Grieving here, grieving there…

OK, two quick grieving stories.

Story #1: I was traveling on an airplane for business and sat next to a fellow who was wearing a yellow Livestrong bracelet and a similar purple bracelet. It took the entire flight for me to finally ask him why he wore the bracelets - "did he know someone who had been impacted by cancer". He said he had been cured of prostate cancer (the purple bracelet) and his son-in-law had been cured of another type of cancer. Try as I might I couldn't bring myself to tell him about Robin. The words went round-and-round in my head for a few minutes and then I just closed my eyes, leaned back in the seat, relaxed, and had those hot steamy tears start running down my cheeks. Geez - I thought I'd been getting pretty good about being able to talk about this! Sometimes the whole story comes out just matter-of-factly, sometimes not at all. It's usually easiest if the person didn't know Robin at all, and easier still to talk about it if the person has had a cancer touch someone in their lives.

Maybe the difference was that this fellow had been a patient? I guess up until now when I've met someone whose life has been touched by cancer it's been that they knew someone "in their lives" - but they weren't the patient. Does it matter somehow in my head that the person I'm talking to has actually had cancer themselves? I don't know if I felt that my story might unnerve him, or if somehow I didn't think Robin's story compared to his (after all he's alive…). Maybe there is some other meaning which hasn't occurred to me yet…

Anyway, one big difference these days is that I can still have the tears, but I don’t have roller coaster emotions. Now it's just something that happens…


Story #2: Our corporate culture while on business travel is such that when the business day ends if there's a group of travelers returning to one hotel, they'll often agree to "meet in the lobby in an hour to go to dinner". This gives everyone time to go back to their room, call home to check in with the family, change their clothes if desired, maybe check some e-mails and wind down a little before dinner. So the first night on travel our group gets back to the hotel, we make plans to meet, and I walk into my hotel room. Then the grieving sensation hits as I think "it's time to call home!" and then I realize "there's no one at home to talk to!". It really caught me off guard that these thoughts would appear in my head. It didn't last long. I changed my clothes and went to meet a coworker at the hotel bar where I talked to her about what had happened. Thank goodness I have such wonderful support all around!

The next night when I got back to my hotel room I called a family member. The third night I got back to my hotel room I didn't call anyone. I just took time to relax before dinner.

After writing these two brief stories it did occur to me that I no longer have the "three days up, three days down" which I was feeling a month ago. I've begun to settle down into my new world and things are looking OK.