Pat Bertram's Blog, page 308

Grief is Not a Medical Disorder

According to the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders released by the American Psychiatric Association, grief is considered a medical disorder, and should be treated as major depression. There used to be a bereavement exclusion in the description of major depression, but they have taken that away, and now more than a few days of pain is considered a crisis. There can be "a few days of acute upset and then a much longer period of the longing, the tearfulness. But...

I Am a Four-Month Grief Survivor

People who have not suffered a devastating loss don't understand grief, and those who have suffered such a loss often cannot describe what they are going through. No wonder few writers are able to accurately portray a grieving person.

I read a novel the other day about a woman who lost her husband, and the only acknowledgment of her grief was a single sentence: She went through all five of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. I wish grief were that simple, that clinical, but grief is one of the...

Comes the Dawn

Someone recently sent me a version of  this poem. Turns out there are several versions and several author claimants. The two most likely authors are Veronica Shoffstall or Judith Evans, though the person who sent it to me has had it for many decades, so it could be older than any of the self-professed authors. If you are interested in a discussion about who wrote this poem, you can find it here: Author of Comes the Dawn.

Comes The Dawn

After a while, you learn the subtle difference
between...

Write for the Dead Whom Thou Didst Love

 A voice calls, "Write, write!"

I say, "For whom shall I write."

And the voice replies,

"For the dead whom thou didst love."

—John Berryman

I read a novel the other day where the main character was a grieving widow with a young daughter, but neither character showed any symptoms of grief — at least not what I have come to know as grief. The only indication of their grief was a conversation about how the two needed to be strong and not cry.

If this is the way the non-grieving public learns about ...

Grief's Milestones

The first year of grieving is difficult, not just because the wounds to the heart and mind are so raw and the void where the loved one resided so dark, but because it is a year of firsts. And each of these firsts comes with a renewal of pain.

We — my life mate and I — did not celebrate our birthdays. We merely recognized them as a tally mark for another year gone by. Because of this, I had not expected to feel any deeper sadness today — his birthday — than I felt yesterday or the day before...

Nor All Your Tears . . .

The Moving Finger writes, and having writ,

Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit

     Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it.

When I started writing, I often thought of the above quatrain from the "Rubaiyat of Omar Kayyam." It made me smile to reflect that this warning about the moving finger does not hold true when it comes to writing. We writers can — and should — rewrite and rewrite until the story turns out exactly the way we want it to turn out.

W...

Rewinding My Life

I ended my last blog post with: And so I trudge the hills of grief, and treasure the moments of comfort I find. I meant it both figuratively and literally — I spend a couple of hours most days wandering in the desert hills near where I am staying.

I feel at times as if I am rewinding my life, our life. When the man I was to spend more than three decades with first came into my life, it was such an awesome change, that I felt restless. I would walk for hours trying to get used to this new...

Grief Has It's Own Logic

Grief is not a gentle slope. It does not start at the top (or the bottom) and gradually diminish. It comes in peaks and valleys. And sometimes it comes when one least expects it. I was okay for a couple of days, successfully bypassing the minefields of memory — I've learned what of our things bring me comfort and what brings me pain – but then yesterday the grief spiked, and it's as it was in the beginning.

It was such a silly thing that set off this new spate of grief. I washed our...

Thank You For a Heartwarming and Heartbreaking Day

On Monday when I logged into my wordpress account, I discovered that my I Am a Three-Month Grief Survivor post had received thousands of views and dozens of comments. A quick check of my stats showed that most of the views came from WordPress. Imagine my surprise when I saw that my post had made the home page. Whew. Took my breath away.

Then I read the comments, and that was the end of breathing for a while. I was awed by the willingness of people to support me in my grief and overwhelmed...

I Am a Three-Month Grief Survivor

Grief plays tricks with time. The past three months have passed in the blink of an eye, and they have lasted forever. I never thought I'd last three weeks let alone three months — at times the pain was so unbearable I wanted to scream. So I did.

Yet here I am, a thousand miles from where I started, and generally I'm doing okay. Grief grabs me a couple of times a day, but doesn't hang around long, mostly because I take long walks and look at life through the lens of a camera. I find solace...