Pressure’s Building…

Months back, the church brought a program in called GriefShare. I suggested my wife go; as for me, I was fine. It is not debilitating, I function well, and every three months the church sends me a book on grief. After six funerals I forgot which one started it, maybe Casey’s grandpa’s.

While I was reading it, I was thinking I might need to go to GriefShare when it returns. I still miss the baby we miscarried, remembering every moment of my godson’s passing, the two losses in our deaf church, my wife’s granddad, her friend, my grandma, and recently an old friend from high school. I do and I do not want to go. I t feels like I am admitting a weakness.

Except I am noticing it boil over at times. A friend lost another friend, asking rhetorically ‘what’s going on?’ Tersely, I replied, “Mortality is happening.” It was wrong, and a jerk thing to say. I apologized. At times, I get fatalistic enough I stop and shake my head. I recently went hunting with my dad and brothers for my dad’s birthday. One kept tripping and falling; I was just waiting for him to fall on something pointy. Then that escalated to me wondering if he would fall and accidentally shoot one of us. I occasionally wonder if I will make it home at the end of the day.

I am finding that despite being conditioned to have a ‘stiff, upper lip,’ it is still getting to me. I think that needs to change, maybe go talk and listen to others going in a similar direction. Maybe then, this preoccupation with death will go away.