OK, so I'm a librarian, basically a reference librarian, and when something happens I always seek the comfort of the printed word. So first I head to the Web (yes, I consider that the printed word--it appears on your screen in print, doesn't it? This is one of the fundamental problems information providers have with the Internet, there's no way to distinguish good information from bad, it all looks legitimate). So there's a cancersurvivors.org site that lists the stages of grief. Here are Kubler-Ross' original 5:
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

OK, fine, we're all familiar with those. Now we have someone else who's narrowed it down to a precious few:
Numbness--this is supposed to last for several weeks or months
Disorganization--lasts for many months, thank goodness
Reorganization--lasts for several weeks or months. The "developmental task" associated with this phase is to have a complete emotional relationship with the deceased.

So I check this person's book--she's Roberta Temes and the book is Living with an Empty Chair: a guide through grief. It's not a substantial book and really not that good but has some kernals. Like yearning, when we don't accept the loss as permanent. Well, that's just so hard to do because the pain is so great. OK, I've been working on that one and I think I'm in pretty good shape about it. Then we have transitional objects--objects belonging to the deceased that you wear, sleep with, hold, or just look at because they've taken on a special significance. I seem to have skipped this one because I don't have anything of Henry's other than his chain saw, which is in my mud room, leaking oil on the floor and I have only thought about it, not taken it out to look at it. I have four pictures of him that I already had up in my living room that I look at constantly. And there's anger, ambivalence and guilt. Then we come to behaving by habit--this shows up in the middle phase of mourning. Well I'd have to say this is happening to me in the early stages of mourning because how else would I be dragging myself to work every day and sitting at my desk cataloging things and doing interlibrary loan? Then, apparently we review our relationship just before we act crazy. Since I've acted crazy for too much of my life already and have chemical control of that I'm hoping to skip that one. Reviewing my relationship? I've been thinking constantly of how much Henry meant to me and the roles he served for me in my adult life: mentor, guide, humorist--some Rogers cousing called him a diplomat, which you have to laugh at if you remember what he was like when he had contempt for someone or some situation and felt free to express it.

OK, so that's the empty chair. Then we have a collection of works in a book called "Living with grief after sudden loss." Sounds promising, right? Well, some of it's good and some not great. As for the stages, we have "Complicated mourning."
We had a choice between complicated and simple? I pick simple. But for those of you with complicated minds:
1. Recognize the loss (duh) Understand the death
2. React to the separation, experience the pain (again, duh)
3. Recollect and reexperience the deceased and the relationship
4. Relinquish the old attachments of the deceased and the old assumptive world (no, this is so not like me)
5. Readjust to move adaptively into the new world without forgetting the old--develop a new relationship with the deceased, form a new identity. (OK, this theme is a recurring theme so maybe there's something to it)
6. Reinvest. (If you have anything left to reinvest)

And there you have in in however many steps you want--how to grieve. I like synthesizing information and I believe in learning from other people's observations. I've been through enough years of enough therapy to recognize the validity of theories. Mostly what I feel now is what...vagueness, disorganization, and what's really missing from these lists, simple sadness, such great sadness. I mourn the loss of the future with Henry, and the loss of Henry's future. I'm sure that fits in here somewhere and I'm just not recognizing it.

But today the sun is shining and it's 80 degrees. So far I've had a union meeting, at which we discussed management's formal charge against us of negotiating in bad faith--so now I have to go to Albany on 5/25 to appear before PERB and defend ourselves. Not alone, we'll have our union rep and attorney there. I just heard from two other members who think they should go too, since they were on the negotiating team so they feel they're being attacked blah blah blah. What these people don't realize is that I really don't care, don't feel vested in any of this (here's where the numbness comes in). I'll have to muster up some anger about it, though. Then I had a meeting with the "cataloger" (I use the term loosely) from Plattsburgh Public who feels she should have more capabilities with our new automated system than she does. We deliberately gave her fewer capabilities so she couldn't muck up the data base anymore. She tried to show that we're not doing a good job by waving a spreadsheet in my face, with a bunch of numbers highlighted in blue. It meant nothing, though, and there was nothing to back it up. As soon as she realized that she said "Did you just get your hair cut? It looks cute." Since I didn't wash it this morning and am having a bad hair day and know it does NOT look cute, is in fact flat on one side, I know she was mocking me. I had my hair cut a month ago.

So I did go on my bog walk yesterday with the dogs and it was really nice. They make me laugh and laugh. They are wonderful for that. Those brown girls are just the cutest and sweetest things in the world. I'm lucky to have them. Tess likes to run ahead, run back and around me in a loop, then go ahead to Chances again and again. Off the boardwalk, on the boardwalk, into the moss, under the trees, over the trees. The bog isn't particularly pretty right now, it's rather brown, but it's very quiet and lovely in its own way. And it belongs to me and my dogs.

Have to stop to get hot dogs and buns on the way home tonight--Ken is making his specialty, baked beans for Sunday dinner and I'm making dogs cooked in beer to go with them. Then it's home again home again. My daffodils are just bustin' out all over. When I got out of the car last night they were so much in bloom I could smell them in the air. Very nice. See? I do care what's going on around me.