Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: WRITE on May 24, 2007, 10:38:58 AM
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one of my friends was diagnosed with secondary liver cancer just a few weeks ago, last week I heard her treatments were stopped, I heard this morning she isn't expected to survive more than a few days.
At her birthday in march she was Greek dancing and shouting 'opa!' but that was sady the end of the good times for her.
I can't believe I am not going to talk to her again, I have been waiting for her call but she has been sedated and unconscious most of the time.
It all happened really fast.
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Write, I am so sorry. How horrible.
I love the picture of her dancing and shouting OPA! I'm so glad you have that memory of her in your heart.
CB
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another message came a few minutes ago, she is in a lot of pain and incommunicable, I hope her release from that comes soon.
It just doesn't give any time to say goodbye though.
Thanks CB.
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WRITE,
I can feel your sense of helplessness and frustration in your text. I am hurting with you about your friend. I have lost people to death as well, and they have suffered like your friend. My thoughts and prayers will be with you this day.
~Laura
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I'm so sorry, Write.
I know how hard this is.
There is never a perfect goodbye and we can't go with them.
I wonder if you could, in your own space, make a small ritual of farewell and sing to her?
love
Hops
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Thanks Laura and Hops.
You're right I will think how I can create something to say goodbye and to remember her by.
I feel grieving, I don't think that is a bad thing though a lot of my american friends are being rather gung-ho on the 'we should remember her as she was' stuff, being a bit artificially cheerful even for me. One friend just emailed 'the best thing we can do is....' and I thought don't tell me how to feel!
I do remember how she was, but she is suffering and lost to us and I feel sad. It's okay to feel sad sometimes.
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Write,
I am so very sorry. I had something similar happen to a friend. All I can say is again, I am sorry.
Love
Deb
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Write,
Thinking of you in this time of loss. My wish is that your friend has an easy release from this life.
axa
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WRITE,
You are very right in saying that it's ok for you to be sad sometimes. I'm blessed to hear the you are feeling. Sometimes in our past dysfunctional families, we learned NOT to feel. It's good to feel even bad, painful feelings sometimes. It's what makes us human and empathic.
May the Lord release your friend from the pain and suffering soon!
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WRITE,
Please know that you have touched your friend's heart in many ways and that you will live on in her spirit forever!
Doodle
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I'm sorry for your friend and you as well Write..... It is always difficult to learn of this type of thing....... I'm glad she has you as a friend,:-)
Friends are worth their weight in gold!!
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WRITE,
I am so sorry. Please know that I am thinking of and praying for you and your friend.
Peace
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Hi Write
I am so sorry about your friend.
I am trying to think of death, for me, as a GIFT!
(......and anyone who has done me wrong, I will come back and haunt forever..............)
This is just from someone who has lived for 68 years and did it all WRONG! Boy! I hope I don't have to re-do it all!
Love
Izzy
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Talk to me about your upcoming death when you're 88, Izzz...
not
now
love
Hops
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Hi Hops,
I got that line from a movie, a guy on death row and this was his time--
The Life Of David Gale!
and the way he made his final speech was great!
love
Izzy
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Okay...I'll forgive you Iz.
:D
hugggggg
Hops
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Dear ((((((((((((((((((((((((WRITE/ Friend is Dying))))))))))))))))))))))))
Hugs,
tt
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Thanks y'all.
Apparently she regained consciousness for a while today and asked for an old friend who is flying in right now. Hopefully she will get to be conscious again and talk to her.
Re death as a gift, well we fear the unknown and resist change, but I remember once telling an old man that I thought 68 was the ideal age to die. He looker at me for a minute and replied 'see how you feel when you're 67 first!'
I think life is a gift and death is merely when life passes. It's the grieving and suffering which is hard during life.
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heard that she passed into a coma this morning, they are not expecting her to live many hours now.
She's suffering so I think it will be a blessed release.
Death is nothing at all
I have only slipped away into the next room
I am I and you are you
whatever we were to each other
that we still are
call me by my old familiar name
speak to me in the easy way
which you always used
put no difference in your tone
wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together
pray smile, think of me, pray for me
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was
Let it be spoken without effort
without the trace of a shadow in it
Life means all that it ever meant
it is the same as it ever was
there is unbroken continuity
why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you
somewhere very near
just around the corner
All is well
Henry Scott Holland
(1847-1918) Canon of St Paul's Cathedral
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Write,
I am so sorry to hear about your friend. That poem is amazing, and it made me cry. Along with the thoughts of you mourning your good friend.
Hugs and love,
Dandylife
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((((Write, Write's Friend))))
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((((((((((Write))))))))))
This is not death, this brittle season.
Warmth waits rekindling
Beneath the snow;
Under rimed branches
Sleep green leaves
And each seed holds
A blossomglow.
We do not know our time or reason,
The promises
We are to keep;
This is not death,
this brittle season.
It is but rest
And pause for sleep.
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Sending a prayer for her that she soars free of pain to freedom
And for you, Write.
She was very lucky to have your friendship...
Hops
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She passed a couple of hours ago.
~W
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I'm so sorry, Write. My thoughts and prayers will be with you this evening as you come to grips with losing her. Be very gentle with yourself.
Much love to you, Write,
CB
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((((((((((Write))))))))))
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Thanks Storm/CB/Ami/Hops
Yes, I did do the British standard and make a big cup of tea and eat shortbread biscuits Ami....
Thanks for the poem Storm; did you write it?
It's beautiful.
I feel exhausted even though I haven't done anything since I got in from work.
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I did indeed write it... for you, and for your friend.
and coming from you, Write, that is a high compliment indeed, one that I will cherish. I respect your writing tremendously.
Generous even in this pain - thank you, dear ((((((((((Write)))))))))).
It's no wonder you're tired. You've done more than you can begin to quantify, not with muscles, but with your mind, heart, and soul.
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(((WRITE))) Much peace be upon you.
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thanks Laura and Storm.
Today I feel exhausted, drained for some reason.
Emotions are my worst enemy sometimes, this can precipitate quite a bipolar reaction too, though today I feel depressed rather than manic which is unusual.
One thing that always worries me- I don't entirely know what 'normal' reactions are...I wonder am I over-reacting. My son just said 'you're so emotional mum' and clearly they think I should be fine now, it's no one of importance to them!
I feel like I should be glad to be alive and stop moping around yes, but I feel like it today.
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Hi Write,
Maybe it's just grief.
Sad worried painful grief.
All those are in the "normal" repertoire and this is surely a "normal" time to feel them...
you sound like a grieving friend to me, ((((((((Write))))))))))
love
Hops
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Hi write,
I have a little anecdote, which may or may not help and may or may not even make sense, but sometimes I accidentally say something useful. And at first it may seem a little off topic but it's not.
I recently bought a DVD of a legendary, semi-underground piece of cinema verite by Claude Lelouche, the French director who made 'A Man and a Woman.' Its an utterly irresponsible, criminal, dangerous film that is also pretty darn exhilirating and a guilty pleasure; to a car guy anyway.
It's called 'Rendevous' and consists of him putting a camera on the front of his Ferrari in 1976 and proceeding to drive (he may have hired a Formula one driver, the details are pretty murky) through the early morning streets of Paris at speeds up to 140 miles an hour. There was no traffic control, none of the streets were closed off and he darn near hits several pedestrians and vehicles while running innumerable red lights, all to a purpose revealed at the end.
Now my wife was never the kind of person to have enjoyed or even watched such a film previously, but surprisingly she did watch it and actually enjoyed it. Even more surprising when I asked her if she would be willing to take such a drive she said, after emphasizing it would have to be a deserted highway rather than a crowded city street where someone else might be killed, yes. She has always been so cautious that her answer was pretty surprising. When she saw my reaction she said the words that are the point of what is turning into a pretty lengthy post; "When you've been at death's door (as she was last summer) 140 miles an hour is nothing."
All of which is a long way of saying I no longer view death as something to mourn but as a release for the person who has died and a reconfirmation of our own mortality which I think should lead us to make the most of what we have left here. Of course there is sorrow in missing those we love, but somehow when you have faced it really, really close and especially if you have dodged it for a time, somehow it seems to me now the best way to honor the dead and death itself is to live as though it may come to visit us at any moment, which of course it can and will, not as something to be considered an enemy.
Solomon said "It is better to be a live dog than a dead lion". I never got what he meant, as the sentiment seems so contrary to Judeo Christian thought, until death was in our house for a time and now waits, perhaps for months perhaps for decades, as a gentleman on the doorstep. Now, when I leave the house I don't try to drive him away or cringe in fear, I just tip my hat to a necessary and sovereign, and in the end merciful, gentleman.
mud
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Thanks Mud. Yes, it helps, accidentally or otherwise :)
I woke up thinking of Psalm 90 today, I have never seen G_d as angry but I do understand 'O satisfy us early with thy mercy'
Your wife is right to live each moment, I think we live on in the people we leave behind and the influence we have had on them and our world.
it's just grief./Honor your grief even if no one else does.
Thanks Ami and Hops, I'll turn it into something creative.
And live some more:
let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.
Ancient words sometimes speak a lot.
The psalmist is ancient I mean Mud, not you
:D
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Hi write and CB,
Glad to have been of accidental service.
CB, your description of Decoration Day is almost identical to what I used to do with my dad on Memorial day, right down to the foil wrapped cans. He's been gone nearly twelve years and I still miss him.
BTW, there is a great old movie called "On Borrowed Time" with Lionel Barrymore. His young grandson falls out of a tree and appears to be dying, so when Death comes to call in the person of Sir Cedric Hardwicke, he tricks him into climbing the same tree and Death can't get down. In so doing Lionel Barrymore hopes to save his grandson but he soons learns the mercy of death and the misery of a world without it.
mud
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Write,
I have been away all weekend. I'm very sorry to hear of the passing of your friend. Thoughts and prayers are with you.
Love
Deb
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Thanks Deb.
Hope everyone is doing okay today
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