A Month of Silence
I’m finally back into the headspace where I can write and photograph the people and places around me again. It’s taken a month to get there. I’ve come back here to say something and yet I couldn’t get anything out. The things I thought I had to say sounded trite or somehow unimportant in relation to the death of my Mom. Yet, I know Mom would want me to say something or do something and not put it off.
But for a while I needed to be silent. I needed to sort out the stuff in my head and my heart.
I’m at a place where I can function again. The first twenty days after her death I was so tired. I didn’t know it was possible to function in the state of exhaustion I was in. But slowly and surely I’ve gotten back to a more “normal” place. It started with work and getting back into the routine there. Along with the work routine, I made sure I paid attention to what my body was telling me. Sleep healed the battered feeling I had, but it took a while to get rid of the feeling that my brain was made of cotton. Even with the amount of sleep I’ve been getting, some times I become aware of being overly tired and want nothing more than to take a nap.
My normalcy spread a bit futher this past week to include gardening and a bit photography. I felt the urge to explore instead of hole up in the house.
Am I all done with exploring my feelings and finding things out about my relationship with my Mom? Probably not. Some of the things I’m doing now are being driven by the desire to make sure my relatives and friends won’t have to go through some of things my family has been through the past few weeks. Conversations with friends and family or entries in my paper journal will bring epiphanies to me and get some of this stuff worked out.
Life goes in the meantime.
February 15th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Boy, did this ring true with my own experiences after Dad passed. It took a month before I could let myself listen to any music, for example. And time moved in an odd way…either very speeded up or unbelievably slow. It was totally back to the basics as far as self-care: sleep and food, sometimes needing touch, sometimes needing to be untouched. It took a while to feel okay about feeling okay, as time went on. Thank you for sharing your story so candidly! You tell it well.