A Sense of Doubt blog post #3692 - SEVEN Months and The Orphaned Adult By Alexander Levy

Me and Dad Tigers Opening Day April 2016

Today is also the first official and domestic day of Baseball season, which is one of the things that brings me the most joy and comfort in my life. Welcome back Baseball. Thanks Dad for introducing me to Baseball.

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3692 - SEVEN Months and The Orphaned Adult By Alexander Levy

Am I going to commemorate each month passed since Dad died and each significant number (hundreds, fifties)?

For at least this first year, yes, almost certainly.


Here's what I have done so far:

After a single month, I posted many items around September 28th for what I posted past years on August 28th, but on September  28th itself, I had to post this:

Saturday, September 28, 2024

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3511 - THE DETROIT TIGERS CLINCH A WILD CARD SPOT!!!

Not specifically about the one month since Dad died, but Dad would appreciate the post. After all, I had the Cubs game on my phone in his final hours. Baseball comforts me.

The next two months, though, I did directly acknowledge Dad's death anniversary with the November one falling on Thanksgiving.

Monday, October 28, 2024

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3540 - 60 DAYS since Dad left and MUSIC MONDAY - "DownPressor Man"

Thursday, November 28, 2024

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3572 - THANKSGIVING 2024 - DAD: Three Months Ago - Reprints and Happy Wishes

But in December, I just posted this fun post, though the next two, especially January, acknowledge Dad as well as the 180 and 200 days posts.

Saturday, December 28, 2024

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3602 - Various Images - Christmas Counseling Humor and More

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3633 - FIVE MONTHS LATER (and SoD Reprint of #3084 from 2023)

Friday, February 28, 2025

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3664 - SoD Reprint of #1470 from 2019 - 1972 Throwback

It seems to me that as the months have passed the incredulity I experience in reflecting on my Dad being GONE compels me to write about it and publish those thoughts on the month anniversary and some of the other numbers that feel significant.

I chose to wait and write this post the day AFTER the twenty-eighth, in part to digest my feelings, but also to do some things just for me on the day. Though I had two appointments, one being at the dentist, I had lunch at Thai Orchid, which is the first place I ate when I moved here and I ate there with my Dad, Liesel, and the kids. I ordered the same thing I had then, eight years ago (another eight!!). I read poetry and made some notes for poems. It felt good to do that.

Today, in my Forgotten English page-a-day calendar, the word is "apologue," which is a moral fable that uses a fiction to convey useful truths, such as by Aesop. The word originates in Greek with apologos, which means "fable."

The calendar also shares stories or some historical fact that may or may not be related to day's word (see below).

The story of King Tantalus struck a chord.

I feel tantalized by a thing I cannot have: my parents.

I lived for 62 years with parents in my life, and for 53 years with both of them.

And now, they are gone. 

And yet, they linger, like that water or that ripe, low-hanging fruit teasing Tantalus but forever unattainable.

In my last therapy appointment, I talked with my therapist about having a difficult time accepting the death of my parents, especially my Dad's death.

I can't remember exactly what he asked me, but I think it was something like "what would accepting it look like for you?"

I talked about how the culture at large expects grieving people to "get over it" and to "move on."

No one wants to hear about someone's grief after a few weeks have passed. Few ask about it, especially when someone is grieving an elderly parent, someone whose time it was to shuffle off the mortal coil.

It seems to me that these things are what "acceptance" is, but I don't think I will EVER "get over it," and what is "moving on" anyway? 

In grieving my Mom's death, I wrote HEY MOM for three years every day, but the majority of those posts were not about grief at all; they were about life, living, my life, my living.

Likewise, a month to the day after Dad died I posted about the Detroit Tigers and did not mention my Dad at all. Granted, all around that post were the reprints of past August 28th posts that were all acknowledging how the 28th, especially August 28th, was a significant date that I would never see the same way ever again.

I announced Dad's death on the 28th of August and then went into reprint mode of posts with old family photos and other relevant content. I finally came out of reprint mode September 10th with a round up of the DNC, which happened before Dad died and that I cried all the way through. I posted his obituary, finally, on September 13th, but I was getting back to normal with a mix of posts directly related to Dad and his death, like this one (a favorite):

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3500 - Ellory loves Grandpa -- Reprint of Hey Mom #779 - Havre, Montana - Trip West Day Four

Oh wow... scrolling through that post I just came across this picture.

Dad was wearing that shirt above when he died, very close to seven years later (and this post is about seven months -- more number connections). This picture above was taken August 24, 2017. The 24th...  8/24... more eights!!

My point being that after a month, I was no longer posting all the time about my Dad dying. The posts about my life and interests far out number those related to Dad's death.

And now, seven months later, that's definitely true. I did just write 200th day since he died, which was twelve days ago, and before that I acknowledged 180 days since. But generally, posts are what the blog posts have always been about: music, comics, science, writing, poetry, politics (state of the hate nation), teaching, and so on.

Since my therapy appointment two weeks ago, I started reading a book called The Orphaned Adult by Alexander Levy.

I plan to take this book to my next appointment on Monday.

Circling back to this idea of "getting over it" or "moving on," I watched my mother NEVER get over the death of her mother from before I was born. She still cried about it even a few years before her own death. She cried more after the meningitis, as that experience, the coma, the paralysis, made all of us so much more emotional, especially her.

But she never got over her Mom's death.

Or her brother Wilbur.

She seemed less traumatized by her father's death, but she did grieve him.

I don't think my Dad really "got over" the death of his parents either.

In  The Orphaned Adult, on page 38, Alexander Levy makes clear that the grieving DO NOT NEED TO GET OVER IT (the deaths of parents). "Grief is something you get through, and if you let it get through you as well, you will eventually find that you have room in yourself to contain it" (Levy, 38).

I really liked this quote as it turned over my own thinking and feeling about grief, kind of like I had been living in upside down world, and now I can at least see into if not live in right-side up world.

I understood that grief is something we "get through," but I had never conceived of it as something that we let "get through us."

What does that mean? How do I let grief get through me? Does that mean it exits? Or is it more like channeling?

Because what I learned from losing my Mom is that grief feels more like a feedback loop, much like our own annual seasons. There are fallow times. There's hibernation. And then there's awakening and new growth, a flare up, over-growth, until the next time of fallow fields and cave hibernations.

Levy goes on to write that "when you come out the other side of this terrible time, without needing to understand how it happened any more than you need to understand how you digest food and distribute nutrients throughout your body in order to be well fed, you will find that you are able to face, and conduct, your life in a new way" (Levy, 38). 

I already feel like I am facing and conducting my life in a new way, and in a way that is growing and evolving. I am not sure how to explain this new way as it's more of a feeling, an intuition, than something that is definable. I am not even sure what it is or how it works yet.

But I am also still in the feedback loop. I am still experiencing anger at my Dad for dying. I am still experiencing disbelief that he's gone. I think I have passed through the disbelief that my mother is gone when I think of her alone, but when I consider her with Dad, the fact that I am an orphan, I feel a strong urge to dismiss the reality of the situation, as I told my therapist, like a child stamping his feet and raging against the way things are, the way he does not wish them to be.

I have been depressed and have been trying to fight that with self-care.

I have been bargaining, weighing myself down with recriminations and regrets: had I only done more, had I flown sooner to Michigan, had Dad not contracted Covid, etc. etc.

I miss my parents every day.

I think about them every day.

Levy says that there will be a time when I do not think about them every day, or at least do not feel the grief every day. I did experience that with my Mom.

Part of what keeps me thinking of them is our new scrolling photo frame that keeps showing me pictures of them even when I am not looking at shelves where I have other, non-digital ones.

I have more to process about this grief and this book in particular in future posts. Stay tuned.

This is a good chunk for today.

Thanks for tuning in.

Reference

Levy, Alexander. The Orphaned Adult: Understanding And Coping With Grief And Change After The Death Of Our Parents. Hachette Books. Kindle Edition. Balance Pub. 2000. ISBN: 978-0738203614

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2503.28 - 13:40

(PUBLISHED today at 13:40 for Dad)

- Days ago: MOM = 3557 days ago & DAD = 212 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.