Dilemma

I woke up this morning after a disturbed night, feeling rather down: heavy heart, pressure in my chest and generally feeling miserable. Marion & Nattie had gone to hockey early. I went down, opened the curtains and turned the light on over the big photo of Kay in the corner of the lounge. I kissed Kay and stroked her cheek, as I do every morning and night. But today I was immediately hit by a panic attack, don't remember the exact cause. Anyway, so far this has set the tone for the day.

I called Linda and had a chat which brightened me up enough that I felt like continuing with the day, (as always, thanks my dear friend). Since then I've been pottering around doing jobs in the garden and prepping my mountain bike for its first outing of the season. But as I was working thoughts of Kay continued to wash through my head. How she would always wait until the absolute last minute before going to the toilet, to the extent that if she wasn't quite fast enough she occasionally wet herself. She hated wasting a minute of the day and any time on the loo was wasted time. She had the habit of unfastening her trousers on the way to the loo and refastening them on the way back so the whole thing would take less time (a habit of Marion's too!) and she would never fasten the fly of her trousers because she "preferred it that way". These and many other painful/black thoughts queued to cross my mind.

Now, here's the dilemma: does one allow oneself to (repeatedly) think black and/or painful thoughts. Or should one avoid thinking bad things?. For example, there I am working away in the leaf sodden autumn garden when suddenly it strikes me that Kay's seen her last autumn, seen her last leaf fall, raked her last pile of leaves, filled her last wheelbarrow. She's seen her last thunderstorm, she's ridden her mountain bike for the last time, had her last birthday, had her last Christmas... Should I shy away from these thoughts? Or should I let them run their course?

Shying away from them seems to be about as useful as burying CO2: it's (notionally) toxic and it has to come out some time. But maybe not right now, maybe when the world can handle it's CO2 output. On the other hand, by allowing these thoughts to have free rein, I'm allowing myself to be pushed deeper down the black hole of misery and grief. And I certainly don't feel that by allowing them free rein now I'll be better for it in the future. In fact, by allowing them free rein the future seems to be increasingly unattractive, as I wrote on Monday.

What to do? To be honest I don't know. I can try to think about think about other things but the pressure of the grief remains the same and it does feel like sticking my head in the sand. On the other hand, allowing myself to think these thoughts and allowing the repetition feels like I'm permitting myself to revel in grief, encouraging myself to be depressed, engaging in some sort of mental masturbation of misery.

I guess that this is a important subject, the key to healing the Sickness of Grief. But what is wise?