- Joined
- May 9, 2016
- Messages
- 1,529
- Reason
- Lost a loved one
- Diagnosis
- 06/2016
- Country
- US
- State
- MN
- City
- Minneapolis
The second anniversary of Brian’s death, 3/13/2021 came and went. March was a surprisingly wretched month for me.
I drank a little too much wine, ate a few too many deserts and bust out crying telling the housemate that Brian died motionless from the neck down on the floor he had laid 5 years earlier, overlooking the garage and shed he built.
Therapy annoyed me and I canceled it. I’m okay without it. I don’t need to answer questions like “in what ways are you like your mother” (who passed in November) to deal with this. I actually say out loud to people that I am ready to move forward. I am. I’m still in love with Brian though, no less than when he was here. I still hurt over what happened to him and to us.
I am not where I thought I’d be by now. It’s not“over” as I truly see what I thought I knew, that this stays with me for keeps. I think my “goal” at this point is to reach a deeper level of peace with what happened.
I’m doing a webinar spot for Compassion and Choices on 4/22. ALS is one of the premier conditions in the Physician Aid in Dying movement, almost as much as late stage cancers. I respect it is controversial in the ALS community. The local chapter likes my story.
I will definitely be doing the webinar but unsure how much longer I continue to do the work at this time. I’ll see how the webinar makes me feel.
I had a long conversation with a woman from the ALS Society here and she said for a LOT of people this disease is a different sort of grief.
She lost her 63 year old mother to a brain tumor and her 67 year old father to ALS after five years with the disease. Brian tumors are no cakewalk, but she said the ALS really grabbed her and the whole family in another way. It’s grief upon grief. By the time your PALS passes, your grief is already compounded by all the daily/weekly/monthly loses of ALS you’ve already been through. Cancer etc can be similar but it’s virtually always the case in ALS.
Takeaway for us former CALS, yes you are going through something “different” and moving forward is going to look different.
I resolved that this was the last year I would Mark 3/13 as special. I resolved that Monday, 4/12 our wedding anniversary I will work it and treat it like a regular day. I resolved that 5/15, the 71st birthday Brian is not here for will not be a day of mourning. Am I pushing myself to hard? Maybe. It’s been two years and life is for the living, I think the best way to honor him is to truly move forward but it’s definitely not easy sometimes.
I drank a little too much wine, ate a few too many deserts and bust out crying telling the housemate that Brian died motionless from the neck down on the floor he had laid 5 years earlier, overlooking the garage and shed he built.
Therapy annoyed me and I canceled it. I’m okay without it. I don’t need to answer questions like “in what ways are you like your mother” (who passed in November) to deal with this. I actually say out loud to people that I am ready to move forward. I am. I’m still in love with Brian though, no less than when he was here. I still hurt over what happened to him and to us.
I am not where I thought I’d be by now. It’s not“over” as I truly see what I thought I knew, that this stays with me for keeps. I think my “goal” at this point is to reach a deeper level of peace with what happened.
I’m doing a webinar spot for Compassion and Choices on 4/22. ALS is one of the premier conditions in the Physician Aid in Dying movement, almost as much as late stage cancers. I respect it is controversial in the ALS community. The local chapter likes my story.
I will definitely be doing the webinar but unsure how much longer I continue to do the work at this time. I’ll see how the webinar makes me feel.
I had a long conversation with a woman from the ALS Society here and she said for a LOT of people this disease is a different sort of grief.
She lost her 63 year old mother to a brain tumor and her 67 year old father to ALS after five years with the disease. Brian tumors are no cakewalk, but she said the ALS really grabbed her and the whole family in another way. It’s grief upon grief. By the time your PALS passes, your grief is already compounded by all the daily/weekly/monthly loses of ALS you’ve already been through. Cancer etc can be similar but it’s virtually always the case in ALS.
Takeaway for us former CALS, yes you are going through something “different” and moving forward is going to look different.
I resolved that this was the last year I would Mark 3/13 as special. I resolved that Monday, 4/12 our wedding anniversary I will work it and treat it like a regular day. I resolved that 5/15, the 71st birthday Brian is not here for will not be a day of mourning. Am I pushing myself to hard? Maybe. It’s been two years and life is for the living, I think the best way to honor him is to truly move forward but it’s definitely not easy sometimes.