I'm mad! I'm very mad! At whom you ask? At myself. Why? Well first I have to give you the backlog.
Even if you don't know me or frequent this blog, you can probably tell by the date gap from my last post to this one that I have not been active in this blog. And if you are one of my OpenStudy friends . . .
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. . . I'm sure you have noticed that I have not been hanging out there as well.
There are several reasons for this the main one simply being lack of time. However, lack of time is a lame excuse in my opinion because I have time for other useless endeavors such as Facebook and other games.
The problem is that I have been practicing escapism for the last several months. See, my mother fell ill in February and had to be hospitalized. The hospital stay was lengthy and difficult with a lot of pain and discomfort. Finally in April she passed away. Along with that came several complications regarding her final arrangements, which I will not get into. It was a very stressful time and situation and we (myself and the rest of the family) were not really allowed to grieve at the time due to the worry and energy put into the funeral home fiasco.
So to cope with my grief I have been doing everything in my power NOT to cope with it, primarily by escaping into video games. So I have not really dealt with my grief at all. I thought that I had, but I was fooling myself and I did not realize it until this morning driving to work.
According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, there are five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance [1]. The denial stage I know I dealt with right off the bat. As soon as I found out that she was in the hospital I started the denial process. "She's going to be okay", "She'll pull through." Other people are great at helping you in this stage telling you that everything is going to be alright when you know very well that it is not. Even with her doctor telling me that that her prognosis was very bad (even he avoided saying it was terminal), I denied it and told myself that she would be okay. I knew very well that she wouldn't be okay even without the doctor's prognosis. She had a stoke in 2000 and ever since that time her health had been declining. There were a lot of other reasons that I knew that she would not recover, but the point is that I knew this and yet still told myself that she would be okay.
However, that is where my grief ended. I never got angry. Even when my sister told me that they were not giving her water in the hospital and that she was dehydrated and desperately begging for water did I get mad. (Side note: Some hospitals when dealing with terminally ill patients will deny them water so that they slip into a coma rather than staying hospitalized indefinitely. This is considered humane and the hospital that I was dealing with even had a name for it; Comfort Care.) Oh I expressed my disagreement with the situation, but I would not say I got angry.
So this morning, on the way to work I got angry. I was angry at myself for a number of things. One being that I have chosen to spend (read: waste) all this time not dealing with my grief. As I thought about it, I tried to rationalize my behavior by saying that there was nothing that I could do, but I knew that was BS. I love to write and I know that writing can be very cathartic and "I HAVE A BLOG FOR CHRIST SAKE!" Again I tried to rationalize my behavior by telling myself that I have a tech blog, that it would not be appropriate that I write about my mom's death on it. Then I got really mad and actually started yelling at myself in the car. It kind of went something like this (pardon me if I get a bit schizophrenic, that happens when I'm torn on a subject or upset):
"Wait a minute! You mean to tell me that you you took the time out of your busy day back on October 6, 2011, while you were still busy with school and wrote a 600 word memorial for Steve Jobs, but you cannot bear to do the same for, or even mention your mother!?"
"Yeah, but Jobs was a giant in the tech industry. His death was relevant to the blog."
"You're an asshole!"
"Why?"
"Because your mother gave birth to you. She raised you, loved you, nurtured you, and made you the man you are today. And you mean to tell me that you can't even mention her in your blog because she had nothing to do with the tech industry? Bullshit! If it were not for her, this blog would not even exist. If you consider yourself important in the tech world, which apparently you do since you have a tech blog, then your mom WAS a giant in the tech world, at least the little tech world that you have created for yourself because she CREATED YOU! Not only that, she was and always had been your biggest fan/admirer and your number one follower. Even if she never even read your blog, she has been a follower and a fan of yours in whatever you have chosen to do for your whole life. She deserves to be remembered in your blog just as much as Steve Jobs does, but you, 'Mr. Tech', can't even mention her in your self-righteous blog. That is why you are an asshole!"
So everything I said to myself made sense. There is really no reason that I cannot write about my mom in this blog. It's my blog. Sure you may not be wanting to read it and it may be and probably is depressing to most of you, but maybe there can be some learning from it as well or perhaps it may help someone else going through a similar situation. Perhaps if you all bear with me through this, we can see if Kübler-Ross' theory on grief really holds true and if so what I do to overcome each stage. If you would prefer not to read these entries in my blog just skip any that have "Good Grief" in the title. As always, I welcome your thoughts, comments, and questions to this or any of my blog posts.
To the question, "will you have any new tech posts anytime soon?" I have to say I don't know. I hope to and perhaps that would also be a good way for me to deal with my grief, but we will have to see. As I said before, I had not made an entry in a while because of always having other things on my plate even before Mom's passing, but we shall see. I really do need to get a tech post up soon and preferably one that you can use since the last several have been more or less a dissertation on communication. Let me say this: I will make a concerted effort to get a Tech Tip out on Tuesday. This should bring back memories to my Facebook friends who always looked forward to Tech Tip Tuesdays.
So until then . . . peace.
[1] Kübler-Ross, E. (1969). On death and dying: What the dying have to teach doctors, nurses, clergy and their own families. Abingdon, Oxon, England: Routledge.
Final Thoughts on Kübler-Ross: Denial and Anger:
In regard to denial, I fell right into the Kübler-Ross model. I both consciously and unconsciously refused to accept the reality of the situation, but I cannot say for sure how long this lasted. Perhaps I was in denial all the way until this morning when I got angry. Even though this seems irrational since so much time has passed since her death,Kübler-Ross says that some people can get stuck in this stage. I think that it is more likely that I got through the denial and then put off anger by escaping in to games, but I can't really say for sure. Even thinking clearly about it now, the last couple of months have been a muddled mess emotionally, so it is hard to tell what I was thinking or feeling at any given time.
Anger definitely reared it's ugly head this morning. I think that the ass chewing that I gave myself in the car did a lot to alleviate much of the anger and writing this blog post did a lot as well. If there is some more anger within me, I don't feel it right now. It may come out later or I may be done with the anger altogether. What I can say is that I have not done any bargaining, which is supposed to be the next stage. I will definitely add to this post if I go through some more anger processing and I will create a new post if I do in fact recognize myself moving into bargaining or depression.
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