Grieving

Today I had a doctor's appointment mainly to discuss my ongoing antibiotic regime. However it soon turned into a session on grieving as it appears that some of my physical symptoms are more to do with stress and grieving at the moment than anything else.

So I learned that there are stages of grieving that we go through and that these stages are not necessary consecutive but may recur and we go through them again and again not in any specific order.

I thought it would help if I shared this on my blog as I guess we have all experienced loss and all need to cope with it in some way or another.

One of the stages is shock. Which results in a sort of emotional numbness. This can also come and go.
Another stage is denial where the death just seems unreal. I think I am stuck in this stage. Even though I saw Dad's body and know that he died...deep down my emotions have not yet accepted the fact.
Then there is a symptom which is sleep disorder. This can manifest itself in a number of ways: inability to fall asleep, inability to stay asleep, inability or reluctance to wake up. I am certainly experiences all of these simultaneously resulting in a feeling of total exhaustion. The sleep disorder symptom is part of the stage called "depression". Now I always argue that I don't have any problems with depression. Today I learnt that we can manifest depression in many ways. In my case the sleep disorder is a strong symptom.
Then there is a "flattening" which is a deadening of the emotions. Inability to grieve...inability to experience joy...inability to get excited about anything. I actually noticed myself being very flat lately. Sort of missing a spark. And I felt that I was actually not experiencing any grief....and put it down to the long time we spent with Dad so very sick and so close to death. Now I realise that this is actually a recognised stage within grieving...the inability to express the grief.
Then there is anger and self doubt. Anger with the fact of the death, sometimes with the person who died. Suddenly even though we want to remember all the good times, we get swamped by bad memories which make us angry. Then we also go through the if only phase where we feel personally responsible for the death. I am definitely continually going around in this stage. The anger. Then the feeling ...if only I had given up work a year earlier I could have achieved my goal of spending time with Dad and writing down all his stories. I thought I was doing quite a good job at pushing those thoughts out of my head but the mere fact that they are recurring shows that I have not yet made peace with myself.
Then there is chaos. Unable to complete things. A feeling of never getting on top of anything because we keep dropping one task in favor of another. Definitely can relate to this stage. And the fact that I have a house full of unpacked boxes gives me the perfect excuse to feel totally frustrated and chaotic :-) sort of wallowing in this phase!
And finally there is acceptance and healing. This may sound like it is time to celebrate and that the grieving is over...but remember these are not consecutive stages...so the whole show can start again over and over until we have finished grieving. And the length of the grieving period is mainly determined by the impact the person who has died had on our lives...how close we were and how much we were influenced by this person.

So where does that leave me? I thought I was coping very well and didn't link any of the physical symptoms with the grieving process. I cried much more during Dad's illness than since his passing. I guess I have been "stuck" in denial and flattening of emotions.

And the remedy? Well...my doctor and I have worked out some goals he wants to help me to achieve:
1. Take prayer more serious and do it regularly.
2. Become selfish for a while and wallow in things that make me feel good. In my case we decided that means doing a lot of reading and movie watching.
3. Make a commitment to loosing weight. Considering I have a personal dietician this should be achievable especially considering the goal is to loose 5 kg in 6 months. And I am embarrassed to say that when I was challenged to take this up 4 months ago, I immediately thought:"I'll show him....I'll loose that in one month". Needless to say...I didn't loose a single kilo in the last 4 months so ....looks like I will take this challenge a bit more serious.
4. Get fit. Well....now I will follow Peters example and record my personal fitness achievements on a daily basis in this blog! And I will cash in on my gym membership and actually grace them with my presence.
Hope someone else finds this helpful. Must dash. Want to watch a DVD :-)

Cant' work out how to add my fitness achievement as a footnote like Peter does so here goes:

today's personal fitness record: ZILCH. Drove around sat around and ate too much. But that's the last day of it!