Grieving

 

Well apparently I am supposed to be grieving. 

I tell people that my dad died at the beginning of December and most of the time they then tell me that it will be difficult, that I should remember the good things and then they head into their own experience of the death of parent.  Not everyone does this – but many.

I am learning lots of things as a consequence of this experience.

We don’t all have similar experiences of death and grief.

There is no such thing as normal

We do lots of adaptive listening – (adapting the thing that someone tells us to our own experience)

There are some strong rules that say we shouldn’t think negatively about people who have died

I don’t miss him

I feel quite relaxed about him having died

I want and need to look at my relationship to fathering, how I do it, how it was done to me and the emotional residue

Not everyone will be sharing my experience

I now need to start sifting my experience and working out what I need from the social constructs that surround me.