

Tagged: death of a soul mate, grief and loss, grief at two years, surviving the death of a spouse

A Credo to Live By

Several years ago I created a credo defining how to live my life. I started with three points, gradually added the next four, and I thought the credo was finished. Recent exchanges on this blog reminded me of other prompts I need to add, such as being more playful and looking for my inner wild woman, and I ended up with eleven points. Eleven is an odd number, but I thought each item was an important one, and didn’t want to subtract one simply for the sake of satisfying my need for symmetry. Besides, my life is just beginning, or rather, beginning again, so chances are I’ll find more goals and reminders that I want to add.

Hey! What do you know! I just found number 12. Now I can have my credo and symmetry too.

My credo:

Believe in yourself.


Expect the best.


Have a vision of victory and abundance.


Don’t settle for a life of mediocrity.


There is adventure waiting for you. Run to it. Explore.


Be bold and brave.


Live the life that only you can live.


Be playful.


Strive for spontaneity.


Find your inner wild woman.


Accept that you are where you are supposed to be.


Embrace your destiny. It belongs to you alone.

Some of the points are easy, such as not being mediocre. Some are almost impossible for me, such as having a vision of victory and abundance since I don’t even know how to do envision those things. Some are wishful thinking, such as embracing my destiny. But . . . if I can learn to follow most of these exhortations, I could live a spectacular life.

Do you have a credo you live by?

 

Tagged: be bold, Be playful, Embrace your destiny, how to live a fuller life, inner wild woman, personal credo, rules to live by

“More Deaths Than One” will leave you breathless

The following is a review of my novel More Deaths Than One, and was written by Dellani Oakes. I didn’t bribe her into saying such nice things. I promise.

***

“More Deaths Than One” by Pat Bertram will leave you breathless—first with anticipation, finally with a contented sigh of a job well done. Set in 1988, this well crafted, fast paced novel of love and intrigue spans the globe from Denver, Colorado to Bangkok, Thailand.

Bob Stark is a quiet man. A Vietnam vet, he’s returned to the states after nearly 18 years in Thailand. He came back to his childhood home of Denver because his life in Thailand couldn’t continue. His friend and mentor, Hsiang-li, left on a personal quest to find a golden Buddha in the jungle—the place where he had to bury his wife and child after they were murdered.

Kerry Casillas works nights in the diner Bob frequents. One night, she introduces herself and they get to know one another. Soon after meeting Kerry, strange things start to happen. Bob and Kerry find themselves embroiled in a mystery far beyond their understanding.

“More Deaths Than One” is an interesting tale of one man’s journey to find the truth. The character of Bob Stark is deep and many faceted. He’s quiet, kind and resourceful, showing abilities even he didn’t know he possessed.

Kerry is a fun loving character and the opposite of Bob in many ways. She’s talkative, outgoing and imaginative. She is the perfect partner and counterpart to Bob. She, too, has hidden talents that surprise and please Bob.

The well-paced plot of “More Deaths Than One”, keeps the reader riveted, waiting to discover the many mysteries in Bob’s past. I enjoyed the fact that though I guessed at all of these secrets, I was right about only a few. Bertram truly kept me hopping as I made my way through the book. I like when a novel isn’t so predictable that I know the end before it arrives.

 

Tagged: Bangkok, dellani oakes, golden Buddha, More Deaths Than One, mystery, review of More Deaths Than One, well-paced plot

I Am Crying, Forever Dying

I had a grief upsurge yesterday, probably because I haven’t been grieving much and it’s been building up, but the upsurge itself was instigated by a song.

It started with my session of dance therapy (I call it that, but all I do is prance around for two or three songs in an effort to add a bit of lightness to my step and my life). The first song was “Cry Cry Cry” by Highway 101.

I wonder if he knows what he’s done to me

I’m gonna love that boy till the day I die

Till the day I do I’m gonna cry cry cry.

What a mood brightener! But I managed to get through that song dry-eyed. I even managed to get through the second song without tearing up — “You’re in My Heart” by Rod Stewart

You’re in my heart, you’re in my soul

You’ll be my breath should I grow old

You are my lover, you’re my best friend

You’re in my soul

Yikes. Not the song to cheer up a woman who has lost her mate. But the third one did me in — “Sailing” by Rod Stewart.

Can you hear me, can you hear me

Through the dark night far away?

I am dying, forever crying

To be with you, who can say.

Even worse, I found myself haunted by those words all day yesterday and into today. Oddly, though, I transposed the words, and what went around and around in my head was “I am crying, forever dying.”

Out walking in the desert today, I had a bit of a mystical revelation. (Or sunstroke. It was hot out there.) What if that’s the truth of it? We are forever dying? Not just now in this lifetime, but forever? What if life is the aberration, and dying (not death) the norm?

Some scientists say the universe is dying, that there are more stars dying out than being born. Maybe someday, when it’s all over, there will be another big bang, and the whole cycle will start again. Perhaps each cycle is a single breath of “The EveryThing.”

I guess what I’m saying is maybe life as we know it is more of a static state than dying is. With dying comes transformation.

Did I mention that it was very HOT in the desert?

Tagged: “Cry Cry Cry” by Highway 101, “You’re in My Heart” by Rod Stewart, desert mysticism, dying as transformation, forever dying, Rod Stewart’s “Sailing.”