Ordinary World
by Darryl Bertolucci
“Gave our hearts, made the start, and it was hard
We lived and learned, life threw curves
There was joy, there was hurt
Remember when
Remember when old ones died and new were born
And life was changed, disassembled, rearranged
We came together, fell apart
And broke each other's hearts
Remember when.”
~ Remember When, Alan Jackson, 2003 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0VuYu2qlBw
Beautiful song. I particularly like the romance. But, “Remembering when”... is much easier said than done. Some happiness, but much more pain ... right now anyway.
February 6 will be the 5-year “anniversary” of my wife’s death from ovarian cancer. I’ve gone over and over the 5 stages of grief many times. I believe I’ve been in a state of “integrated grief”* for a while. I would have had some trouble connecting with my first memories of joy and sadness anyway. This makes it more difficult.
Unlike Riley, my default emotion was not joy. I continuously felt that I wasn’t enough: "the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”** Exhausting. One of the effects of feeling I wasn’t enough was that even when I was successful, I felt undeserving of positive feedback from my parents, siblings, schoolmates, teachers…anyone really. I was ashamed. Embarrassed. Doing well was only another opportunity to be let down. To be hurt. Disappointed.
I have few images (core memories?) of not feeling this way. These are mostly from photographs. One is of me ... a 6 or 7-year old hugging a rather large chicken … ”Cluck”. A pet. I was proud of Cluck. She lived in the dirty, smelly “chicken house” with others. For some reason, one hot day my brother Pat—who was 20-years older—caught Cluck and handed her to me. She seemed OK with that. She was fairly old and—I might imagine—welcomed the attention. Pat helped me get her a separate coop.
My relationship with Cluck was short-lived, but made me happy. I not only had something to care for but my brother would ask about her once in a while. He didn’t talk to me about much else. So that was a big deal. About 4 months later, Cluck died. That was very sad. My brother stopped talking to me. That was sadder.
* “Integrated grief” is the result of adaptation to loss. When a person adapts to a loss, grief is not over. Instead, thoughts, feelings and behaviors ... are integrated in ways that allow them to remember and honor the person who has died. Grief finds a place in their life.
(Brene Brown, Atlas of the Heart, P113)
** “The feeling of not being enough” is a form of shame, which Brene Brown defines as "the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging”.
(Brene Brown, at 4:50)