The Brochure on Grief and the Distraction It Causes

Today I'm going to continue telling you about my journey with grief over the loss of Dallas. Again, I'm not going to be sharing the perky intro and outro music. It just doesn't seem appropriate. Intro and outro music, it just doesn't seem appropriate. We're still struggling At least I'm still struggling with the grief.

It's hard. It's only been three weeks and without him here I still really miss him. I'm starting to really miss him because it's settling in that he's really, really gone. So it's been hard, continues to be hard. I loved him so much I've been able to think about him and remember some of his good qualities. Think about him and remember some of his good qualities, some of the qualities that I loved about him. I keep telling myself I'm not going to cry, but that's pretty hard. But then I remember that he's really gone and starts all over again and I say remember, because of course I know he's gone.

But grief is, I guess, a funny thing because you can get to a point where your brain has to kind of shut it off and you have to keep going. You have to distract yourself and at least for me, I can't wallow in it 24-7. I'd be a complete wreck. So I distract myself with other things and then it comes back to me that he's really gone and I try not to dwell on it too much, but sometimes I think about it and I realize that he really is gone. And that's when it gets really tough. I've continued to keep his picture up on my phone so that every time I open my phone up I see him, and that's been at the same time hard and comforting. I've thought about taking that picture off and putting one of the other pets on there, but I realize that it's just important to keep him there as hard as it is.

Anyway, that's just a little bit about where I'm at right now. I couldn't really put a word to how I'm feeling. I mean, I knew that there was a word to it, but I couldn't figure out what that word was. And this morning one of my friends posted on my Facebook page in reaction to something that happened to me yesterday and she used the word distracting. She said grief is really distracting and that's the word.

I've been really distracted. My mind, my brain has been in a different place. It's been hard to concentrate on things as much as I've tried. I've watched what I call my comfort shows or my comfort movies. I've watched a lot of I Love Lucy movies reruns, so I don't have to think I can get distracted. I don't have to think I found the Lucy and Desi movie, the Long, long Trailer, which I hadn't seen in a while, and that's a really sweet little film, and I've watched that a couple of times on Prime I think it's on Prime. One of my other favorite films is Pride and Prejudice, the one with Keira Knightley, and things like that that have distracted me without too much thought process.

The cat's in here using his scratchy pad. If you hear something in the background, that's him, and I've also been gardening the dog's here as well. She's on my right side, the cat's on the left. So yesterday was Saturday and I was looking forward to a day of just sitting here quietly and going out in the yard the weather was nice and working in the garden. I had also been out in the garden Friday afternoon and I find that that's very healing for me working with the soil, the plants, et cetera, and I was looking forward to just puttering out there a little bit.

Bubbie, our cat had a different plan in mind. The universe had a different plan in mind for me. So he started having his episodes where he was having trouble urinating. He was pacing back and forth, going in every litter box but not really producing much urine, and he wasn't in a lot of pain because he wasn't crying like he's done before, but he was obviously not doing very well. So we packed him up and I took him to the emergency vet, which is never really a good thing, and you know. They took him in and they did his vitals and whatnot, and they had me sit in a little room there, a little exam room, to talk to the doctor, talk to the doctor, and I totally underestimated how hard that would be for me, what a trigger it would be. That's the thing, these triggers come up. To talk to the vet, first of all because we lost Walter there in August down the hall. But just to talk to a vet and just to deal with one of our animals, and I just started to lose it over Dallas, and the vet came in and she started talking to me and I just I apologized, I just started crying and I told her what happened Anyway. And I told her what happened Anyway. Long story short, he stayed for a couple hours. They did the tests, he wasn't blocked, they gave him some meds, ran some other diagnostics because he needed to have a test for his diabetes management, you know control, the fructosamine test.

And so I went back to pick him up and I got. I was distracted and I I had to get on the phone for um, for something. It was hard to hear in there. So I decided to go out to my car, um, because I wanted to call the credit card company, because you know these bills aren't cheap, and I wanted to put it on the care credit, um, that that's no interest. And, uh, there was a problem with that.

So I went to go get in my car and I wasn't paying attention and I fell, um, I tripped over one of the pylons the car stops right that you hit when you go into a parking space. I went down hard, I fell on my knees and I fell on my elbow and with the knee replacements that I've had, I can tell you that you don't want to kneel on your knees at all. You never want to put any pressure on your knees. So falling onto asphalt with both knees was an excruciating ouch. I also hit my teeth somehow, my front teeth. I don't know if it was just my bottom teeth. I don't know what else I could have hit. I wasn't tasting asphalt. So my teeth were numb all of a sudden, which was a really weird feeling. But they were still there. They weren't loose.

So I continued the phone call and then somebody came out and I said I need help because I couldn't get off the ground without turning and getting on my knees, which wasn't going to happen because I was in so much pain. I didn't want to put any pressure on my knees again. And then everybody was so nice and they apologized for everything and I told them about Dallas again and I started crying again and it was just a big mess. He was growling in his carrier, at the staff. If they got too close, because he doesn't like to go there, he gets stressed out. They told me that he has a big personality, but he obviously loves us very much. He does have a big personality and he's not one of these sweet cats, he's a very feisty. It's on his terms. Everything is on Bubby's terms.

So anyway, we came home. Bill helped us out of the car. He felt bad for not going, but there was no way that he would have stopped me from falling at this point. And then last night, you know so, I iced, I did my elevation, I did my ibuprofen, which helped. You know, it all helped a little bit. But last night walking around I felt like somebody had just hit me across the knees with a baseball bat. I talked to the dentist and he said he thought I would be okay, but they would be probably more sore. My teeth would be more sore today, so it's soft food for me, no peanut brittle, no hard food. So my knees do feel better today. Luckily I didn't rip up my pants or my knees weren't bleeding. They're just, top of everything else being a grief disaster. I'm physically sore, but that's great. Just another distraction, another complication.

Bubbie seems okay. He's not quite himself. It takes him usually two to three days to recover mentally, I think, from being at the emergency vet or being at any vet, emergency vet or being at any vet. I wish he was the kind of cat that would enjoy going out and would enjoy being like a people cat. But he's just not that kind of cat. He enjoys being home, he enjoys his routine. He's kind of a curmudgeon in that way and I guess I can't blame him for that, you know.

And I just wanted to come home yesterday and just work in the garden, but that I just had to rest. Sometimes you just have to stop and you have to rest and you have to just say, okay, look, I can't do anything else, I just have to take care of me. And that's kind of been the theme lately. But I really had to scale it back. Yesterday we ordered food to be delivered and I just laid here and went to bed early because I was tired, got a good night's sleep. So you know, that's where I'm at.

In addition, I have a couple of friends. I've had, you know, one friend who's been going through. I can't even tell you how much crap she's been going through, tell you how much crap she's been going through, how many challenges one person can encounter in their lives, and everything's been thrown at her. And I've been trying to keep up with her and provide some level of support. And last night I found out another friend has had a health crisis in her family and these things are just so. It hurts me when the people around me are hurting as well. And I'll say this I realized that with the loss of Dallas that I started thinking about my friend Gina so much more and I realized that I missed her so much more, because when anything would happen, like a loss, like when we lost our pet rabbit Hoover who was the greatest rabbit ever and a rabbit that she had actually found and brought to us or something really tragic happened, gina was always right there and she was one of the most supportive.

She knew exactly what to do to comfort you. She knew how to be completely empathetic and sympathetic in always the right way, and I realized how much I missed her in this space of my own grief, and then that hurt a little bit more too, because she's not here. So anyway, I struggle on. There are good things. You have to always try to find the good things in life, because life keeps happening, and I'm grateful, you know.

I'm grateful that Bubby's feeling better. I'm grateful for our little dog, brownie, who tries desperately to be supportive although she decided to land on one of my sore knees last night and I almost threw her across the room, I didn't and grateful for the support of my husband and all my friends and for my health not the sore parts, but for my health. So I hope that in some way this might help you with your own grief, if not now, at some point in the future. Your own grief, if not now, at some point in the future, because life as it continues, it does include loss, and it's really a significant part of life, especially as you get older, and, unfortunately, you have to learn to deal with it effectively. So that's all I've got for today. I'm trying to put somewhat of a happy spin on it, but I hope that you'll stay well and next week I'll try to find more good things to share with you. I hope you'll join me.