“Hello Sue Ann, this is the social worker from Hospice. The team met today and the physician in charge of your dad’s case is thinking it might be a good idea to increase the dosage on his anti-depressant medication. He is still losing weight so we’d like to increase the liquid meals as well.”
My heart falls as I dial the phone to return the call.
“Hello Carla, thank you so much for all that you are doing to improve the quality of my dad’s life. I am so grateful for the care he is receiving from the Hospice team. You are amazing. The depression you are seeing has been with my dad for the past seven years. One day he was a happy, loving, effusive man who talked so much we could barely get a word in. And then, shortly after a heart stent procedure, he fell into an abyss.”
The doctors poked and prodded, assessed and reassessed. At one point, after many months of what looked like a deep dark depression, they treated him with a new anti-depressant. The fog lifted, but instead of the old Sam, we now had a rather manic father on our hands. He called me every night, talking incessantly. He would go off to the grocery store and not come home for hours because he made four or five additional stops along the way talking to anyone who would listen. One day we found him getting ready to purchase a new car.
The behaviors my dad exhibited during this period were rather alarming. The doctors told us he was adjusting to the new medication. I stayed on the phone with him night after night, tears streaming down my face, because even though I knew his actions were a little extreme, I just wanted to hear the sound of his voice. I wanted to believe that the joyful father I had known all my life had returned.
It didn’t last. Pretty soon my dad fell back into the abyss. He was no longer the father I knew. He lost more weight. His skin hung from his bones in folds. The spring in his step became a shuffle. My mother’s fear showed up in the voice of pure anguish, “Pick up your feet when you walk.” “Sit up.” “Drink some water.” “Eat, for God’s sake, eat.”
I found myself grieving the death of a man who hadn’t yet passed. I was grieving the death of his spirit, his joie de vivre, the pride that sparkled in his eyes when we talked. I was grieving for all the words I wish I had spoken when his mind was clear and open and waiting to hear from me. “Drop us a line,” he would say when we parted ways after a visit.
Grief has a way of robbing us of our vitality as we struggle to untangle myriad emotions. Pretty soon worry, sadness, and angst take the spring from our step and the light from our eyes.
Call it a spiritual awakening. Call it divine intervention. Call it a course in miracles. Slowly, I pulled myself out of my own abyss and used the steps I teach others in my work as a nourishment counselor. I’m using them again.
Keep the Rhythm: Pay attention to your rhythm around food and in life. Are you making a consistent effort to get enough sleep and to exercise your body and your mind? Are you eating three meals a day that are adequate enough to sustain you? Remember, the body needs a nourishment rhythm that it can count on.
Create a Nourishment Menu: What feeds you? A walk in the woods? An intimate conversation with a wise and wonderful friend? How about music, art, dance, or just curling up with a good book? Do you give yourself permission to have fun? Every time you feel your energy leaking, replenish it with something from your nourishment menu.
Cultivate a Sense of Gratitude: Gratitude is a heart-based emotional state of being. The exercise of activating a positive feeling like gratitude literally shifts your physiology, helping to balance your heart rhythms and nervous system. A gratitude practice can make you healthier, more resilient, and more relaxed. This can be as simple as holding your hand over your heart, closing your eyes, and picturing someone or something you are grateful for.
Color Your Plate: When you find yourself slipping into grey, color your plate. Make a beautiful meal. Give yourself the gift of nourishing food and revel in the meditative process of slicing cucumbers, snapping beans, or roasting red peppers.
Give Yourself Permission to Pause: At least once a day, make an effort to slow down and notice—really notice—one thing of beauty in your surroundings. That could be the color of the leaves on the tree outside your window, the texture of a paperweight on your desk, or how the light casts new and interesting shadows as the sun moves across the sky. Dropping into the present, falling still, loving what is. Adopt the phrase that feels good to you and know that distress lies in the stories we tell ourselves about the past or the future. There is serenity in the present moment. Savor that serenity and make it a practice.
What is your experience of grief and how do you take care of yourself in the face of sadness or struggle?
13 thoughts on “Permission to Pause”
Beautifully written Sue Ann. Thank you for sharing so openly. As you know, I experienced great loss last year and two things carried me through. First, allowing myself to feel the pain. So many women feel the need to put up the strong front and don’t allow themselves that complete sadness. I did feel it wholly and it helped. I read once that if you just allow a painful moment to happen instead of fighting it, it is typically over in 90 seconds! And I found that to be true. Secondly, I adhere to the old airplane adage — affix your own oxygen mask before helping others. Bottom line, if I’m not healthy and stable, I am of no help to anyone. Do what you need to do to feel as good as possible and then tend to others.
Yes, Koren, I know your loss and I so appreciate your insight and all that you have shared with me around the death of your mom. I don’t think we are ever truly prepared for the loss of a loved one but I’m convinced we can live fully and completely in the light they leave behind. They wouldn’t have it any other way. . .
Sue Ann, your voice came through loud and clear. This is a calling for you. If you are going through this, just think what others, who do not have have your knowledge, insight, and persistence are experiencing. Love and awareness of all you have received from your father is very sustaining. When I experienced a huge loss it was and still is the memories which supported me and assured me that all would be OK. I had long talks with my dad, ate his favorite foods (just the smells brought him to the table) and continued his tradition of scalloped oysters and corn to complete a holiday meal. The grief was very real, but the joy of his life with mine was very comforting.
My thoughts are with you as you deal long distance with your father. Knowing that you have placed him in better hands . . . more caring, more patient, more attentative, . . . has to enable you to relax somewhat. You took that other fork in the road, gave it the time needed and for now, you need to be content to know that you have done your best. I applaud you.
Oprah should come calling.
Yes, Judy, I thought about you a lot while I was in Colorado. We share very similar stories around our beloved fathers. And I DO feel called to uplift the care that our loved ones receive as they enter this phase of their lives. I don’t know what form this calling will take, but I am sure I will soon be supporting others on this journey. In many ways I feel as though I have come full circle. My very first “real” job was in a retirement home serving meals to residents in a big old lovely dining room. I still remember Ma & Pa Smith, a love so deep that even at the age of 90 they were winking and twinkling in each other’s company. And Mrs. Benz who ALWAYS asked for a little dab of ice cream and a piece of cheddar cheese when they served apple pie for dessert. They didn’t serve cheese with the pie but I always had a stash of those miniature Kraft cheddar sticks for apple pie days. Yes, I was feeding people back then, too.
Sue Ann,
This was such a moving post. Thank you so much for sharing about your journey with your father. I too am going through similar things, with the home hospice care of my father-in-law (in our home) and the declining health of my father several states away. You are right about greiving before the death as you lose the man you once knew. There is that terrible day when it finally hits you that the man he once was is no longer visable.
Again, thank you.
Hi Ann,
I think I experienced a shift when I found myself no longer grieving the loss of the man he used to be and started falling in love with the very different little man he had become. I still miss my dad. I still see glimpses of the old Sam in some of his mannerisms but, for the most part, I’m working on noticing the endearing way he observes the world around him and how he navigates this new space of his. When he started singing with the Hospice volunteer lat week, I was moved to tears. I don’t ever remember hearing my dad sing though he loved the “sound” of music. Best of luck to you as you navigate these waters and let me know if I can help you in any way.
Ahhhhh… Sue Ann. I am moved, truly, by your story by your wisdom by your truth by your heart.
My life so much richer for knowing you.
Thank you so much for sharing your Self.
Thank you for visiting me here in my blogosphere, Teresa. I am still feeling my way through the content I hope to share in this blog. THIS journey is one that needs to be written because I cannot “contain” all the words. . .
Ohhhh Sue Ann! Sooooooo wonderful to meet you here again in your writing and in your exquisitely soul-crafted space. I feel at home. And so very glad you are back!
And…this piece stirs me deeply. Stirs me into pausing and reflecting… on your grief… on mine… on Grief.
Yours… I feel the tragedy of the moment when who your father was, disappeared. Loss, so great! So sudden. My heart aches in this echoing space. For you. For him.
Grief. My experience. Soooooooo painful. Knocking me to the earth by its force. Cracking me open wide to weeping rivers of tears.
The potency of Grief reflects to me the depths of its initiating power to alter us forever. To open our Hearts as nothing else, and awaken us to our depths.
I love you!
Thank you for following my heart and my muse, Kathleen.
Kathleen, I am so grateful for your deep and powerful presence in this journey. You were sitting beside me through this initiation in ways I have yet to fully understand and integrate. The potency of grief coupled with the gratitude I feel for all the gifts my father bestowed upon me are great, indeed. Thank you for holding my hand and my heart through this process. Love you dearly, my friend.
Dear Sue Ann,
This was such a touching post — your descriptions of your Dad, the anguish of declining clarity, grieving over gradual loss…
My Dad, too, is fading away with myriad health problems — congestive heart failure, pulmonary difficulties, and now cancer. I can hear it in his voice over the phone (four states away) but to top it off, he can’t hear ME. (100% hearing loss as of this year.) Every visit “home” is a flurry of notes exchanged as we try to communicate what’s in our hearts, without knowing if this will be the “last” visit. I want to drink in his every nuance, just like I drank in your precious, nourishing words in this post.
Oh Kim, I hear you. No one can prepare us for the time we have to place our loved ones in the care of others. I was so blessed to have that beautiful stretch of uninterrupted time with my dad. Just watching him breathe gave me a feeling of warmth and filled me with so many fond memories. It was like watching a screen play in his breath. My favorite word during that visit was, “Terrific.” That’s what he would say when I tucked his blanket around him and just honored his desire to sleep. And sleep. And sleep. Love that man. . .