Do you ever have strange things happen to you? I mean, really moving strange things happen to you. I was reading a Facebook post today, and it triggered me. It was a post about a woman who was preparing for a graveside service at Beipine's Veterans Cemetery and was wondering if she could have a bagpiper or something, I don't know, but it certainly triggered me.
And it brings me to today's topic. It's the fact that grief is love with nowhere to go. As I cough my way through the introduction, I was quickly reminded of the fact that that is the cemetery where my brother was laid to rest two years ago this month. And it was a short but extremely moving ceremony.
I had most of my kids with me. I had a couple of ex-wives with me. It was just one of those things. And they say that grief is not weakness.
It's evidence of something that mattered deeply. And yeah, I guess that's true. But I'm so grateful for that ceremony because my brother, when he passed, his wife is a member of a religion that doesn't believe in a lot of this stuff, let's just say that. And she wasn't gonna go for a funeral, but my nephew, just, you know, my brother's son just said, no, this is what we're going to do.
And we did it, he did it, and I attended. But up until then, I was just absolutely lost. I mean, I was so out there lost that I was having a difficult time coping with anything. I was doing it, I was getting through the day, I was getting all the stuff done.
We all do that, when these things happen, we all do the stuff. We watch the dishes, we take out the trash, we do what we have to do professionally, we do all of those things. But when we're not doing those things, if you're working and you're taking a break, guess what you're doing, I was just out there. And then he had that service, and it just kind of crystallized everything.
And I was told, you know, once I went to a thing at a church, when my mom passed away, because I was just, again, an incredibly lost. And the first thing they said is, there's no right way to grieve, there isn't. And it just happened. And what is the best way to get through grief?
You gotta go through it, that's all, you just gotta walk into it and go. It comes in waves, so you just let it happen that way. You just sometimes, you think about somebody saying, have you, I remember when my mom passed away, a good friend of mine, his name is Gerald. He said, have you gotten over your mom yet?
And I said, no. And it's now 22 years since mom left, and asked me if I've gotten over mom yet, no. You move with grief, it stays with you. You do move forward.
This is the important thing. I was talking to my health insurance lady who lost her boyfriend and her business partner. And we were having this discussion, not terribly long ago. And she was saying, well, I hate to move on.
I said, then don't. I said, we don't move on, we move forward. That's what we do. You kind of go forward into that.
And as that happens, life starts getting back to semi-normalcy. And the important thing is not to isolate. This is what I learned when I went to my first grief class. I went to a grief class, holy cow.
And by the way, it was a three class class that I only went to the first one. I didn't go to the other two. But the one thing that the man said, he said, grief whispers. He says, don't isolate.
Don't be alone. As a matter of fact, go be with people. And I took that advice. I started finding myself actively involved with people.
People that I didn't know, by the way. So I didn't have to, you know, this is what I did. I got connected with a computer club of all things and some other things having to do with technology, groups and a business group. And I didn't know any of these people.
I joined a group of people in Clearwater, oh, some 20 years ago. And I didn't know any of them. I knew no one there. And they started having these Tuesday meetings.
And I met all these people and I just found myself, you know, doing things. And that's good. And if I had a problem where I needed to talk when my mom passed away, there was my brother. I could talk to him and he could talk to me.
And both of us had just a hellatiously terrible time with this whole thing as I am, you know, now re-experienced. And I'm re-experiencing when my brother passed away two years ago. So what am I doing? I'm trying to get out there and be with people and have experiences.
Yes, I talk to friends and you know, that's good. What do you say to somebody who's just lost somebody? You know, I had a lot of people say things to me. And you know what I like the most?
I liked it when they listened and just let me talk. And I found that to be true when somebody loses somebody. And you know, you can lose somebody instantly. You can lose somebody who's going out slowly.
When this happens, you just sit there and I, with a particular close friend who lost someone instantly. I just came over and I was there. That's all. I said, listen, I said, I'm here for whatever you need.
If you need nothing, I'm still here. If you want me to leave, I'll leave. But you know, I make a pretty good peanut butter sandwich. And that, you know, that was good.
And you know, rituals are kind of important, like I say, my brother's service, my mother's service, which I'm the one who talked at. And I still cannot believe I did that. I just can't. I absolutely can't.
I've relived that several times over the years of things I would have done differently. I did well, but you know, but rituals are important, perhaps a charitable act. I have an acquaintance who lost a child here recently. And now he's involved in charitable acts in the way that, you know, speaks to him as far as the loss of his daughter.
And through it all, we have to have some gratitude. It doesn't erase grief. It kind of sits beside it, besides it, you know, it just kind of sits there. Slowly it reshapes it, but it doesn't make it go away.
So that's all I got for you today. You know, I had something else in mind to do today, but read that Facebook post. Just went through them a whole damn body. Strange how things like that trivia, isn't it?
Really, really strange. Thank you for listening. This is The Daily Grateful. And I am Michael Gross.