This is a place for old members to come and share how their healing journeys have progressed.
Its also a place for those members to reconnect and share their experiences.
VAC wrote: ↑Tue Jun 26, 2018 7:37 am
Was able to go outside a few days ago and so some light work in the yard....it was Heaven.
Peace and Healing to each one of you and wisdom for each step you must take on your journey.
VAC
Dear VAC,
Sending you hope and wishes for a full and increasingly more active life. Thank you for being here at isurvive as a steady voice as one of us on the healing journey. It sounds like you are now healing body as well as spirit. Me too.
VAC,
I didn't know there was something called aphasia. I think I have a similar problem. For me, there are ideas and concepts that mull around in my mind but I can't seem to formulate the words for them. I think this is called slow processing.
Once, and if, they come, I can write them a lot easier than I say them. I'm just not a verbal person in general. I wasn't allowed to speak any of my thoughts or feelings as a child. "Seen and not heard" was the rule.
Thank you for sharing that part of yourself.
I'm sorry for the loss of a dear friend. It must hurt a great deal. Is it the same pain as the abandonment of childhood?
I haven't lost a friend that was close to me, but I have had to say goodbye to many people I was close to. Sometimes, I wasn't given the chance to at least do that. I haven't had a close friend for many years.
I hope the wound of loss will lighten soon. Sending comfort and love~~~
I also want to say thank you for sharing the thought on those people who have given up part of their lives to "love the unlovely". I believe my husband is one of those people. I tell him how grateful I am for staying by my side for 20+ years, but I didn't realize that he has had to suffer as well. I will express my gratefulness to him for specifically that reason, now.
Happy to hear that you were able to be in a place outside where you could feel heaven and happiness.
One of the greatest gifts, in my opinion, is to help walk someone all the way Home.
Everyone wants to be near when a baby is born; almost no one wants to hold the hand of someone who is dying.
My mom was a career nurse who also cared for people in our home; I grew up around this. She taught me how to take care of the sick.
Losing someone you love dearly has a stunning impact, to watch them breath their last breath, or to be on the phone. I never used to cry.
Now as an older man, I weep freely, and I believe it is healing to my heart. Pride is something not much use in life when it is a defense mechanism and/or arrogance gone to seed. I went to a restaurant today I realized I once haunted over 40 years ago....
,,,,,,the food was good, the atmosphere interesting, sadly, younger people doing the same dumb things I did...
Losing someone close to you is layered in diff ways. Providing end of life care is truly a labor of love if it is done right, with compassion and total service to someone at their most vulnerable.
I have held their hands...whole diff arena.
I have been on the phone at the point of death.
I have been close to the situation.
I have heard about the death of someone I cared for.
My faith gives me confidence I will see them again.
I have faced death myself a number of times....honestly my biggest concern was it was not the right time, and I did not want to leave my family behind.
People rarely die the way they do on the movies....often, death seems anticlimatic, considering the suffering some endure up to the end. I can't relate losing someone I love to the trauma of childhood abuse, but it is a clever analogy.
Usually the day one dies, bloodpressure and respiration starts to slow down in the afternoon....it gets lower and slower. Oddly, many people die on or near midnight. Unless they are hooked up to machines, there is one last deep breath and exhalation. I believe this is the eternal spirit leaving the body.
It is very sobering, and honestly awe inspiring. I have spent an hour just watching someone's body after they die, and realizing no one is at home. I provided end of life care for my primary abuser, my dad. I had decided I would slap him off the bed I had laid accross him, holding him down while he screamed for six days....
......I did not. He was a very unhappy man all my life. I remember watching him those days, mostly sleepless....he suffered so terribly. After his death, I took a washcloth and washed his face and hands. I wanted to wash away the pain and fear from him, to smooth his face. It was good to see him relaxed.
.....I was very sad we never had a good relationship; he was always afraid of me and a great agent of sabotage in my life as well, and I never knew why until I remembered everything a few months before he died.
....I combed his hair. Then I sat and watched him, and thought of everything I could remember good and bad. He tried to love the son he helped destroy, but he could not.
....I sat for over an hour watching the body of my father, watching his face, knowing I deeply loved him despite his actions, wondering where he was now and what had become of him. The son he did not want walked him all the way Home.
When I was satisfied, I went out and told the nursing staff he was dead. They were shocked he had died and I had not told them or freaked: the days before had been truly terrible. Whatever he did to me and my family I would not wish that on him.
When he was dying, I told him I loved him, and it was over. I would have given him anything to relieve his suffering.
Wolf Spirit, don't mean to heavy you out, but death is as real as life. I know i will live for many years yet, but I see it coming and deal with it all the time. Those left behind sometimes mourn for years. It changes who you are for the rest of your life.
This may sound odd to you, but I pray about my own death, when my days are finished here. I want those left behind to remember me kindly. I do not want them to suffer so.
VAC,
I cried when I read your post. Both times.
I think it is because your words touched a part of me that I just can't face, which is reconciliation.
I don't know if that's what happened with you, but I inferred it when I read how you took care of your father while he passed away.
So much compassion.
Side note: Have you seen the movie, The Shack?
I used to be afraid of death when I was in my 20s. As a child, I wished for death. The last 5 of 6 years I have planned my own death, but my children have kept me here.
Lately, with all of the suicide awareness and treatment in the media, I am always taken aback by the people who say, Suicide is final. There's no coming back.
To which I reply, That's the point. Why would the person want to come back to what they were living?
I think those people have not faced the inner darkness that is already death without the heart stopping or the brain circuit-less.
Spending time with loved ones who are dying must be so conflicting, but I can see how it would be okay with you as you are a compassionate person and can comfort them. You can be there for them. Even the ones who have hurt you so deeply.
Thank you again for sharing stories from your life; they provide a lot of reflection time for me.
I fought the seduction of suicide from age 4 until my later 30's...it was real, but an alien entity that sought my destruction through the promise of peace....I hate it.
Too many dear souls, even a famliy member. I understand the pull and false promise of suicide, but nothing ends: we are eternal beings.
I am sorry you struggle. I had two plans, both designed to cause pain to those who would find my body. I do not mean to sound harsh, but I have been to too many funerals of suicides and seen the wounded mourning of those left behind and to hear them sob, "I would have done anything if I had known!"
As far as me making peace with my dad, that is ongoing in my heart even though he passed about 15 years ago.....he was evil, driven, scarred, broken, frantic, impossible. I still loved and do love my dad today.
That does not diminish the still unfolding horror of the things he did not only to me but to my children, I was so broken to learn. I feel sorry for him.
I have forgiven him.
Yes I read the book and watched the movie....very good and timely when I did.
Wolf Spirit, this may seem like semantics, but I believe there is a difference between reconciliation and forgiveness.
When you forgive someone, you release them from the debt of their actions towards and against you.
When you reconcile with someone they are back in your life and good graces, a part of your life.
I can forgive someone and be at peace about it without trusting them not to bite....that comes if they want it and act like it.
I have a professional acquaintance of decades, since we were young men. He is at the top of his game. He has opened doors for me. In over thirty years I have yet to be alone with him when he did not trash me. I have forgiven him; I will never be alone with him again.
Honestly my reasons for taking care of my dad was two-fold. One, is that he expended a lot of energy and money to make sure I was a stranger to him; he surrounded himself with thieves in his last days, and placed himself in their care: they stays as long as he could sign checks and talk to attorneys.
When he was incapacitated they disappeared.
I was there, and let him know it when he asked where they were.
I also wanted him to be safe.
I also was in total control of the last days of his life.
The main reason I had to and have to forgive him is for my own healing and sanity. I can't drink poison and expect to get well. My dad was a monster. My dad was a mentor. My dad gave his life away to others and took life away from mother and from me, and my family. I had grown men come to me and weep after he died and tell me he was the only father they had ever known.
People came to me telling me how wonderful he was, his generosity, his care.
I am glad others thought well of him.
So what am I to do with this dad of mine, this dead dad of mine? Hate I have always known, hate and twisted love. He is the only man I ever pointed a gun at. He is the only man I ever threatened to kill. He lived in terror of me.
I blackmailed him more than once, not even remembering what he had done to me, but knowing enough of his darkside he did not want me to tell. I was a difficult teenager to say the least: damaged goods, angry, retaliatory broken hellion.
My dad threw me over several cliffs emotionally while he lived, but the worst came after he died.
Yes, I forgave, I forgive, I will forgive.
For my own sake.
