It is very hard for me to return to the town I grew-up in. Since my parents died, it seems somehow that I’m on the outside looking in. I don’t belong anymore. Everything is so familiar and full of loving memories but I’m disconnected because I have no home or family there. It just makes me want to be with Mom and Dad and I can’t. Too much loss and longing involved in visiting that place so I avoid it.
I don’t know, summerbreeze. Probably that is one of those things you have to decide for yourself. I don’t mean to sound as if I’m dispensing a generic bit of advice. I just mean that I think this is one of those times when “listening to your heart” truly is the best course.
That being said, I feel for you. I can’t imagine anything more painful than losing a loved one, especially your child.
Broken Arrow
I’ve avoided the entire state of Utah for um…nearly 6 years now. I could have gone back this summer, but it still would have hurt too much, so instead I went to Florida for my vacation.
I don’t know if this will help you, but here it is. Second sonnet.
Like Venoma, I have no desire to go back to that place that nearly killed me. I spent four years there and I’m not giving it another day (being 900-ish miles away helps some). I’m not going back to my paternal grandparents’ old home for various reasons (being 450 miles removed from it helps some), nor the school where I went for eleven years (same distance). And it will take serious effort to get me to go to the graves of any of my grandparents (too many unresolved issues).
And Dewey Beach.
Me too! I was wandering through woods that used to be one of my favorite childhood hangouts and found myself coming to a dead stop maybe twenty feet from someone’s backyard. A trail I used to ride my bike down at top speed is now condominiums. It’s so hard to think that those places aren’t waiting for me anymore.
I also am a little leery of going to Chicago again - the last time I was there, I had a massive panic attack, complete with paranoid delusions. I’m sure I’ll eventually return, but the thought makes me uneasy.
Madison, Wisconsin.
Too much sadness over the way my relationship with my ex ended when we lived there. She still does. It’s too bad, because Madison is beautiful and I have many happy memories of living there too.
I wish to never again go to Somalia.
I wish I’d never been there in the first place.
Thanks, [b[AbbySthrnAccent**, and my sympathy.
skeptic_ev, you do seem to understand. I have had people say to me, “I know how you feel, my cat died last year.” I’m sorry, but my son was a young man, newly married, outstanding in his career, full of promise. Not a cat.
Thank you, iampunha for the poem. I have a little book of poems and quotations I was sent. They, and the people who sent them, mean a lot.
I have found, over the years (8 ) that I can offer some consolation to others. I do feel “fireproof”, now. Nothing can be worse. Nothing can hurt me more.
But I find I am a little callous, having survived this. A woman who is an acquaintance of mine told me she couldn’t bear to go to the town where her 16-year-old son had chosen to live with his father. I had to bite my tongue not to tell her to chill. If I could drive to the moon to see my son for 10 seconds, I would do it.
For a long time I swore I’d never return to Rochester, New York. Lotsa bad emotional baggage there.
But, ultimately, business made me go back there. I’ve been back there because of associations with two different jobs I’ve held. In fact, I’ve been back more times than I can remember. I’ve even stopped there while on vacation with Pepper Mill. So apparently nothing is irrevocable.
I wasn’t sure if you were unable to locate it or something, so I figured either you would be too hurt to post it or you didn’t know where to find it. If it had been the former, this post would be replaced with me apologizing a lot. I’m glad that isn’t the case:)
You’re only getting my own opinion and a bit of insight from the several people I’ve helped talk through the grief process.
No, SummerBreeze, I personally don’t think anyone “should” do any particular thing in their progress through living a life that is now missing futures they expected it to contain. -period-
After my sweetie passed, one of the books I was loaned from Hospice was “I’m Grieving as Fast as I Can.” Haven’t read word one from the book, in 5 years, but have read the cover a thousand times or more, and live by it. My own re-gathering of myself into life, after death, is mine.
I personally found it deeply cleansing to go to one particularly beautiful place, a river beach, to throw flowers into the river and let them go, swept onward, like I was letting my Sweetie go … and just sob, deeply and silently until no more sobs would come. But I never took her ashes there … Her ashes went to beautiful places we had shared, together, only because of a ‘random’ conversation we’d had some time before she was ever diagnosed. In the conversation we both agreed we’d want our belove’d to take our ashes to the beautiful places we’d loved most, strictly because it would make our much loved partner have to take themselves to those beautiful places.
I also find I talk about her, now, but I also talk -to- her, often. And sometimes, I can find her in my dreams.
Love always doesn’t mean my life ends when hers does, though I wished for that … “love always” means love all ways, even when our ‘ways’ parted.
Yes. Cape Girardeau, MO, and Arizona.
Audrey, Mr2U is the same way. He hasn’t been to his father’s grave since he was buried over 20 years ago. I can’t go to my Dad’s either (well, it’s in Arizona and I’m not - so that’s one reason) but I just don’t WANT to. (I’m sure my mother will have plenty to say about THAT if and when I go back out there for holidays or anything, which I don’t even want to do.)
2 definite, 1 probably. The Definites: 1.My workstudy worksite. 2.A bar we went to, where I won a doll I gave to a woman, who rebuffed me. Probably: Our city’s Children’s Museum, site of my humiliating rebuffing.
Last November, one of my closest friends was killed by a drunk driver … while I and the rest of my friends sat in a kitchen, drooling over cake, wondering why she hadn’t called to say she’d be late to her own birthday party.
I’m 27, and this was the first time in my life I’d ever lost someone close to me. I still have all four of my grandparents, I knew three of my great-grandparents, and the idea of death, while still real to me, was something that happened to other people.
Meghan was like a sister to me, and nearly ten months later, I still find myself teary at what seems the smallest provocation.
Every year, we take at least one trip to the New York Renaissance Faire. Last weekend was our first trip without Meghan (myself, my best friend, and another friend, who was also in the car with Meg, but survived). We went and got ourselves beer, then went to her favorite spot, drank a toast, took a picture of her up in the sky, and cried like we hadn’t since the funeral. I had been so nervous about going, but once we’d all finished sniffling, we agreed that it was exactly what we had needed to finally put her to rest.
I talk to her constantly–I know she can hear me. She is everywhere I am, and everywhere I’m not, and knowing that she’s up in whatever passes for Heaven surrounded by McDonald’s fries and Funions makes each day just a little easier to get through.
My grandfather’s house since he died. Beautiful house on a lake, he designed it himself (kinda Frank Lloyd Wright) and I just know the current residents have totally fucked it up. He was a very minimalist designer, and I’ll bet they have all these crappy knicknacks and whatnot…it would be too depressing to see.
Ouch, Draelin. I’m sorry. I used to shop for grocerys in the middle of the day. Grocery shopping was a fun thing we always shared together. If I went in mid-day, I could leave my wrap-around sunglasses on, and noone would have to be disturbed by seeing me cry my way through the store. The other alternative was midnight grocerying, then noone sees anything around them, anyway. Glad you and your friends were willing to just cry your eyes out at the Ren. Faire. Good for you!