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Mateo Pee Pee
Trad climber
Ivory Tower PDX
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Sep 10, 2016 - 04:19pm PT
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An appropriate reminder, thanks!
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BooDawg
Social climber
Butterfly Town
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Sep 10, 2016 - 04:41pm PT
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Thank you, Allyson, for the lovely metaphorical reminder of how our grief and the scars of the heart are so often related to our capacity to love those whose lives have crossed and perhaps run parallel to out own.
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bixquite
Social climber
humboldt nation
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Sep 10, 2016 - 06:28pm PT
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I lost my sister to cancer six months ago. I thank you for that beautifully written piece. The emotions are the ocean and friends and loved ones are the life boats till we sail again. Laughter and tears the rudder and sail and your soul the compass. Ship of fools on a cruel sea. Sending love to family and friends, brothers and sisters.
"Honey you are my shining star, don't you go away"
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yosguns
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 10, 2016 - 07:01pm PT
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bixquite, I'm sorry for your loss. You're absolutely right; friends and family are the lifeboat to weather rough seas. Big hugs and support to you.
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Trad climber
Will know soon
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Sep 10, 2016 - 09:54pm PT
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Dealing with Loss and Grief.....lots of reflection over the past 8 years on this subject. My best friend died nearly 9 years ago. Whoa, really ? seems like last week.
Still he springs back into my heart and mind at the most unlikely times. Like yesterday. I missed him so bad.
When Dan died a "mind picture" came to me....loss is like a pond of grief. BUT every time someone dips into the pond some of the grief is taken and the pain and loss is a little less.
Grief is not just about death of someone you love. Death may be the easiest one to deal with. Loss thru divorce, loss of the job it took a lifetime to create, loss of a pet, loss of your financial future you built, a family home, a family, your health or that of one you care about. Loss......creates a huge hole in your heart and life. But, it is not the end of life.
Still sorting and dealing but also Living. Love from Lynnie
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thebravecowboy
climber
The Good Places
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Sep 10, 2016 - 10:07pm PT
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Death may be the easiest one to deal with. Loss thru divorce, loss of the job it took a lifetime to create, loss of a pet, loss of your financial future you built, a family home, a family, your health or that of one you care about. Loss......creates a huge hole in your heart and life. But, it is not the end of life
Well said, Lynne. I dun'na know ya, but your words [especially those] about the loss of your partner stick with me.
Someone said that as we age it becomes easier to live in acceptance of the grieving state. I hope so!
Someone else, a wiser one than mine-own-self, said that this would help:
[Click to View YouTube Video]
He was right.
Also, walking and moving as meditation. And climbing, especially climbing.
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yosguns
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 10, 2016 - 10:37pm PT
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Lynne,
Absolutely. Grief is grief is grief is grief. The "old man"'s words ring true for every kind of loss, not just death. Death might just be the simplest type of grief, though I can't imagine losing a child and at only 30, I probably have too little experience to make that judgment, that death is simpler than other losses. I do know, for me, the lost hope of a failed marriage or career is something that persists long after the death of the dream, creating the complex waves of grief the "old man" describes. I recognize the waves better and earlier now than I did when I was younger, closer to the time my first life failures came to fruition, and I've found a lot of comfort in riding them out; studying bodhicitta and meditation helped me aim to accept the grief--embrace impermanence--rather than torment myself by trying to resist or fight it or even judge myself for having it. What the "old man" describes seems to come from a similar type of wisdom--acceptance rather than suppression or rejection--gained after a lifetime of experience with loss.
Keep practicing with open hearts, we will!
Love,
Allyson
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JOEY.F
Gym climber
It's not rocket surgery
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Sep 10, 2016 - 11:58pm PT
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Thanks TBC!
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Sep 11, 2016 - 03:45am PT
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I'm here too.
And TBC's share has in it the wisdom of the ages.
The ability to find balance while suffering is helped by all forms of meditation
Chanting , humming, repeating devotions & those bowls/bells ...
Thank you The Brave Cowboy.
I'm always filled with a sense of wonder when the light of the setting sun jogs some memory of a past person. Are they, their spirit, really with us ? then,? always?
I like to think so. . .
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Sep 11, 2016 - 07:25am PT
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It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, "And this too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
― Abraham Lincoln
Regard this phantom world
As a star at dawn,
A bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp — a phantom — and a dream.
— Buddha
Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs . . . finally comes to realize that nothing really belongs to them.
― Paulo Coelho
Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily.
Life is but a dream.
— English language nursery rhyme
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nah000
climber
no/w/here
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Sep 11, 2016 - 08:13am PT
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after decades of shared work, the loss of a partnership with a still living person... the loss of the collective dreams of [insert appropriate dream here] and growing old together... the emotional loss of someone who helped sustain one through times of little to effectively no hope... is something, based on personal experience, that i can not imagine being able to survive twice.
and so i also understand why some are not able to survive similar occurrences once.
while the sentiments as expressed in the piece above are nice and helpful ones to those who survive, what it doesn't address is that in some storms, when one is in the thick of it, one can not know whether one will survive the hundred foot waves or not.
at least based on my time on this earth, i suspect that it is not just the physical realm that can overwhelm us...
and so i do believe that sometimes the emotional waves do bring an end... and while sometimes that end is physical... sometimes the physical body keeps taking steps forward even though the emotive body has effectively passed away...
regardless, i believe it is important to recognize that to those in the deepest depths of grief, those words, as well intentioned as they are, are worthless.
not because they aren't true to those who survive... or that they are not true in most cases... or even due to their not being well intentioned...
but rather because they aren't necessarily true in all cases and as incredibly resilient as we generally are, not everyone makes it.
recognizing, accepting and standing with those in the thick of it, requires recognizing, accepting and standing with the possibility that we humans don't always make it through to the other side of the wave.
and because of that, it is only after the largest waves have passed, that words are necessarily helpful.
A little Indian brave who before he was ten, played war games in
the woods with his Indian friends, and he built a dream that when he
grew up, he would be a fearless warrior Indian Chief.
Many moons passed and more the dream grew strong, until tomorrow
He would sing his first war song,
And fight his first battle, but something went wrong,
surprise attack killed him in his sleep that night
And so castles made of sand, melts into the sea eventually.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Sep 11, 2016 - 10:43am PT
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The Wind Cries Mary is the first Hendrix song that comes to mind when grieving as it helped me through the loss of my older sister to melanoma while we were both in college. Named a route in the Cochise Stronghold "As the Wind Cries" in her memory.
After all the Jacks are in their boxes
And the clowns have all gone to bed
You can hear happiness staggering on down the street
Footprints dressed in red
And the wind whispers Mary
A broom is drearily sweeping
Of the broken pieces of yesterdays life
Somewhere a queen is weeping
Somewhere a king has no wife
And the wind it cries Mary
The traffic lights they a turn blue tomorrow
And shine the emptiness down on my bed
The tiny island sags down the street
Cause the life that lives is dead
And the wind screams Mary.
Will the wind every remember
The names it has blown in the past
And with this crutch it's old age and it's wisdom
It whispers no this will be the last
And the wind cries Mary.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Sep 11, 2016 - 11:04am PT
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They sat side by side holding their hats, she the sombrero of woven straw, he the dusty black fedora. She was crying. He sighed and seemed himself weary and cast down. He said that while one would like to say that God will punish those who do such things and that people often speak in just this way it was his experience that God could not be spoken for and that men with wicked histories often enjoyed times of comfort and that they died in peace and were buried with honor. He said that it was a mistake to expect too much of justice in this world. He said that the notion that evil is seldom rewarded was greatly overspoken for if there were no advantage to it then men would shun it and how could virtue then be attached to its repudiation? It was the nature of his profession that his experience with death should be greater than for most and he said that while it was true that time heals bereavement it does so only at the cost of the slow extinction of those loved ones from the heart’s memory which is the sole place of their abode then and now. Faces fade, voices dim. Seize them back, whispered the sepulturero. Speak with them. Call their names. Do this and do not let sorrow die for it is the sweetening of every gift.
CMC
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Sep 11, 2016 - 11:15am PT
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It's been 6 1/2 years since I lost someone extremely dear to me. yet the grief persists...
Anne was my lovely wife, and we had spent 29 years together as friends, climbing partners, business partners, lovers, and married to one another. I'll spare everyone the details, but she was taken from me by a horrible disease: Huntington's Chorea. This disease is an insidious neuropsychiatric affliction manifesting itself through extreme paranoia and schizophrenia, accompanied by symptoms physically debilitating--loss of coordination, falling, involuntary movements (chorea).
I found out about the paranoia and schizophrenic behavior by being served with divorce papers at the airport on evening after returning from a business trip. The contents of the papers were filled with fantastic allegations that had no real life basis; only 2 weeks later she had wandered outside in -20 degree weather without a glove on one hand and getting severe frostbite. She was hospitalized was diagnosed by the neurologist with this hideous disease. I was called to sign a release for surgical amputation of the fingers of her left hand. She was subsequently transferred to an extended care facility which specialized in Huntington's Disease patients. I fought the divorce proceedings vigorously--and lost. Her scumbag attorney was pushing ahead for the big payday--he netted $75,000 from her funds. The specialist facility actually helped her a lot--initially--and she actually regained her mental capacity to some extent, but only temporarily. She is still barely alive, and I haven't seen her for 3 years on the advice of the care professionals. This is extremely difficult to write about, but I figured I had to get this off my chest and out of my system at some point, as a catharsis.
I'm now trying to regain a complete life and my return to climbing after a long layoff has really helped.
Thanks, friends, for letting me get this rant out of my system.
Rodger
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yosguns
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 11, 2016 - 11:51am PT
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Interesting point, about the death of the emotive self.
I hope I don't know what that would be like, though I have feared something like it in the biggest waves. Maybe fearing such death and then being alive enough after the storm to appreciate the words in the OP mean you haven't suffered such death.
In the thick of it, though, it is hard to know whether a wave will cause a mortal wound rather than only a scar.
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thebravecowboy
climber
The Good Places
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Sep 11, 2016 - 11:58am PT
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Heavy stuff Rodger. Please know that I feel for you and hope to help cosmically dissipate some of that terrifically awful pain. Keep climbing!
I know a pair of older folks that go speak, shout, cry off the canyon rims to their passed-away progenitors and former compatriots. The soulful howl of the lone human mourning aloud into the big empty beauty of it both itemizes the personal, emotive loss and celebrates the beauty of the inevitable return to the big atomic mixing bowl from which have all dried out into our flaky little pseudo-static human forms.
what was that Kansas songline? "all we are is crust on the rim"
to honor those passed away like this can feel silly but what more are we anyway than little voices crying out a wild place to begin with? vox clamantis in deserto
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Sep 11, 2016 - 12:11pm PT
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This thread allowed me an entre to venting what was trapped inside me for many years. I fully intend to post a memorial thread to her once she actually passes--complete with her climbing photos and extensive resume of climbs.
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thebravecowboy
climber
The Good Places
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Sep 11, 2016 - 12:14pm PT
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Fronto-temporal dementia took a member of my little pack recently, and it tried all the ties from all angles. Your experience sounds worlds more difficult. Way to stick it out!
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