Since Misty's death the first week of December, getting no reaction from others and having a horrible Christmas, we decided to take a New Year's weekend trip to get out of the house and memories. We tried to get over it, as society dictates.
I discovered that you can't "McGrieve." IT's not like the instant McDonald's hamburger we get at the drive through. It's a slow and painful process. I don't think there are any "stages" or right way to grieve.
Like our pets, each person's grief process is unique to them.
I definitely feel the progression, but I can't just get to the last stage on command from others (or at least their lack of mentioning it at all).
Grief isn't McDonald's, you can't say "last stage, please," and be "over it."
So many people acted that first week like we should have just walked out of the vets office and been like, "oh well." Or cry for a day and then it's time to move on.
I wish it worked that way, because who would want to go through months of pain by choice. We don't have a choice of what to feel.
Thanks to EVERYONE here for their feedback and support. This board seems to be my only outlet at this point. I am so grateful for everyone--sharing your own stories, feelings, and pain makes me not feel alone. And trying to offer support to others makes me feel better about myself.....and honoring Misty too.
Thank you!!!!
Peace and happy thoughts, Amy
Full Version: Mcgrieving
How right you are, Amy. I just posted to someone else that grief is a living thing. You can't get a vaccination and say "Okay, I'm done now."
I have been utterly and completely devastated. My grief doesn't cooperate with stages, doesn't respond to little ideas I have about how to get through it. The only comfort I have is that my boy is happy, and someday I'll get to die and be with him.
I've actually asked people on this forum how long it takes. 6 mos? A year? 10 years? I want it to be done now, I miss my little Jake so much that it is hard to breathe. There is no time frame, you just keep breathing in and out and doing the next thing and maybe someday the darkness will lighten a little.
Thank you for posting on this topic
I have been utterly and completely devastated. My grief doesn't cooperate with stages, doesn't respond to little ideas I have about how to get through it. The only comfort I have is that my boy is happy, and someday I'll get to die and be with him.
I've actually asked people on this forum how long it takes. 6 mos? A year? 10 years? I want it to be done now, I miss my little Jake so much that it is hard to breathe. There is no time frame, you just keep breathing in and out and doing the next thing and maybe someday the darkness will lighten a little.
Thank you for posting on this topic
I know how both of you feel cause I feel the same way.....there really is no time frame for getting over it (as they say) We lost our boy Sox back on Oct. 13th and I am still grieving for him.I just miss him so much.We have adopted a new kitty named Smoky and don't get me wrong I love him and I am glad he's with us but it's not the same as having my boy here.He was like our child for so long....we had him since he was a baby and when he died he was almost 17 yrs. old,that's a long time.I feel like everyone grieves different and I don't think you ever really get over it.Look at us,it's been almost 6 months.I do feel like it's a little bit easier to deal with than when it first happened.I guess you just have to get used to it.I hope that by knowing your not alone and that your feelings are real that it helps you just a little bit.Sincerely,Renee (Sox's mom)
I understand all too well how you feel. Unfortunately, with the exception of those of us on this wonderful site, most people don't get it. They don't understand the depth of pain we suffer when we lose our babies. My only consolation, like others, is that I will one day leave the earth and I'll be with my boy again. I'm approaching 9 weeks without him and I just have a big, empty hole where his presence was. Nothing will ever replace it. I guess that's why they call grief a process - you move through the 'acute' phase and then it dulls a bit, but the emptiness remains. Misty is lucky to have such a loving family - they all should be so lucky.
I don't think there is any way to tell when the actual grieving process is over.
I remember when I had my old chihuahua put to sleep, and it seemed a year was the magical "time" for me. I didn't grieve the whole time, mind you
I do worry about others who NEVER get through the crisis of losing a pet, and stay stuck in the actual grieving state for YEARS. I don't think that is normal by any stretch of the imagination, and urge those who CAN'T get out of grieving to seek help. Grief for anything shouldn't be a state of existence for years on end, that is just not normal. My main concern for them is that they learn to live grieving, and forget to live! If I am still crying for my Boo over a year from now, which I may be, I think I'll seriously consider seeking help. I've never needed a "head doctor" but I also know to a point what is normal human behavior and what is abnormal. At least for me, uncontrolled grief does have a time limit. I'm not sure WHAT that is, which is confusing, but I will know when my grief is affecting my LIFE to an extent that I NEED HELP. I probably will not, as I've said, I feel healing in my heart.
But you are right, after four months I still do cry, at a memory, or a smell or touch that reminds me of my Boo, but I also feel a sense of healing.
I was told by one of my employers (hug her!) that if the loss of Boo was a child would I be "over it?" and SHE SAID heck no. She understood it was a LOSS, not just missing something. I LOST a SOMEBODY.
I don't think there will ever be an "over it" but more of an acceptance.
But we must look forward to a time when we can look back and SMILE, not cry. THAT will come. It will. In time. It should, it must.
(If it doesn't, please read my red statement above-- it is not meant to offend ANYONE, I sincerely believe anyone grieving as a life existence needs help)
You are right, no special MC-order can make it come faster
Grief to me is a period of reaching acceptance of what has happened. It may take days or weeks or months, maybe even a year or more, but should never be the way we exist forever.
I remember when I had my old chihuahua put to sleep, and it seemed a year was the magical "time" for me. I didn't grieve the whole time, mind you
I do worry about others who NEVER get through the crisis of losing a pet, and stay stuck in the actual grieving state for YEARS. I don't think that is normal by any stretch of the imagination, and urge those who CAN'T get out of grieving to seek help. Grief for anything shouldn't be a state of existence for years on end, that is just not normal. My main concern for them is that they learn to live grieving, and forget to live! If I am still crying for my Boo over a year from now, which I may be, I think I'll seriously consider seeking help. I've never needed a "head doctor" but I also know to a point what is normal human behavior and what is abnormal. At least for me, uncontrolled grief does have a time limit. I'm not sure WHAT that is, which is confusing, but I will know when my grief is affecting my LIFE to an extent that I NEED HELP. I probably will not, as I've said, I feel healing in my heart.
But you are right, after four months I still do cry, at a memory, or a smell or touch that reminds me of my Boo, but I also feel a sense of healing.
I was told by one of my employers (hug her!) that if the loss of Boo was a child would I be "over it?" and SHE SAID heck no. She understood it was a LOSS, not just missing something. I LOST a SOMEBODY.
I don't think there will ever be an "over it" but more of an acceptance.
But we must look forward to a time when we can look back and SMILE, not cry. THAT will come. It will. In time. It should, it must.
(If it doesn't, please read my red statement above-- it is not meant to offend ANYONE, I sincerely believe anyone grieving as a life existence needs help)
You are right, no special MC-order can make it come faster
Grief to me is a period of reaching acceptance of what has happened. It may take days or weeks or months, maybe even a year or more, but should never be the way we exist forever.
Misty's Mommy
You are right, there is no fast way to get through grief. I notice some people come here thinking/hoping that someone will have a fast answer. Wouldn't that be nice? There just isn't one, it takes as long as it takes, for you. Or an answer like 'In 6 weeks it will all be over and you will be back to normal'.
There is no going back to normal, it's a new reality and we just have to learn to live in it. It takes some of us more time than others. I think of it as having my heart shattered and waiting for it to pull back together and heal.
I printed this up from a wise man, Alen Cohen. I keep it so I read it several times a day:
"Use pain as a steppingstone, not a campground."
Some days I even feel like I could do that.
Love
You are right, there is no fast way to get through grief. I notice some people come here thinking/hoping that someone will have a fast answer. Wouldn't that be nice? There just isn't one, it takes as long as it takes, for you. Or an answer like 'In 6 weeks it will all be over and you will be back to normal'.
There is no going back to normal, it's a new reality and we just have to learn to live in it. It takes some of us more time than others. I think of it as having my heart shattered and waiting for it to pull back together and heal.
I printed this up from a wise man, Alen Cohen. I keep it so I read it several times a day:
"Use pain as a steppingstone, not a campground."
Some days I even feel like I could do that.
Love
It seems as though the grief goes deeper than I do. I do not take a breathe that is not tinged by grief.
I see his big saucer eyes the first time he swam, I remember his tastey ears when I chewed on them, I can almost feel him as I threw my arms around him when I came home.
My Jakey, I don't know how I will go on without you. I wish there was a time table...at exactly 8 months the pain will diminish and I will just smile at the thought of you. Alas, no time table. Just an endless aching hurt that flows through the days and nights of my life.
I hope you are happy, my boy. The animal communicator said you are, and I trust her because she knew so many things about your life. I want my boy to fly free. Please forgive me, and be there with me when I pass. Counting the days til then. Be free, be happy, be well, my sweet Jakey.
I see his big saucer eyes the first time he swam, I remember his tastey ears when I chewed on them, I can almost feel him as I threw my arms around him when I came home.
My Jakey, I don't know how I will go on without you. I wish there was a time table...at exactly 8 months the pain will diminish and I will just smile at the thought of you. Alas, no time table. Just an endless aching hurt that flows through the days and nights of my life.
I hope you are happy, my boy. The animal communicator said you are, and I trust her because she knew so many things about your life. I want my boy to fly free. Please forgive me, and be there with me when I pass. Counting the days til then. Be free, be happy, be well, my sweet Jakey.
Amy, that is the BEST darn descriptive I've ever seen on western society's rush to bury everyone's grief! "McGrief" ~ PERFECT!! (I'll be using this extensively, as required, if you don't mind!) If you aren't interested in writing your own book, I think you ought to offer this new colloquialism to an animal loss author and suggest it as the ti*tle for another book that they could write on this very subject!
I know you'd read the article on "Grieving Secondary Losses", but also hope you read the other one I'd posted, HERE. on what time has to do with grief.
I'll just bet that that trip you took, even if it provided a few temporary distractions here and there, didn't do SQUAT to change a thing about your own personal grief!
I know the one we took so soon after Nissa's departure didn't, nor did the one we took just after Christmas. They were both designed ONLY to provide a little bit of an emotional break for us, an emotional distraction.....nothing more....because we all also need to 'break up' our grieving with things that feed our souls in some way. Just as no one can physically cry ALL the time (it's physically impossible), we can't always be intensely grieving for months or years at a time, w/o doing ourselves great harm. If the grief does NOT have some ups and downs, it's likely turning into something MORE than just grief alone.
I think we have a little choice, in smaller ways, about grief, but that has more to do with HOW we go through grief, rather than IF we go through it. If we love someone who's gone on, we DON'T have control of the most natural reaction/response to our loss. But we DO have, and make, choices about things like what we'll do for ourselves and others, to assist our pain, at least at times, during this slow and evolving process. We may feel completely powerless over the pain, but in some ways, we're really not totally powerless to assist it to evolve into something more handleable....both in the shorter and long term. If we do absolutely NOTHING to help ourselves, THEN it has the potential to turn into a more unmanageable 'monster', for which we'll need even more help. As well, I'm not sure I'd even choose "no pain" at all, because in my mind, there's a psychological link, whether it's strictly true or not, to feeling the pain of loss in relation to the importance of who I lost. Without at least SOME pain to acknowledge that importance, it would be like saying their life with me wasn't that impacting. So perhaps we need ask ourselves, if we really had the choice of how long to feel sorrow, how long WOULD seem 'proper' to each of us?
I know I had FAR less knowledge and resources when I lost Sabin and coupled with my much greater guilt over him, it took me many years to move forward. Now, with Nissa, the pain is different and less in some ways, but worse in others, but I also have learned so much about grief and grieving and have more resources to draw upon, so between one thing and another, it may even take me AS long overall, but it WILL be different. It already is in some ways. We never know for certain where or how we'll end up after a major loss, but we can try to steer our own boat. The trying itself is a step, even if one method doesn't work for us. Then we just need try another, until we find what DOES help.
Coming to LS is, naturally, one of the ways to help us to navigate these uncharted waters, and with so many 'crew members' to both keep us company and provide us with their own perspectives on this stormy journey, surely one day we'll find land again, though the shore will be different than the one we started out from.
I know you'd read the article on "Grieving Secondary Losses", but also hope you read the other one I'd posted, HERE. on what time has to do with grief.
I'll just bet that that trip you took, even if it provided a few temporary distractions here and there, didn't do SQUAT to change a thing about your own personal grief!
I know the one we took so soon after Nissa's departure didn't, nor did the one we took just after Christmas. They were both designed ONLY to provide a little bit of an emotional break for us, an emotional distraction.....nothing more....because we all also need to 'break up' our grieving with things that feed our souls in some way. Just as no one can physically cry ALL the time (it's physically impossible), we can't always be intensely grieving for months or years at a time, w/o doing ourselves great harm. If the grief does NOT have some ups and downs, it's likely turning into something MORE than just grief alone. QUOTE
I wish it worked that way, because who would want to go through months of pain by choice. We don't have a choice of what to feel.
I think we have a little choice, in smaller ways, about grief, but that has more to do with HOW we go through grief, rather than IF we go through it. If we love someone who's gone on, we DON'T have control of the most natural reaction/response to our loss. But we DO have, and make, choices about things like what we'll do for ourselves and others, to assist our pain, at least at times, during this slow and evolving process. We may feel completely powerless over the pain, but in some ways, we're really not totally powerless to assist it to evolve into something more handleable....both in the shorter and long term. If we do absolutely NOTHING to help ourselves, THEN it has the potential to turn into a more unmanageable 'monster', for which we'll need even more help. As well, I'm not sure I'd even choose "no pain" at all, because in my mind, there's a psychological link, whether it's strictly true or not, to feeling the pain of loss in relation to the importance of who I lost. Without at least SOME pain to acknowledge that importance, it would be like saying their life with me wasn't that impacting. So perhaps we need ask ourselves, if we really had the choice of how long to feel sorrow, how long WOULD seem 'proper' to each of us?
I know I had FAR less knowledge and resources when I lost Sabin and coupled with my much greater guilt over him, it took me many years to move forward. Now, with Nissa, the pain is different and less in some ways, but worse in others, but I also have learned so much about grief and grieving and have more resources to draw upon, so between one thing and another, it may even take me AS long overall, but it WILL be different. It already is in some ways. We never know for certain where or how we'll end up after a major loss, but we can try to steer our own boat. The trying itself is a step, even if one method doesn't work for us. Then we just need try another, until we find what DOES help.
Coming to LS is, naturally, one of the ways to help us to navigate these uncharted waters, and with so many 'crew members' to both keep us company and provide us with their own perspectives on this stormy journey, surely one day we'll find land again, though the shore will be different than the one we started out from.
Dusk to Dawn,"There is no time frame, you just keep breathing in and out and doing the next thing and maybe someday the darkness will lighten a little."
That's how I feel, the weather has improved here and it helps to get out of the house. I try to enjoy things with my daughter and it's getting a bit better, but I just keep trying to move forward towards acceptance. Haven't gotten there, though.
Moose Mom: "Use pain as a steppingstone, not a campground."
Some days I even feel like I could do that."
I'm getting there....but I needed a chance to share my story, no one in our lives would even listen once. I think finding thios site has helped me...I got a chance to vent, share my pain,and see others did the same for their pets. I was always told we were over the top in terms of all we did for Misty and criticized.
"There is no going back to normal, it's a new reality and we just have to learn to live in it. It takes some of us more time than others. I think of it as having my heart shattered and waiting for it to pull back together and heal."
I am trying to look at the new reality. I just don't want to feel this way forever. I'm getting there, at least so far this week. I am sure I will still backslide, like my DH said, the summer will be hard.......no Misty watching him plant the flowers this year, or watering the plants. I am hoping after the first year it will get easier. Everyone has their own time frame for healing.
FK's Mom: Thanks for the compliment on the McDonald's comparison. I came up with it based on how other people implied I should feel, however, I've found myself crying everyday for 4 months. Part of that is because of THEM making me feel as if there was no one left in the world when no one cared and he as gone.
Yes, our trip out of town did us little good. The second weekend in January we went to a basketball game and left in the middle of it, crying the whole way home. I just wasn't ready toturn off the faucets because of other people. And like DH said, it WAS a temporary break from the situation........
I am trying to break the intensity this week, which is why I took a break from checking in yesterday.....
Thanks everyone AGAIN for their support.
Amy
That's how I feel, the weather has improved here and it helps to get out of the house. I try to enjoy things with my daughter and it's getting a bit better, but I just keep trying to move forward towards acceptance. Haven't gotten there, though.
Moose Mom: "Use pain as a steppingstone, not a campground."
Some days I even feel like I could do that."
I'm getting there....but I needed a chance to share my story, no one in our lives would even listen once. I think finding thios site has helped me...I got a chance to vent, share my pain,and see others did the same for their pets. I was always told we were over the top in terms of all we did for Misty and criticized.
"There is no going back to normal, it's a new reality and we just have to learn to live in it. It takes some of us more time than others. I think of it as having my heart shattered and waiting for it to pull back together and heal."
I am trying to look at the new reality. I just don't want to feel this way forever. I'm getting there, at least so far this week. I am sure I will still backslide, like my DH said, the summer will be hard.......no Misty watching him plant the flowers this year, or watering the plants. I am hoping after the first year it will get easier. Everyone has their own time frame for healing.
FK's Mom: Thanks for the compliment on the McDonald's comparison. I came up with it based on how other people implied I should feel, however, I've found myself crying everyday for 4 months. Part of that is because of THEM making me feel as if there was no one left in the world when no one cared and he as gone.
Yes, our trip out of town did us little good. The second weekend in January we went to a basketball game and left in the middle of it, crying the whole way home. I just wasn't ready toturn off the faucets because of other people. And like DH said, it WAS a temporary break from the situation........
I am trying to break the intensity this week, which is why I took a break from checking in yesterday.....
Thanks everyone AGAIN for their support.
Amy
Amy (Misty's Mommy)
I really think before we can begin to heal we have to talk about our loss, sometimes a lot. We don't get that outlet in our society. I know after my Mom died in 2005 I needed to talk about her. Really bitch about her, we had issues. No one much wanted to hear, and if they did only the good stuff. It took me a while to access the good stuff about her. That is the wonderful thing about our fur kids, their love that was just love, no 'stuff' surrounding it.
This site is such a wonderful place to help us get it out. Great people to help us too.
Love
QUOTE
but I needed a chance to share my story
I really think before we can begin to heal we have to talk about our loss, sometimes a lot. We don't get that outlet in our society. I know after my Mom died in 2005 I needed to talk about her. Really bitch about her, we had issues. No one much wanted to hear, and if they did only the good stuff. It took me a while to access the good stuff about her. That is the wonderful thing about our fur kids, their love that was just love, no 'stuff' surrounding it.
This site is such a wonderful place to help us get it out. Great people to help us too.
Love
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.