The Talk in Ceramics

Thursday is my day to paint ceramic pieces. I am working on a teapot, and hopefully, by the time I finish it, I will know how to post pictures here from my phone. I am not going to hold my breath on that, though.

We are just a bunch of ladies (and a couple of men) who sit around and talk while we clean and/or paint our pieces. After we catch up with what everyone has been doing for the week, we talk about topics. Sometimes it weather or politics; today it was about death and dying. The majority of us are single not by choice, a few are married, but we have all felt the effects of having someone we love leave this earth, leaving us behind to figure out what to do next.

The topic started when one lady said that her niece's husband (in his 50s) died from a heart attack at the beginning of the new year. It was sudden and completely a surprise. I asked how her niece was doing, and she shrugged her shoulders and said, not too good. No, I guess she wouldn't be.

It is one thing to have someone die who has been sick for a long time and you watch them suffer or become weak. It is another thing to have someone die who has lived a very long life -- which is far into the 90s and 100s -- and the life has been good. And then there is the sudden, surprise death. How in the world do you cope with that surprise? I don't think you do, or can. I think it takes a long time to adjust, to understand that one day a person is here, and the next day, the person is not.

It's hard enough to put pieces back together when you know that a person is going to die, and that takes a long time.

Believe it, it does take a long time. It will be 6 years for me this April and it seems like yesterday and it seems like eternity. It took me a long time to just stop wandering around, walking the halls, wondering how I was going to go on. And I have. Slowly, step by step.

One woman in ceramics lost her husband to death a year and so ago. In the beginning, she said, she didn't even think about it, she just got up, sold everything she had and moved here. She was ready to start a new life. I asked her if she loved him, and there was no hesitation, Yes, Yes, Yes. But, she said because she was in the health field and she watched her husband succumb to diabetes and all the related medical issues, she understood and could close that chapter. Today, she is back pedaling, She is fighting her own, silent agony of missing the life they built together and the laughter they shared. She has moved on, to another town, another state, another house, but that solves nothing. Grief and coping with that grief has to be given its stage. Sometimes, I guess, it takes center stage from the start and sometimes it enters late, but it will show up.

I knew another lady who lost her son to suicide. That is another topic all together. It has been many, many years since her son took his life, and in that one act, she also took her life; not physically, but in every other way. She was an RN, and she never went back to work; she was married and even though she remains married, her husband and daughter have moved West; she does not talk to anyone, will not allow anyone to talk to her; and she stays in the house, day in, day out.

I could never imagine losing someone to suicide, that they were that hurt that they could not have reached out to want to continue to live.

I could never imagine the anger and grief from losing a person to murder. That is unfathomable to me. It just should never happen.

I could never imagine losing a child, one that you carried in your womb and birthed and cared for for as long as that child lived.

A long, long time ago I dated someone who married his high school sweetheart, and they had a child together, and the child became sick and died. And the marriage ended. Not because they did not love each other but because the grief was too much. I heard through the years that he did remarry his first love, but I also heard it did not work out the second time. Grief does not go away. Ever.

One thing I know today is that we are all broken. I never knew that before but I know it now. We walk around with a broken heart, whether from death, divorce, lost dreams. And yet, we go on, or most of us go on, a little changed, a lot changed, but we go on. And in the end, I guess that is what life is all about. Putting that first step forward, inch by inch moving forward.

Until tomorrow.... have a great day