The art of mourning

So.  Coming up on seven months of this grieving thing.  I have been mulling over something I learned a couple of months ago: grief and mourning are two different things. Huh.  I've always used those terms interchangeably, but Dr. Alan Wolfelt, on his website, informs me that grief refers to the feelings and thoughts we experience when we go through a loss (basically the internal stuff) and mourning is the outward expression of those feelings and thoughts.

It's surprising how much knowing this little fact has helped me.  As I have come to places where I need to make a decision about my schedule or activities or working or (fill in the blank), I have felt a tug-of-war inside, this odd panicky feeling.  Thinking about going back to subbing, for example:  I knew that I would eventually do this, I spent time in February volunteering at the school to re-accustom myself to being there, I wanted to work there and was excited about it- when I sat down at the computer to notify the school division, I got stuck.  "But what if..." was about as coherent as my thoughts got when I tried to figure out what was causing this sudden trapped feeling.  I have learned over these months that if I am feeling like that, there is usually a good reason for it, and so I went away from my computer to do something else and wait for the thoughts to percolate. 

About half an hour later, here is what showed up: What if going back to work says to other people that I am "all better now"?  What if  people think that Ramsy didn't mean that much to me?  What if it says to me that I am all done missing him?  What if it says to me that I can't have any more time to grieve? 

So often the thoughts that float to the surface seem silly to me when I look at them.  Of course people aren't going to think I didn't care about Rams.  Of course I'm not telling myself that I can't have any more time- why would I think that?  But recognizing that these aren't logical thoughts doesn't make me feel better.  What did make me feel better was the day I realized that these feelings are my heart's way of saying that it wants my outer activity and appearance to match my thoughts and feelings.  In other words, I want to mourn as well as grieve.  Ah.

Our society, I may have said before, does not offer a whole lot of options for expressing grief.  There's the printing of the obituary; there's the funeral; there's leaving teddy bears or flowers or cards at the site of an accident; there's bringing flowers to the grave, and maybe putting a notice in the paper on the anniversary.  And that's about it.  No wearing of mourning clothes, no black arm bands, no black-edged stationery or window draperies, no set graduated schedule for returning to regular activites.  We are certainly free from these conventions, yes, but what do we have instead?  We have to make up our own mourning rituals if we want them.

And I do want them.  But not in a morbid way.  You know how when a couple gets engaged or has a baby, they want everyone to know how they feel about it?  I just want to be able to let people know, in a non-alarming, non-intrusive, non-"oh crap, here she comes" kind of way, that I was crazy about Rams, that my entire life is inside-outed because he isn't here, that in many ways the world is a different place without him. So I make up my own expressions of grief as I go along.  Some of them I've talked about in other posts, some I haven't, some I don't talk about because they are just personal and talking about them steals away their secret significance.  But these are some of the ways that I show, to myself or to others, what's going on inside: listening to certain songs, reading old letters, looking at pictures.  Talking with people who knew him.  Drinking coffee, which I only kind of like, in places that I associate with him.  Wearing his wedding ring on a chain around my neck, wearing his T-shirts around the house.  Writing, both publicly (hello, blogworld) and privately (hello, journal and snail mail and email).  Choosing to do some activities that I might normally not do, because Ramsy was an adventurer, and why not be just a little more adventurous than I am inclined to be?  Trying art journaling.  Making experiments with piano techniques.  Being a little bit braver in certain conversations.  Telling people what I appreciate about them.  I think of him as I deliberately behave just a little differently.

And here's what I did this evening: took a cool hardcover notebook that was given to me as a gift, and experimented with decorating its pages in a bunch of different ways.  It's going to go in a plastic container, along with some pens and pencil crayons, that will stay at Ramsy's grave so people can write in it or draw or just read it when they visit.  It was incredibly relaxing to sit on my floor and putter with my arty-type stuff, and I got to put some of the stuff in my head onto the pages in another way besides just writing it down.  Maybe some visitors will get to do that too.  (I know there's a pretty good chance it will be stolen and/or vandalized sooner or later- but I'm going to put it there anyway.  And if it disappears- oh well!)

What I've found in the last couple of months is that when I can come up with mourning rituals, the panicky feelings settle down.  My outside cannot always match my inside- that's just how it is.  I can't go around looking like a hag all the time.  I can't sit on a chair and cry when my kids need to be fed and supervised and driven to lessons.  I can't scream and yell in public or refuse to turn the pages of my calendar as the months go by.  (Well, ok, I guess I could technically do all these things, but it wouldn't work out very well in the long run...)  But I can make other ways to say what I need to say.