A Sense of Doubt blog post #3633 - FIVE MONTHS LATER (and SoD Reprint of #3084 from 2023)I am publishing this post at the time of Dad's death, 1:40 p.m., which happened five months ago today on August 28th, 2024.
Technically, because of the time difference from East Coast (Michigan) to West Coast (PDX), Dad died at 10:40 a.m. my local time, but seeing 10:40 will not be as meaningful to me as 1:40 p.m. or 13:40, so I am making the conversion.
I am sinking in quantum foam.
Now, this minute, I am holding Dad's hand, telling him it's all right, telling him I love him, it's okay to go, as he takes his last breath.
Now, I am here, in my office, listening to David Bowie's Stage, Satchel snoring at my feet, typing these words, searching for meaning.
Today, aloud to students, I read the words "I burn the way money burns," from Anne Sexton's
"The Breast."
Dad stops breathing for a 20 seconds or so and then starts again for another minute or two before he stops for good.
I am drinking water from my Batgirl glass and trying to think of things to write. How I am feeling five months on?
I have the Cubs game streaming on my phone (no sound); I am trying to read a textbook chapter for my theories class; I have to go to the bathroom and tell Dad not to die while I am out of the room; Dad just breathes, mouth open; I didn't even recognize him at first when I came in the room two days before.
Let me repeat that.
I didn't even recognize him at first when I came in the room two days before.
My Dad.
The only parent in my life for the last nine years since my Mom died in 2015.
I am in my office in January, the 28th, why did this happen? Have I made sense of this yet? Can anyone explain this to me?
I feel guilty for feeling relief.
I am dreaming about my parents a lot lately. Both of them. I woke in a sudden start one morning recently sure that my mother was touching my face with one finger, with the swollen joints she had in her last years. It is creepy and not creepy.
For an instant I see her.
I don't want to be sitting here as my father breathes through his last hours.
I would prefer to be anywhere else.
There is nowhere in the world I would rather be.
I am so grateful to be here.
I need to be here.
I need to do this whether he wants me here or not.
He said he didn't want anyone with him, but I know he didn't mean it.
He's grateful I am here.
I am so grateful for my whole life.
It's been five months, and I am relieved that Dad has not been here for what's going on in the world these last five months.
I wish Dad was here and alive.
I am in that room with his roommate muttering on the other side of a curtain. Dad is breathing. I wish he could be talking. I wish I had returned to Michigan sooner so that I could talk to him, before he stopped talking for good.
I tell Dad that staring out into space is like looking at old photographs, looking at snapshots backwards in time.
I don't know why I tell him this.
I try not to talk to so much.
I feel I should talk more.
Should I talk non-stop until he dies?
I tell him I am trying to read homework.
I tell him I have the Cubs game on, though the sound off.
Dad, you did not love Baseball as much as I do, but I need things that comfort me right now.
I am thinking about Watchmen - Chapter Four. I made sure Dad read that book.
It's January. There may be snow soon. I am back home in Kalama. I am still in Kalamazoo in August. I am not either place while being in both places. I stare at the photograph in my hand of Dad. Why are there no photographs of Dad in this post acknowledging that five months has passed? I wish I had more pictures of Dad. I wish I had Dad with me.
I am angry at my Dad for dying.
I feel guilty being angry at my Dad for dying.
I feel abandoned.
I feel protected, sheltered in the arms of a loving embrace, every waking moment, and in so many of my dreams.
I just found out that the girl I took to the senior prom died Sunday:
I am talking to him in August.
I am on the phone with him in July. Possibly our last phone conversation. July 14th. We celebrated Liesel's PMHNP license completion at Margarita Factory in Hazel Dell and she dropped her iPad accidentally between the booth and the wall, and it was a major project to recover it.
I wanted to tell Dad about it. But I am not sure I spoke to him after that. He would have laughed.
One of the last things he said to me was "I don't want to talk about the past; I just want to look forward to the future."
Did I miss the chance to talk to him about the past? The things he remembers as he was an adult at the time, but I was a child?
I am asking him about a photograph of Mom.
I am holding a photograph of him with a Tigers hat I gave him.
I am holding his hand. He's breathing. Is he in pain? He's dying.
I am typing this blog entry. I stop to investigate that my former girlfriend (very briefly) then Laurie Bauer, later Laurie Vanderberg died. My sister had told me about this the other day.
I feel so much loss like a knife on my skin, sharp, but no blood. A white ghost scratch.
I am listening to David Bowie.
"It's a God awful small affair..."
I feel a little like that. It's all LIFE ON MARS.
Chapter Four of Watchmen mostly takes place on Mars.
I am so grateful to have things like David Bowie, comics, puppies, a warm home, family, people I love and whom love me, would I have any of these things if not for my parents?
I like sushi and fruit pie.
Not usually at the same time.
I want my Dad to be proud of me. I am telling him how proud I am of him, so proud to be his son, how great the life he gave me has been, how great he was as a father, he's breathing, he's not saying anything, I think he squeezed my hand ever so softly. I know he can hear me.
I am there.
I am here.
It's been five months.
It's been five minutes.
People will say I have not moved on.
What does that even mean?
What does it mean to move on?
We need to make space for people to express their grief, to talk about it, to write about it, to experience it in their own way, in their own time, at their own pace. Why shut them down? Why shame them for still feeling loss five minutes later, five months later, five years, nine years, five decades later?
Time exists all at once, in this moment.
I am staring at a photograph of my Dad.
I am watching my Dad die while holding his hand.
Don't go.
It's okay to go.
He's still breathing.
It's been five months.
"I burn the way money burns."
Link to original post that I am reprinting below (which also contains a reprint): Matryoshka dolls of reprints!
Saturday, July 29, 2023
A Sense of Doubt blog post #3084 - Gratitude - The Gateway to Grace - THAT ONE THING for 2307.29
As usual, I had something else scheduled for today, and I have delayed that post that needs more work.
I have been practicing gratitude lately, which is in one important way a healing practice after I was passed over for the full-time, tenure track job at work for the second year in a row.
After receiving that news, I was NOT feeling very grateful.
And yet, when I reflect on my life, I am VERY grateful for all the privilege and opportunity I have enjoyed and currently enjoy.
Moving out west was a wonderful change for me that has brought me to the best school for which I have ever worked.
I live in a magical place with beautiful dogs and family.
Last year, my wife and I moved to Kalama, and I am so grateful for this amazing house, this amazing town, and so many things: good food, good friends, Ultimate, good work, sunshine, the river, the mountains, my health, my family's health, and even this blog, and the one or two readers who tune in. Thanks.
Time again for my repeated comments on gratitude that started ten years ago with my t-shirts blog, and content that I have reprinted many times.
Also, I found a good article on gratitude to share along with the Arianna Huffington, which is worthy of being a motto.
Thanks for tuning in!!
Sunday, August 12, 2018
LAST WORD ON THE GRATITUDE THING: I got the idea for the gratitude prayer (meditation, list, incantation, catalogue, rumination, reflection, or whatever you want to call it) from a movie called
The Secret. I am not quite promoting the movie as a "true" exposure of an actual science. In fact, many of the stories in the film are a bit fatuous. However, I like watching it. I showed it to a class (my second viewing) about a month ago, and the idea of the daily gratitude thing struck me. In the movie, one of the interviewees (I forget which one and it's not important) explained how he had a rock in his pocket. At night, he would set it on his dresser with the other contents of his pockets. The next morning, he would retrieve it and remember to list the things for which he was grateful as a daily routine, like a prayer. He had a visitor from South Africa and told the man about his rock and gratitude practice. The man called it a "gratitude rock." After returning to South Africa, he wrote his American friend and asked for some gratitude rocks to be sent to him because one of his children was very sick, and he did not have the money to seek medical care for the child. The interviewee balked at sending "gratitude rocks" because, after all, "they are just rocks," he said. But he found three nice rocks and sent them to his South African friend. Months later, the South African wrote back. The rocks worked! His son was healed and recovered. They paid for his medical treatment by selling a hundred gratitude rocks. People believed in the power of the gratitude rocks.
I found this story inspirational. I do not use a rock, but every day, I make my gratitude list. I send energy into the universe. I focus on the positive and try to limit or dismiss the negative.
I think it's working.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_gratitude_changes_you_and_your_brainHow Gratitude Changes You and Your Brain
New research is starting to explore how gratitude works to improve our mental health.
BY JOSHUA BROWN, JOEL WONG | JUNE 6, 2017
With the rise of managed health care, which emphasizes cost-efficiency and brevity, mental health professionals have had to confront this burning question: How can they help clients derive the greatest possible benefit from treatment in the shortest amount of time?
Recent evidence suggests that a promising approach is to complement psychological counseling with additional activities that are not too taxing for clients but yield high results. In our own research, we have zeroed in on one such activity: the practice of gratitude. Indeed, many studies over the past decade have found that people who consciously count their blessings tend to be happier and less depressed.
The problem is that most research studies on gratitude have been conducted with well-functioning people. Is gratitude beneficial for people who struggle with mental health concerns? And, if so, how?
We set out to address these questions in a recent research study involving nearly 300 adults, mostly college students who were seeking mental health counseling at a university. We recruited these participants just before they began their first session of counseling, and, on average, they reported clinically low levels of mental health at the time. The majority of people seeking counseling services at this university in general struggled with issues related to depression and anxiety.
We randomly assigned our study participants into three groups. Although all three groups received counseling services, the first group was also instructed to write one letter of gratitude to another person each week for three weeks, whereas the second group was asked to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings about negative experiences. The third group did not do any writing activity.
What did we find? Compared with the participants who wrote about negative experiences or only received counseling, those who wrote gratitude letters reported significantly better mental health four weeks and 12 weeks after their writing exercise ended. This suggests that gratitude writing can be beneficial not just for healthy, well-adjusted individuals, but also for those who struggle with mental health concerns. In fact, it seems, practicing gratitude on top of receiving psychological counseling carries greater benefits than counseling alone, even when that gratitude practice is brief.
And that’s not all. When we dug deeper into our results, we found indications of how gratitude might actually work on our minds and bodies. While not definitive, here are four insights from our research suggesting what might be behind gratitude’s psychological benefits.
1. Gratitude unshackles us from toxic emotions
First, by analyzing the words used by participants in each of the two writing groups, we were able to understand the mechanisms behind the mental health benefits of gratitude letter writing. We compared the percentage of positive emotion words, negative emotion words, and “we” words (first-person plural words) that participants used in their writing. Not surprisingly, those in the gratitude writing group used a higher percentage of positive emotion words and “we” words, and a lower proportion of negative emotion words, than those in the other writing group.
However, people who used more positive emotion words and more “we” words in their gratitude letters didn’t necessarily have better mental health later. It was only when people used fewer negative emotion words in their letters that they were significantly more likely to report better mental health. In fact, it was the lack of negative emotion words—not the abundance of positive words—that explained the mental health gap between the gratitude writing group and the other writing group.
Perhaps this suggests that gratitude letter writing produces better mental health by shifting one’s attention away from toxic emotions, such as resentment and envy. When you write about how grateful you are to others and how much other people have blessed your life, it might become considerably harder for you to ruminate on your negative experiences.
2. Gratitude helps even if you don’t share it
We told participants who were assigned to write gratitude letters that they weren’t required to send their letters to their intended recipient. In fact, only 23 percent of participants who wrote gratitude letters sent them. But those who didn’t send their letters enjoyed the benefits of experiencing gratitude nonetheless. (Because the number of people who sent their letters was so small, it was hard for us to determine whether this group’s mental health was better than those who didn’t send their letter.)
This suggests that the mental health benefits of writing gratitude letters are not entirely dependent on actually communicating that gratitude to another person.
So if you’re thinking of writing a letter of gratitude to someone, but you’re unsure whether you want that person to read the letter, we encourage you to write it anyway. You can decide later whether to send it (and we think it’s often a good idea to do so). But the mere act of writing the letter can help you appreciate the people in your life and shift your focus away from negative feelings and thoughts.
3. Gratitude’s benefits take time
It’s important to note that the mental health benefits of gratitude writing in our study did not emerge immediately, but gradually accrued over time. Although the different groups in our study did not differ in mental health levels one week after the end of the writing activities, individuals in the gratitude group reported better mental health than the others four weeks after the writing activities, and this difference in mental health became even larger 12 weeks after the writing activities.
These results are encouraging because many other studies suggest that the mental health benefits of positive activities often decrease rather than increase over time afterward. We don’t really know why this positive snowball effect occurred in our study. Perhaps the gratitude letter writers discussed what they wrote in their letters with their counselors or with others. These conversations may have reinforced the psychological benefits derived from the gratitude writing itself.
For now, the bottom line is this: If you participate in a gratitude writing activity, don’t be too surprised if you don’t feel dramatically better immediately after the writing. Be patient and remember that the benefits of gratitude might take time to kick in.
4. Gratitude has lasting effects on the brain
About three months after the psychotherapy sessions began, we took some of the people who wrote gratitude letters and compared them with those who didn’t do any writing. We wanted to know if their brains were processing information differently.
We used an fMRI scanner to measure brain activity while people from each group did a “pay it forward” task. In that task, the individuals were regularly given a small amount of money by a nice person, called the “benefactor.” This benefactor only asked that they pass the money on to someone if they felt grateful. Our participants then decided how much of the money, if any, to pass on to a worthy cause (and we did in fact donate that money to a local charity).
We wanted to distinguish donations motivated by gratitude from donations driven by other motivations, like feelings of guilt or obligation. So we asked the participants to rate how grateful they felt toward the benefactor, and how much they wanted to help each charitable cause, as well as how guilty they would feel if they didn’t help. We also gave them questionnaires to measure how grateful they are in their lives in general.
We found that across the participants, when people felt more grateful, their brain activity was distinct from brain activity related to guilt and the desire to help a cause. More specifically, we found that when people who are generally more grateful gave more money to a cause, they showed greater neural sensitivity in the medial prefrontal cortex, a brain area associated with learning and decision making. This suggests that people who are more grateful are also more attentive to how they express gratitude.
Most interestingly, when we compared those who wrote the gratitude letters with those who didn’t, the gratitude letter writers showed greater activation in the medial prefrontal cortex when they experienced gratitude in the fMRI scanner. This is striking as this effect was found three months after the letter writing began. This indicates that simply expressing gratitude may have lasting effects on the brain. While not conclusive, this finding suggests that practicing gratitude may help train the brain to be more sensitive to the experience of gratitude down the line, and this could contribute to improved mental health over time.
Though these are just the first steps in what should be a longer research journey, our research so far not only suggests that writing gratitude letters may be helpful for people seeking counseling services but also explains what’s behind gratitude’s psychological benefits. At a time when many mental health professionals are feeling crunched, we hope that this research can point them—and their clients—toward an effective and beneficial tool.
Regardless of whether you’re facing serious psychological challenges, if you have never written a gratitude letter before, we encourage you to try it. Much of our time and energy is spent pursuing things we currently don’t have. Gratitude reverses our priorities to help us appreciate the people and things we do.
About the Authors
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2307.29 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2948 days ago
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2501.28 - 13:40 (actually 10:40)
- Days ago: MOM = 3497 days ago & DAD = 153 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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