today's facebook posting ...

"The reality is that it is 2 yrs 3 mos ... I still have not opened all the condolence cards & letters as it hurts too much ... I still have clothes in the closet that I just hold & smell ... how does one mend a very broken heart? Thank goodness breathing is a reflex".

End of posting.

Listening to Steely Dan on Spotify. It's been a while. It still works upon me as a musical balsam.

So, yes, it is still very much about the grief. I gave up several dedicated years of anti-depressants & anti-anxiety meds just in time for the holidays. Timing sucked but all my reading has made the distinction between grief and depression very, very clear. Grief cannot be treated with anti-ds.

If that was the case, why put my body through all the additional stress of processing unnecessary drugs?

Accupuncture has been working very nicely for my migraines. They are now less the norm than they were, a predictable and unwanted, painful presence just the turn of my head away.

Jon has been working on accupuncture detox points as well. Perhaps they are helping. I certainly did not go into full blown withdrawals, which was anticipated. Far from it, much to my doctor's great surprise. I will give 50% credit to Jon's healing needles & 50% to the power of my will.

Or won't. As in "I won't have a problem", "I won't give in".

It is hard enough to experience the death of a loved one, a spouse, but painful issues like single parenthood, financial insecurity, isolation, all becomes dominant players in the grieving process.

I know they are with me ...

Something about Vic's passing has overly sensitized me to people's pain & suffering, particularly the illness of cancer & all that it entails ...

Reading that Joe Paterno's family were making a decision about his ventilator threw me into a mini breakdown. It reminded me so vividly that my last decision made on Vic's behalf was not to put him on a ventilator as I was advised that once on it, he would never come off.

So to have him hooked up to a breathing machine, to feed him through a tube in his stomach ... not an option he would have wanted anymore as the quality of his life would have been completely compromised & he would have been helpless & dependent, two things that were unacceptable.

I miss him ...