DEATH -- COPING IS INDIVIDUAL

She's my friend, but I've never met her in person.  I follow her blog and admire her character and her ability as a writer.

Greta Christina just lost her father with whom she had not been very close.  Nevertheless, his death has plunged her into intense grief which she narrates on her blog, through which we, her friends, try to help with our comments.  I just posted this one.

"Don’t know if I’m normal or abnormal, but I didn’t go through intense grief when either of my parents died. I expected it. They both had lived into their mid and late nineties and life was not treating them well. It was more of a relief than grief. Of course, I miss them being here. Yet, not an overwhelming feeling of loss.

My uncle died after a long life which was ended by lukemia. The doctors tried to keep him alive with blood transfusions, but he was so miserable he just begged “let me go.” They did. He went. He’s gone. The world goes on.

One day, I’ll go. Some will grieve, but I hope not too deeply because I’ll be better off without the life that is becoming more of a struggle and disappointment every day. I’m a shadow of the man I was just a short time ago.

So, don’t worry about your feelings. Let them play out and do what you have to do to cope in your own individual way. Your feelings and reactions are just you. There’s no right or wrong about them. We, of all people, should not feel guilty about how we feel. After all, no one has any right to pass judgment on how we feel or how we cope. It’s really none of their business."

That's exactly how I feel on the subject.  This concept of having to do certain things and feel certain ways so others, and especially some sky fairy "god," will approve of us is just plain nonsense. 

I really don't know oftentimes why I think and feel the way I do.  Why can I put things like my youngest son abandoning the family and not communicating with any of us for over 5 years now in the back of my mind without it tying me up in emotional knots?  It just doesn't.  Does that make me a hard-hearted, uncaring person? 

I don't think so. 

I'm just pragmatic and analytical enough to know there is nothing I can do at the moment to change the situation and it would be a waste of time and emotional energy to let it consume me.  I think he will eventually come down off whatever "high horse" he is riding and seek to resume contact with me and his brother and sisters.  I've tried to locate him.  I even sent a letter to an old address, but he's no longer there.  I can't afford to hire an investigator to locate him.  So, I've concluded that I just have to wait it out and not worry about what anyone else might think about the situation. 

I don't, and won't, let it consume me.  I'm not going to tear myself apart emotionally worrying about what I could have perhaps done better to avoid the situation. 

Guilt parties are not for me.  They are another tool theists use to keep people feeling guilty and unworthy so they have to grovel before an imaginary god, and it always involves them bowing and scraping -- especially paying -- through those theists as "god's" representatives.  The catholics have that one down to perfection, but protestants are pretty damn good at it too.

How I react to life and it's problems and events is just me.  It reflects the sum total of what I have experienced and learned, along with the tendencies I inherited through the crapshoot of genetics. 

I am who I am. 

I think what I think. 

I feel what I feel.

That's just going to have to be good enough.

Anybody who wants to judge it can just go take a hike.