"DEATH CRACKS US OPEN"

I have posted before that this site reminds me of a quilt…made up of so many threads which join together to provide some comfort for eachl of us as we try to make sense of an existence without the physical presence of our loved ones. This afternoon, on another thread, Romy mentioned to Johnswife about a gentleman called Tom Zuba who has suffered tragic losses in his life; intrigued and always hopeful of any extra support, I have spent the last hour researching him on the web and have been both amazed and uplifted by what I have read. The following is a copy of an article written by this gentleman…I am posting it here in the hope that it will help fellow grievers wherever they may be on their personal path:

Death Cracks Us Open
I believe that the death of someone we love cracks us open. I believe it’s supposed to.
Death shatters us. It breaks us into a million tiny pieces. And as the minutes turn to hours, and the hours turn to days, the days to weeks, the weeks to months, and somehow, someway, the months to years, we slowly hunt for the shattered pieces of our self.
Some of the found pieces we reclaim realizing, with relief and amazement, that they still fit. We need them. Try as we may, though, at times with much sadness and disbelief, we come to accept the new truth that some of the old pieces no longer fit. Those pieces no longer serve us. We must discard them. And remarkably, amazingly, along the way, from time to time, we discover new pieces. Sweet, new, wonderful pieces that seem to make the new us more of who we are now. More of who we are becoming.
And along the way we dare to ask the questions. We have to.
Is there a God? If there is, what is he? Is he even a he? Perhaps he’s really a she, or an it, or maybe a they? And if we decide that there is a God, we need to know what he/she/it/they had to do with the death of the person that we love so much.
And we ask about prayer.? Does it change the outcome? Can the right prayer, said at the right time in the right way by the right number of people…change the mind of God? If I had said the right prayer in the right way would the person I love still be alive?
And what happens when we die? What really happens? Do we continue to exist? Is there a part of us that’s eternal? Or is this all there is?
And heaven? Is there a heaven? If so, where is it? Is the person I love that has died in heaven? Is she aware of me? Can he communicate with me? Can I communicate with her?
I think it’s in the asking and the answering of some of life’s fundamental questions that we can learn to make peace with our new life. But I think that the process must be a gentle one. We ask. We answer. And like trying on a new shirt or a new dress, the answer we come up with may fit for a while…as we continue to find the tiny pieces of our shattered self.
And then the day comes when the answer that served us so well…no longer rings true. And there’s a newer answer rising up, to the tough question we dared to ask our self. And when we try on the newer answer, we feel a new level of peace. It fits better. As we learn to live our life…with our newly emerging new self.
Death cracks us open. It’s supposed to.

If this has resonated with you, please google his name…there is much more which might be of use/comfort.
Take care everyone x

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Thank you AG. That made interesting reading. I shall look him up. :kissing_heart:

Hi. AM. Good to hear from you again. Very prophetic. Kahlil Gibran in his book ‘The Prophet’ said:
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. And would you watch with serenity through the winters of your grief”.
Yes, death does crack us open. In heaven and earth there is a reason for everything. We may not know or see the reason, but because we don’t have the insight does not mean it’s not there. ‘The shattered self’. Yes, we are in bits. The expression’ pull yourself together’, although mostly said in a hurtful way, has something going for it. Like a jigsaw puzzle the ‘bits’ do come together and eventually the whole picture emerges. The reasons become clear. As St. Paul said, ‘Now we see through a glass darkly, but later face to face’. In our grief we do see most things ‘darkly’. But come the day when we see clearly, we may be very surprised at the reasons for pain. The last paragraph of your quote rings so true to me. ‘And when the day comes when the answer that served us so well…no longer rings true’. That’s it. The answers we have now don’t fit together. But eventually, in time, the bits do come together to form a whole. The word ‘whole’ has its root in ‘Holy’ and ‘Holistic’. If, in the process of being ‘cracked open’ we reveal parts of ourselves that we never knew existed then we have made a major step forward. If we learn, through our pain, the real meaning of love, then it’s never lost even in bereavement.
Thanks for that AG. Blessings and take care.

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Thank you I have not yet plucked up the courage to look into Romy’s suggestions. I am afraid it might be too early to explore my feelings in depth. At the moment they are right out in the open and consist of periods of screaming and crying followed by a strange calm. Lots of unpleasant dreams and what is the purpose of that? I love your idea of the quilt it is comforting. I am so glad admin managed the situation with care earlier in the week and I can benefit from the wise words of some lovely people on here. :two_hearts:

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Hi Johns wife. That’s fine. Is there a hurry? The understanding only comes when we begin to reason again, and it will happen. Your ups and downs are perfectly normal in the circumstance. We have all been there or are there. The ebb and flow of emotions can be disturbing and we may think we are going crazy. WE ARE NOT!! The trauma which we have had, does not go away just like that. I know, so many don’t like to hear it, but it is all about time. Allowing time to pass without becoming impatient can help a lot. The process of grief is painful and very upsetting. I have found, and it’s my own personal experience, that as the days pass the light does get brighter and I begin to realise there is hope. But it’s been 18 months of hard going. In the beginning I did almost give up any hope of coming out of grief, but I soldiered on. We all do, we have to. What’s the alternative?
Would my wife have wanted me to go on being miserable? No way, so for her sake I do my best. It’s all any of us can do. So called ‘unpleasant dreams’ can so often be telling us something. Perhaps if you write them down and keep a dream journal they may later mean something.
Take care. Blessings.

Thank you Jonathan. Four weeks ago we were in the garden. No wonder we all feel crazy when something so earth shattering happens. The days, weeks and months stretch out before me like a ghastly journey I have to get through. I am trying to think one day at a time. People who have been in my situation explaining there is hope and light gives us newbies something to cling onto.

And there is light and hope, although at the moment it may seem so remote to you. ‘A ghastly journey’. It is a journey we are all on, but it need not be ghastly. It does depend on our temperament and attitude. But it’s far to early for you to even consider such things. We all grieve in our own way and in our own time. No one can force us or do it for us. It takes as long as it takes. We have all been ‘newbies’ on here, that’s why we are able to help. There is no substitute for knowing, and it may be you can help others through this awful experience. Very best wishes to you.

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