The Grieving Process: from Kent Allen at the LDS W/W Conference

I had the privilege of attending an LDS widows conference this month.  It was the most amazing event I have ever attended.  I had heard a lot of hype before it and some even claimed that it was better than General Conference.

I highly doubt that, I thought.

But I was wrong!  It was BETTER than General Conference and I REALLY love General Conference.

Anyways, I felt prompted to share some of my notes.

So, here are my notes from Kent Allen's workshop, "The Grieving Process."

Definition of Hope: hope is looking forward with anticipation to something you think you will have.

Definition of Loss: loss is when we lose hopes and dreams that are core to our existence.

Definition of Grieving: the process we go through that helps us let go of old hopes and dreams that we can no longer have and helps us establish NEW HOPES AND DREAMS that are more attainable.  It is an unlearned process and is a FEELING PROCESS not a thinking process.

-no logic to it.

-nothing prepares you for the loss of a spouse

-TO HEAL YOU HAVE TO FEEL.

When you experience trauma, you either resolve it (99% of people won't) or it turns to shock/stress.  Too much stress causes the brain to go numb.  (The front lobe goes numb, the rest is speckled with memories. If your brain didn't do this, the trauma would kill you.)
Then there are triggers which are emotional memories...memories jogged by your senses: touch, sight, sound, taste, smell.  Triggers will come at any point in the day or night.  This causes pain/anxiety causing you to fight (get angry), take flight (run away), or freeze (zone out).  If you have a high level of anxiety, it means you have a higher level of adrenaline in your system.  Relax, calm your breathing, clear your mind of stress and painful memories.  Think about peaceful experiences.  When you're in pain or anxious you tend to misread life cues which creates more stress and thus the cycle repeats itself.

*Ask and allow God to help you feel peace and hope, He will comfort you.

*The moment your spouse died, you lost your agency.

*48-72 hours (3-4 days) after, you're not thinking any new thoughts, just the same ones over and over.

6 Steps to Gaining your Agency Back

1. Recognize (tune into your body, recognize your feelings: lonely, abandoned, sad...)
2. Choose how long you want to feel that way:
    a. allow yourself to feel: angry, lonely, bad
    b. choose the amount of time you want to feel bad
    c. the time you choose needs to be in real time (minutes, hours, weeks...)
3. Cut the time in half (Life is composed of positive and negative moments.  The negative are 11 times more powerful.)
4. Set a timer.** (SUPER IMPORTANT!!)
      Allow yourself to feel negative until the timer goes off.
5. Think a totally different positive thought (things that you love, make you happy)

   -Kent told about a little boy who would think about hamburgers as his positive thought, whatever works for you!!
6. As soon as you can, DO something different.

*it only takes 2 1/2 weeks to drain the [I can't remember which one he said] dam.
*It takes two months to fill it.
*write down a list of "fillers," things that make you feel good.

*you need to write down the list so when you do have five minutes, you will know what to do!  Put your lists on your phone!


All these ideas/notes are not my own, they are from Kent Allen, LMFT!!

To Lie or not to Lie?

I have found that I don't like to tell people that Bucky is dead.

Okay, now that I said that, it sounds incredibly stupid.

I mean, I don't like to tell strangers.  Not because I don't want to talk about him, but because I don't want to hear all of the "I'm so sorry..." and then they always want to know HOW and WHEN.

It's always awkward when someone you just met finds out your husband is dead.  It's like going to the viewing and funeral all over again.

I was at the dentist's the other day and the hygienist was making friendly conversation.  (I don't think I have ever been a fan of the conversations at the dentist office.)

The hygienist does her best to start a conversation with me by asking, "So, are you married?  Do you have any kids?"
Reluctantly I reply, "I have four kids."

Notice, I did not say I was married.  That's just a lie of omission, right?  So not a real flat out lie.

We talk about the kids for a bit and then she says...

She looks at some charts.

I have come to the conclusion that I either need to resign myself to the life of a pathological liar or buck up, tell the truth, and just bask in the awkwardness of it all.

Yeah...  I think I'm going to go google "How to become better at lying."

The Tornado of Grief and Loss

Sometimes words escape me and I can't really describe how I feel and yet I have this need to get it out of me.  At times like that, I turn to drawing, albeit terrible drawings, to try to sort out how I feel.

The day before my husband was diagnosed with leukemia was a perfect day.  (Okay, maybe not perfect.)  But the months leading up to his diagnosis were perfect.  He had just come home from his second twelve month deployment to Afghanistan.  We were moving to a new duty station from which he would not deploy for at least three years.

We watched an episode of Monk most nights together.

We were finally enjoying time together without the angst of another deployment hanging over our heads.

In short, life was good.

And then he was diagnosed with leukemia and it seemed as though a tornado had begun to rip through our lives.

I was shocked and the tornado only seemed to grow larger.

And once the tornado was done ripping apart the fabric of our very lives, I was left alone still wondering what had just happened.

And I still wonder.

And then people asked me how I am doing, and I still could not believe what I had just seen and what remained of my life, this awful terrible mess.

And I can see the mess, but I don't think anyone else can see it because they say things like, "You're over this now, right?" and "You should be okay by now."

And then they leave and I see this life that was once so beautiful and now just a terrible mess, and I wonder, "How could you even say that to me?"

How can you not see this mess?!

How could you think that everything would be okay by now, just a few months afterward?

Why can't you see that my life has been irrevocably changed?

Why can't you see that it takes more than a few months to rebuild a lifetime of dreams?

Why can't you see that I can't just sweep this under the rug?

Why can't you see what I see?

Soooo tired

I sent the boys to church early to save us a darn pew.  15 minutes before church starts and all the pews are reserved...drives me crazy that no matter how early we get to church it seems like we can never get a pew anymore.
So, 40 minutes before church starts I sent the boys off with the iPad to play with to save us a spot.  (This used to be Bucky's job, since he had to be there for meetings anyway...of course there were always the people who just sit on top of your stuff anyway...I have mixed feelings about this since I have been on both ends of it...how about they just make the chapel bigger? Problem solved.)

Anyway, Mr. Jumping Bean (7) had been up since....oh, 6:45, so he had no problem getting ready to go.

As soon as the meeting starts, Jumping Bean looks at me and says, in a rather unquiet voice, "I am sooooo tired. Did you bring my bed?"
"Umm, no," I whisper back.
"Did you bring Jelly Bean's bed?"
"No..."

I must lie on this bench and take up all of the room...

"Can I use Cocoa's blanket?"
Please just stop talking...Of course if I ignore him, he just says it louder.
He proceeds to talk about how he is so tired and how he just wants to sleep RIGHT NOW.

"Mom, I can't help but fall over, I am SO tired..."

Eventually he won't quit talking about it and starts flopping around...and being a general pain all around. I take him out of the chapel and find a quiet area of the church to talk to him.  I pray for inspiration on how to teach my child that it is better to be bored in church sitting on a comfy pew than sitting on a hard chair with a mom that won't talk to you...nothing. I got nothing.  One day Jumping Bean will be the best example in the family...but that day was not today, or last week...or the past seven years...

It reminded me of this Mr. Bean clip (at about 3 minutes, that's where this starts resembling the floppy Jumping Bean, if only Jumping Bean could be quiet about falling asleep...)

If you need a good laugh, you should watch it, I certainly needed to laugh after a meeting like that!

Where I'm At

As I was making oatmeal this morning, the water boiled and popped, splashing hot oatmeal on my forearm.  I quickly ran it under cold water and the pain passed rather quickly.  I continued with the breakfast preparations and forgot about the incident.

An hour later, as I was preparing the bathtub for the baby, I stuck my arm under the running water.  The temperature was fine but as the water trickled down my forearm the intense pain came back.  I pulled my arm out as quickly as I could.  It took a moment for me to remember and figure out why my arm was hurting.

That is where I'm at in the process of healing.  I'm okay.  My days aren't incredibly bad, nor are they over joyous.  They're just okay.

But every once in a while I will see something or hear something that will bring back the searing pain.

And then I have to run to the bathroom and run my forearm under cold water again.

I can't think of any examples as of late, but quite a few weeks ago I took Jumping Bean-7 to the baptism open house that our stake was putting on for all of the children that will turn eight this year.

We looked at the white baptismal suits and I told Jumping Bean how he would wear that when he was baptized.  And then I overheard the woman standing next to us talking to her daughter, "You'll wear one and Daddy will wear one too..."

Can we go home now?  I thought.  "Let's go look at the baptismal font and then we can go.  Okay?"

I guess I needed to rush home to put some cold water on my forearm.

I'm okay now.

Friday

From my family blog, September 4, 2013:

I feel crushed.  Devastated.  Deflated.

On Sunday, about 10 after 10, my husband went home.  I knew...and he knew...that he would be healed.  But we both felt it would get harder before it got easier.  As I prayed two months ago, while pleading with the Lord, asking Him to heal my husband, I heard the answer, "Friday."

I was excited and knew that come Friday, my husband would be whole again.

Friday after Friday passed.

And he never got better.  He didn't get worse, but his blood counts did.

Then Friday, August 23rd came, and Bucky was rushed to the hospital.  He received a blood transfusion and by Saturday, he seemed like himself again.  But as I knelt in prayer, I felt that it was time.

And then it dawned on me what Friday meant.

"I think of how dark that Friday was when Christ was lifted up on the cross.

source

On that terrible Friday the earth shook and grew dark. Frightful storms lashed at the earth.

Those evil men who sought His life rejoiced. Now that Jesus was no more, surely those who followed Him would disperse. On that day they stood triumphant.

On that day the veil of the temple was rent in twain.

Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus, were both overcome with grief and despair. The superb man they had loved and honored hung lifeless upon the cross.

On that Friday the Apostles were devastated. Jesus, their Savior—the man who had walked on water and raised the dead—was Himself at the mercy of wicked men. They watched helplessly as He was overcome by His enemies.

On that Friday the Savior of mankind was humiliated and bruised, abused and reviled.

It was a Friday filled with devastating, consuming sorrow that gnawed at the souls of those who loved and honored the Son of God.

I think that of all the days since the beginning of this world’s history, that Friday was the darkest.

But the doom of that day did not endure.

The despair did not linger because on Sunday, the resurrected Lord burst the bonds of death. He ascended from the grave and appeared gloriously triumphant as the Savior of all mankind.

And in an instant the eyes that had been filled with ever-flowing tears dried. The lips that had whispered prayers of distress and grief now filled the air with wondrous praise, for Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God, stood before them as the firstfruits of the Resurrection, the proof that death is merely the beginning of a new and wondrous existence.

Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays.

But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death—Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come.

No matter our desperation, no matter our grief, Sunday will come. In this life or the next, Sunday will come." -Joseph B. Wirthlin, Sunday Will Come

Downhill...

I was beginning to wallow...Bucky needed a lot of help during the night. Without his sight, he seems to have begun to lose his balance as well.

His mind is not as sharp and bright as it once was. It is hard to look at him and remember how he once was...full of life, laughter, and energy. All of that seems lost from him.  It is hard to hold a conversation with him...he can't remember what was said ten seconds earlier...

As I was becoming frustrated, I went to pick up Jelly Bean from preschool. While waiting I saw my ensign magazine next to me. There was an article about hope, which led me to another article by Elder Ballard:

The Lord is in control. He knows the end from the beginning. He has given us adequate instruction that, if followed, will see us safely through any crisis. His purposes will be fulfilled, and someday we will understand the eternal reasons for all of these events. Therefore, today we must be careful to not overreact, nor should we be caught up in extreme preparations; but what we must do is keep the commandments of God and never lose hope!

...Please turn to Him if you are discouraged and struggling for direction in your life. Armed with the shield of faith, we can overcome many of our daily challenges and overpower our greatest weaknesses and fears, knowing that if we do our best to keep the commandments of God, come what may, we will be all right. 

Of course that does not necessarily mean that we will be spared personal suffering and heartache. Righteousness has never precluded adversity. But faith in the Lord Jesus Christ—real faith, whole-souled and unshakable—is a power to be reckoned with in the universe. It can be a causative force through which miracles are wrought. Or it can be a source of inner strength through which we find peace, comfort, and the courage to cope...

Regardless of how desperate things may seem or how desperate they may yet become, please believe me, you can always have hope. Always."

(1992 October General Conference, The Joy of Hope Fulfilled, Sat. Afternoon Session - M. Russell Ballard)

So...hope on...journey on. All is not well today...but one day it will be.