Grief is self indulgent… That might sound harsh, but I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I accuse myself of it or hold myself a responsible for it, but I think grief is very self-indulgent. You know it’s natural certainly to feel sad about something or someone when you lose them I mean, you can be grief stricken, and I feel like I was but as time goes on, you know what I’ve learned or what I think I’m learning is to sit and be kind of indulging yourself in grief and sadness and oh my God such a loss. I’m so heartbroken. I’m so lost. I’m so alone I mean here. I am saying these words out loud and I think there was a point in time when I felt them, but I really don’t feel them right now and I don’t think it’s just because I have a new person to love although I guess I have to give a lot of credit to that because meeting Jennifer has really you know open my eyes to the reality that I can love again, but if I was talking to someone else, which I might do, I might say this out loud at the next Death Cafe meeting because I am surrounded with people that are literally broken and they’ll say that they’ll say that I’m broken. I’m stuck you know I’m so sad and the loneliness just descends upon them and I feel so bad for them because I feel like I do know what that feels like but then again I think there is a way to make use of that or at least to create an anecdote to that by by loving someone else, and that doesn’t have to be a new romantic partnership it can be as it was in my case my daughter, my cousin, even my friend you know not actually shouldn’t really say even but I mean re-introducing myself and ourselves to you know our friendship and this is what I discovered over these past two years I’m really close to Linda. I can talk to her about anything at any time and I do and when we’re doing that when we’re talking, we thank each other and we appreciate each other and it’s a similar experience when I’m talking to Alice you know we just get kind of worked up talking to each other about the good old days, but also about how we’re coping with the current days and both of us have found a new love partner and I love hearing about her experiences and I know she loves hearing about mine so but ours is a true friendship and I think that’s the other thing I’ve learned to have a true friendship with a female a true platonic relationship. It’s not as easy as I thought, but I guess that’s another part of this learning experience, you know sex used to be such a big part of getting to know a girl, and it was kind of almost the only reason or the main reason you’re obsessed with oh you know when are we gonna have sex? How’s the sex? What’s happening with sex and you know I don’t feel that anymore. I love Jennifer. I love her. I love being with her. I love telling her out I love saying it out loud she says things that are just funny and I just say gosh I love you like OK yesterday I talked to her about the Artemis moonlight and I and she loves to look at the moon so I told her that these four astronauts had you know launched to the moon that we’re gonna orbit the moon and it was a news article life center so a little bit later I said so what was it like you know what did you see when you looked at the moon she said four people waving back at me. It was so funny. It was so funny and a lot funnier that I’m conveying right now but she’s just funny and she says cute little funny things that make me laugh and I need to start recording them because we both talk about how quickly we forget stuff so you’re gonna kind of you have to kinda capture it at the moment but you know we had a wonderful day today. We we just have one great day after another and I think we’re both kind of surprised by it or take him back. I don’t know quite the right word but I think she’ll say thank you for another wonderful day as if there’s kind of a limit and you know as if she’s kind of amazed by it as well but anyway my point in this blog post is to say I’ve learned through the 78 years. It’ll be 78 just a few more days that you know when we had a pet dog that we loved and we lost them. It was devastating. It was heartbreaking. It was very very real. I can still remember the day we lost chance and I was just sucked in. I mean you you lose your breath. it’s just amazing the physical reaction that you have but and I was surprised by it cause I wasn’t anticipating that or whatever but you know then we got Dolce and we love Dolce the Shih Tzu then he died and I had to put him down at the vet and the vet was so supportive, but we made that decision in the moment and I sat with him and put my hand on his back, you know so he knew he was loved and then they gave him a shot and put him to sleep and then I leave and then they know they finish the job and you know they send them to heaven this is my firm believe that when you die, you go to heaven and I’m not talking about something a picnic ground playground where everybody’s up there just having a great old time. I’m talking about you’re no longer here lights out. You are now oblivious you no longer exist. There’s no past. There’s no present. There’s no anxiety there’s nothing and nothing is great and nothing to me. We’ll be having now. Do I have enough firm believing that that I could pull the trigger? No a few things there I don’t want to pull the trigger because I’m not feeling like I wanna leave this life yet, but I do think about it I think about what if what is what if I lose my independence what if I start losing my mind or my health? What am I gonna do? When am I gonna do it and you know so these are things you have to cope with her deal with you know when you get to be my age, but the message here and the one I wanna make clear is what you don’t have to do is more in the losses of everybody you’ve lost you mourn them you feel for them. You feel the loss but then you get to love again and if I had stopped loving dogs when I when we lost Q Schorr when we lost a chance or when we lost, then I wouldn’t have Zeke and I wouldn’t have this whole experience. I’m having with Hospice to visit people in the support the people and it’s just a wonderful thing and losing test yes 46 years of my life 46 years it’s hard to say and believe it but it’s true 46 years of building a life together and when she first died that first week I thought I was gonna suffocate I just I didn’t see any point in being you know in being here I was scared I was worried about money. I was just in a panic in a way but I didn’t do anything. I just kind of got through it and you know within weeks let alone months in a year now I’ve driven to New Jersey. I’ve visited with Linda. I visited with Dara and her husband and you know their children and you know it was just a wonderful experience and something I would nip down if I was still with Tess and so now I love Jennifer and I had no idea that I was gonna fall in love with another girl. In fact, I was kind of allergic to it. I didn’t. I didn’t really wanna get involved with anyone and I didn’t feel anybody. The women that I had met this year. I didn’t feel any romantic inclinations towards them. I feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for Cindy. I wish I could make her happy. I wish she wasn’t lonely. That bothers me a lot, but I can’t be the one to fix it so but what I’m saying is when I go back to the Death Cafe I might I might give this little speech I might say don’t consume yourself with grief. Take that grief and turn it into love. Take that grief and turn it into you people you know will say oh that grief you’re feeling is the measure of your love for that person. OK then take that literally and then redirect it towards someone else. Someone knew that you can love whether it’s your daughter your son, your friend, your cousin someone in your life that you can love and start paying attention to them and start growing a relationship with them that is a privilege that you’ve been given so yes, I am saying stop grieving start loving start living again.