Moments with Mary

There is this real phenomenon after someone has had an amputation from losing a part of their body that they will develop phantom pain.  The pain feels like a searing deep pain happening where the missing body part once existed.  The pain is very real and its cause is the result of loss.  After someone you love dies, you will experience grief phantom pain because that part of you that holds your loved one’s physical presence is no longer there.  The pain can be mild to severe and can last for hours, day, months, years or longer.  Like a loss of limb, you are now cut off from your loved one.   Grief phantom pain occurs because our brain hasn’t yet made the connections that physically, emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically a real part of us is missing…our loved one.   Grief Phantom pain is relieved with time.  Our brain will need time to adjust to what was once there, so easily a part of our lives, changed by the ending of the life...

Inside every single day during the grief process, there will be moments of complete frustration.  Being frustrated is that feeling of being upset or annoyed, especially because of the inability to change or achieve something.  Expect frustration because you can count on being frustrated.    Since there is no ability to change the circumstances of the death of your loved one, it’s more a matter of trying to learn to live without them.  Learning anything new takes time.  Add in the lack of control over the circumstances which oftentimes pervade initiative so the ability to achieve anything is difficult.  Listlessness, sadness and depression can also override momentum to accomplish anything.  Don’t be alarmed if little is accomplished, especially in the first six months following the funeral.  Two major reasons why this is happening.  First, realizing the impact of the loss leaves us lost.  Second, trying to grasp your new reality is t...

When we become aware our loved one has died, we feel a stunned disbelief of this reality.  We don’t want to believe it.  We can’t believe it.  Eventually we are forced and have no choice other than to believe it.  During the disbelief, we get a little bit of time to absorb the reality.  We enter two different planes of awareness.  One plane is our minds go blank and everything seems surreal.  This can’t be happening.  It isn’t happening.  We can’t yet grasp and don’t want to deal with what is happening.  The other plane is pain.  Our emotions begin to realize the enormity of our loss.  The loss starts off as tingly arrows of numbing pain and soon grows into real heartfelt shattering pain.  We can actually feel that pain inside our hearts as we emotionally split in two.   One side of our hearts is devastated by the loss of what life could, would, or should have been with our loved one.  The other side of our ...