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In one of my previous posts, I mentioned that I felt like I was living completely a nightmare or a bad dream but that isn't true - not at all times anyway.

If I think of it in terms of a graph, I see a plateau followed by a U-curve then a plateau again and it goes on. Occasionally, there'd interception of spikes.

The plateau would be when emotions are relatively stable, undisturbed, undistressed. Life, without his presence, feels like a dream. But sometimes when it does feel real, it's only because I feel as though he's only a travel away and I'm awaiting his return from a long business trip as we did before. The whole period of his illness is non-existent. The idea of death is surreal. These plateau experiences happen when there's activity, distraction or moderate contentment.

Then comes the dip, ever so often, with the U-curve where his illness and death are most vivid in my mind. Sometimes, I'd remember the times we spent together and not being able to relive that saddens me. These tearful dips come about in stillness, magnified in sadness, whenever a memory is sparked, in reticence or being idle - too often in the backseat of car rides. This is the nightmare.

The spikes are often gifts from social interactions with my closest friends and family who know just the right heart string to pluck. Sometimes it's unexpected gestures from unexpected people, sometimes it's from hearing or watching something uplifting and cheery like from a movie or song. Fortunate, I am, for these moments and I savour it with every might. As hard as I want to hold on to these moments, they are brief. I don't wish they were.

Is this what Grief and Loss feel like? I've spoken to family and close friends and they've expressed somewhat a similar experience - life in a state of a dream. If it is, where and when is the finishing line or does it carry on indefinitely but you somehow learn to cope better with the "U"s? Or do you simply become numb to the pain that it seems as though the pain has gone away?

M


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