Joyanna Adams

Nobody Needs YOUR Opinion.

Okay, I am asking my reades to put in your two cents on this one…It’s just a theory I have formed about grieving.

Yesterday, my favorite parakeet died…his name was Lima.

I KNEW he was on his last days. I have five other parakeets and he was the oldest, and all my birds sleep in the same room with me. I love my birds. Anyway, I cried, and cried, and cried and cried and I held his little warm body in my hands until he got stiff.

I say this because you would have thought I’d lost a member of the family.

But, here’s my theory. I woke up grieving. I thought about my life, how I would never see my only son ever again, or my brother, and my husband and I have grown apart…so I was crazy in grief already, but not crying. Just trying to figure out what I did wrong to make everyone go away.

So, when I found my poor little man on the bottom of the cage, I lost it.

Now, as some of you know, I took care of both my parents. They had massive strokes, and were bedrideen for years. I was their caretaker. It was a hard job. Five years of my life. And when they died, I really didn’t cry much. Why? Because I HAD to stay strong…day after day. Then one day, years later, a dog I had bought died when only three years old. Again, I went into sobbig hysterics.

The tears came pouring out…a river of tears and pain…basically, I had held the grief of my mother and father dying inside for all those years.

Men do the same thing. I read about a man who lost his first child. His wife was grieving terribly. But he couldn’t do it. He HAD to work, and her not understanding WHY he couldn’t stop and grieve put a wedge between them. A man’s brain is WIRED differenent If they cry for too long, they can’t recover.

It’s a fact: Male and female brains, are simply wired different.

Tonight I saw my husband sob, like I’ve never seen. I thought it was about me, but then I realized it was more about how he has worked all his life, his family treated him like shit, and it just all came out.

Sometimes, when you see somebody crying uncontrollably, there is more than just that one death that is the reason. People hold grief inside. They have to in order to function. And then…usually a pet death’s, because pets love us unconditionally, bring forth all that we been hiding from ourselves.

I had a friend come to my aid yesterday. His comfort was quick, and logical. “You need to bury him.” In other words…stop crying and remember death is a part of life. It was what I needed to hear. But he was there for me.

And that’s how I now deal with grief now. I put on the saddest music I can find, I cry REALLY hard, and then, within an hour or a good nights’ sleep, I force myself to go on, and live life.

It works.

So my question to my readers is: What do you think of my theory? Do people hold grief in for years and then something else sets off all the sorrow inside, that you have been holding to forever?

So are funerals important to get people to grieve and move on? By the way, I hate funerals.

My little Lima is now downstairs in the freezer, all wrapped up. I have a bird graveyard in my backyard for all those that I loved and lost, and even some I found dead on the ground. To me, they are the smallest of joy..and I just love them. They are God’s little joyful gifts of song.

They mate, they love, they feed their babies…and they quack. What’s not to love? Lima, I will miss you…because for years you kept me from feeling the horrible loss of my son, and for that I thank you.

And to my friend who was there for me yesterday? Give your mother a big kiss for me, because she obviously raised a good man, and I thank him again for his kindness in my hour of sorrow.

THAT is a good and loving man, rare, and great. Anyway…

Readers? What say you?

October 16, 2024 - Posted by Joyanna Adams | Uncategorized | death, grief, healing, loss, mental-health