#grief does not expire like a candle or the beacon on a lighthouse; it simply changes temperature

[septembersghost]

andrew saying, "i hope this grief stays with me, because it's all the unexpressed love i didn't get to tell her," and anthony rapp saying, "grief does not expire like a candle or the beacon on a lighthouse, it simply changes temperature"

adding:

[litandlifequotes]

Grief does not expire like a candle or the beacon on a lighthouse. It simply changes temperature.

Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss and the Musical 'Rent' by Anthony Rapp

[saferincages]

Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs? - Mary Oliver, Dog Songs

Today, April 18th, would have been our beloved Angel’s 13th birthday. We were so hoping she would be here to celebrate it, but unfortunately her illness took her far more quickly than we were anticipating, which has us commemorating it without her, and still grieving her terribly.

I’ve talked about her so often that I now struggle to find the proper words to pay tribute to what a miracle she was for me, and what a truly special girl and precious little soul she was. I related some of the story of us getting her here, but wanted to take this last chance to remember. Saying I dreamed of or wanted a dog my entire life doesn’t even fairly capture it - I yearned for a dog, more than anything else that could ever be offered to me. There were multiple obstacles that made this impossible growing up - my mom and I being too busy with work/school to properly care for one, the fact that we were too burdened financially, the limitations on the kind of dog we could bring home given both of our allergies. Thus it remained my fondest continual wish. By 2006, my illness had been breaking me down for over a year. I had no choice but to drop out of school when I could barely function; I had reached what they called a “plateau” in physical therapy, a point where they couldn’t help me or rehabilitate me further from my lingering car accident injuries, and my immune system kept getting worse, my body increasingly frail. I was spending most days entirely alone while my mom worked full-time. It got to the point of quiet desperation, my depression was becoming more serious and we didn’t know what to do.

An e-mail went out in my mom’s office from a family who wanted to rehome their young standard poodle. We decided to go and meet her, and she was lovely, but she was 60 pounds and definitely too rambunctious for us to enclose in our very small living situation. (There’s a happy ending to that story, as her family decided to keep her.) The thought was irrevocably planted in my brain, though, and I fixated on the idea of finally finding a dog. We tried several other times - like a 3 year old Bichon who ended up at our Humane Society (they’re so rarely found at shelters that they did a lottery for people to be able to adopt him; our number did not come up), then a miniature poodle puppy at the shelter in Denver (same story with the lottery). I started scouring the paper, and one night in late July, in the online classifieds, I found a listing for six Bichon puppies. The timing was unbelievably perfect. I excitedly called the number, and the lady told me they had two left, a boy and a girl, and if we would like to see them, could we please come right away, because she and her husband were going out of town for the weekend and someone else was going to come watch the dogs. My mom and I got into the car in the dark of night and drove to the other side of the city. When we got there, we saw four little white fluffy faces in the door - the couple’s two adult Bichons and two babies.

We went inside, and the lady who had them started telling us about them. The little boy was docile and laid-back, the little girl was sweet yet very feisty and stubborn. She had been the smallest in her litter, and her five brothers and sisters pushed her around and never let her eat enough, and so she had to learn to stand up for herself. They were both darling. He laid quietly on the floor waiting for attention. She perseveringly climbed up onto the back of the sofa to be as close to us as possible, to sniff us and kiss our faces. She was silly and affectionate, and of course I instantly fell in love with her. She was meant to be ours. They gave us her papers, and her blanket, I scooped her up in my arms, and she was mine. On the drive home, our normal route ended up being blocked off because of a chemical spill, and the police officer who stopped us glanced into the car and smiled at the sleepy little puppy (”look!,” he said, “a carpet with eyes!” because she was quite fuzzy).

The gate to temporarily keep her in the kitchen overnight didn’t work at all, she was too smart for that. She squeezed out and promptly came into my room, whimpered on my floor until I turned to look at her, and waited for me to pick her up. I put her on the bed, she stole a pillow, and that was our story almost every night for the rest of her life. She was the best puppy, a model puppy, she never made a mess or chewed up anything she wasn’t supposed to (except for a roll of toilet paper, which only made us laugh), and she took to training quickly.

She was the most incredible blessing, and every day, no matter how sick I was, no matter how devastated I felt by anything else happening in my existence or the world, she gave me a reason to get up, to carry on. Not only because she depended on me - and that’s no small thing, having a dear, bright life that needs you to look after her - but because she was so boundless in her exuberance, her light, her love for everything and everyone. She believed all people and animals (I would say obviously other dogs, but honestly she seemed to like kitties most of all) should be her friends, and did her very best to charm them. She was excited to wake up in the morning, and she would bounce on me with her tail wagging in circles. She loved cozy things, pillows and stuffed animals and blankets and warm laundry; she loved soothing instrumental music and would settle right down to sleep when I put her favorites on (near the end of her life, we played a lot from Soothing Relaxation, and we put this one on for her before she died. She enjoyed certain piano pieces on the Soundscapes channel, especially this and this, she’d snuggle up and close her deep brown eyes whenever they played). She loved to play and growl and zoom around from room to room at top speed, she loved to lay in the sun and look out the window, she loved baby carrots and apple slices and was the cutest when she crunched them. She listened to me sing to her with rapt attention, and when we talked to her, she liked to talk back with various small barks and grumbles while inquisitively tilting her head. She had a mind of her own and liked to arrange things however she wanted them; she waved her paws constantly, and it meant different things depending on what she was asking us. She never stopped giving kisses, and this went double whenever one of us was crying, as she saw it as her comforting duty to lick away our tears. In her very last hour, when she hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for almost two days, when I was suddenly forced into making a decision I wasn’t ready to make, when all I wanted was to bring her home and tears were streaming down my face, she still sat up to kiss them away. It’s been hard having so many endless tears to shed since we lost her, and not having her in my lap to take care of me.

I’m convinced she did take care of me, more than I did for her. I called her my little nurse a lot, because she always knew when I was more sick than usual, and she worried and fussed around me, and tucked herself in by my side, and wouldn’t leave me. Even as isolated as I am due to being homebound, I was never lonely while she was in my life, she was always there to reassure me. She sensed so many of our moods, and she was so empathetic that we’d try not to get too upset around her because she would react with concern. When my anxiety and panic attacks began getting worse, and when my POTS became more severe, I truly began to realize how much she helped me, how her being near me calmed my tension, eased my physical pain, how running my fingers through her incredibly soft curls immediately lowered my heart rate, and that’s when I had her certified as my emotional support animal. She’d been doing that job from the start, so she deserved the title officially.

I mentioned here why I named her Angel: I wanted to use the name Angel because I love angels, because it made me think of sweetness and light, and of course she has been my guardian and my salvation and truly my Angel all these years, but she’s something else that word connotes too. She’s a warrior Angel. She was unbelievably strong and courageous, she fought so hard to live, and all she wanted was to stay with us. She was made of that pure goodness, and she was also brave and resilient. We called her bunches of nicknames - our diamond, our flower, our princess, our sugar, our baby, but she was profoundly an Angel most of all.

We had a unique relationship because we were almost always together, every minute, every day, every year. Not everyone understands the depth of connection knitted deep into our spirits that one can have with a beautiful living being, but experiencing it was a gift beyond any measurement words can give. I never left her for more than a few hours at the time. I never spent a night without her, except when she was in the hospital. She was my constant; my warm, fluffy baby, my treasure, and that life and happiness was everything. My dad acknowledged that, for me, losing her was much more like losing a child, because we were so bonded, so unbreakably close, and that is irreplaceable. I’ve mentioned before that I won’t ever be able to have that connection in human form, and getting another dog is once again an impossibility for us due to our current predicament (not that Angel could ever be replaced, but we would open our home and hearts to new love if we could), so she was it for me, the one dream come true, all I had.

I read Dog Songs as we were losing her, and Mary Oliver captured the adoration and the acute sadness exquisitely. So, that deepest sting: sorrow. Still, is she gone from us entirely, or is she part of that other world, everywhere? One of her poems was for her own Bichon, Percy, and these lines conjured Angel: For she was made small but brave of heart. For she could be silly and noble in the same moment. For she listened to poems as well as love-talk. For when she sniffed it was as if she were being pleased by every part of the world. For when she sickened she rallied as many times as she could. For she was a mixture of gravity and waggery. For there was nothing sweeter than her peace when at rest. For there was nothing brisker than her life when in motion. For when I went away she would watch for me at the window. For she loved me. For when she lay down to enter sleep she did not argue about whether or not God made her. For she could fling herself upside down and laugh a true laugh. For I often see her shape in the clouds and this is a continual blessing. She also wrote: It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old - or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.

Despite losing the entire semblance of and hopes for my "normal" life when I became chronically ill, despite mourning people (whether they passed out of my life literally or figuratively), even still I have never undergone this level of grief and heartache. I long to hold her in my arms, to hear the padding of her adorable popcorn paws and the jingling of her tags, to kiss her irresistibly soft head (which smelled like her sugar cookie conditioner). She always had such an exceptionally strong heartbeat - the little heartbeat at my feet - and when it stopped, while I embraced her with my hand against her chest, a huge part of me went with her. She gave me so much purpose and grace and helped me survive. She lit up every day with joy, and we will never stop missing her.

Angel was the truest, most precious love I've ever known, and how lucky I am to have been blessed by such a wondrous girl.

[septembersghost]

#i am SO fascinated by this perverse game of telephone#because in 'talk' #what stacey is talking about is the process of grief #despite mike's initial anger with this monologue of hers #he eventually hears her #he comes to understand this 'forgetting' and 'not thinking about matty' #he comes to understand that what she is describing is NOT a second death for matty (as mike seems to initially think) #but simply a life after matty #we can carry the ones we've loved and lost in our hearts but we can't privilege our memories over our present lives #being present for her daughter is what allowed stacey to deal with her grief over matty #this can be applied to all sorts of painful emotions beyond grief bc no matter that type of pain you feel #it won't be made any better by dwelling in it#the only thing you can do is keep on living#which is why mike delivers a version of stacey's monologue to jimmy in bcr#jimmy might not be experiencing grief in that particular moment but he is in pain#HOWEVER#when jimmy goes on to deliver this third version of stacey's mono in fun and games#what he's talking about isn't grief or even the kind of pain he felt coming out of bagman#what he's talking about is GUILT#i am sure he and kim are grieving howard in some capacity#but the dominant emotion here is GUILT#and guilt cannot be dealt with in the same way as grief#we are victims of grief but guilt is a wound that we inflict upon ourselves#a certain degree of passiveness is advantageous in the grief process#we can't push ourselves through#we simply have to keep living#dealing with guilt however requires action#it requires atonement#we can't simply expect for it to diminish over time in the same way grief diminishes#in fact this is evidenced by mike himself (x)

talk vs. bad choice road

[nellibell49]

Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining. ― Anne Lamott | THE OLD PROVERBIAL RECOVERY “Grief does not expire like a candle or the beacon on a lighthouse. It simply changes temperature.” ― Anthony Rapp, Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent…

[septembersghost]

the way the internet treats grief and the grieving process is so broken and weird, i constantly see comments shaming people for still "holding on" or "looking for attention" for not grieving quickly or quietly enough for their liking, or for still expressing their pain and profound sense of loss, even many years later. i don't know if the theory of "stages" warped perception (elizabeth kübler ross herself walked this back and noted that the cycle doesn't follow one progression, nor is it linear, not does it have a defined timeline or ending, i wish everyone was as familiar with the ball in a box concept), but that loss is always with you. you don't "get over it," you learn to live with and grow around it, and grief can always unexpectedly creep up on you and knock you over, even after considerable time has passed. we need to be better at not shaming people for this and at accepting that the process of those feelings is forever ongoing, and there's nothing wrong with sharing that or reflecting on it when it washes over you.

[septembersghost]

Hi Jess! <3 I saw someone send you an ask about TS, and I just wanted to share that “goodbye goodbye goodbye you were bigger than the whole sky” (the whole music but specially that one lyric) makes me weep like a baby, and I wanted to know if you have any thoughts on this song? (apologies if you’ve shared them before, the tumblr search for it was, as usual, not fruitful lol). G’night from my timezone to whatever yours is!

hi honey!!! you know i love taylor asks <333

it's curious, i have a collection of her songs that are objectively beautiful, and subjectively i cannot physically listen to and perpetually skip (ronan, soon you'll get better, epiphany, several tracks on evermore tbh. never grow up is actually one too), and you'd think bigger than the whole sky would fall into this category since it makes me weep. but because of the way i've deeply personalized it, it's become consoling to me despite how heartbreaking it is.

in a literal sense, i believe we know what it's about and it's a situation that was not taylor's own, but something devastating that happened to a dear friend (claire winter. she has publicly shared about this, but i still feel like respectfully it deserves a little bit of space). and it has helped many people because of that specific topic, which is so touching. that said, every song taylor writes also has quite a bit of herself infused into its meaning. i've seen analysis connecting it to the loss of self in would've could've should've (like this post), and wrote a bit here about how personally it resonates with me and speaks to the way i grieve the girl i was and the adult i never got to be.

i feel bttws is one of her songs that's so empathetic and poignant in the way it addresses grief and loss that we can take that to our own hearts however we need it. it can be losing someone you loved (it made me think, for example, of my precious dog too, and then i questioned if that was selfish, but...it isn't, sorrow is sorrow for each of us, just as i mourn myself and my life unlived and everything i hoped i could be), it can be about losing potential, losing a dream, losing something dear and essential in yourself, wondering why it had to happen that way. and most importantly, in acknowledging that that matters. it's not trying to minimize any aspect of that loss. whatever it is that's gone away from us, that was valuable and sacred. it was bigger than the whole sky, and no matter how long it existed, when it's that dear, that full of promise, it's more than just a short time, the span of that doesn't measure its worth. you're allowed to pine, and cry, and recognize what you're living without. you're allowed to feel the weight of that sadness. you're allowed to give it voice, and you're allowed to feel the expanse of it across your world. saying goodbye doesn't mean you don't always carry that with you. what could've been, would've been, should've been was still a beautiful thing, and the loss itself left something behind. you carry it alongside you wherever you go, and it isn't shameful, it's reverent and quietly true.

[septembersghost]

That Evermore clip made me tear & think back of my dad & then later of my friend’s dad. The guys in my family are more tech savvy- my brother would assist with more newer tech, lol- my dad would reminisce about using a slide ruler (no calculators yet) when studying engineering. My friend’s dad would carpool us in grade school & treated us to cherry slushies a couple of times. He passed from Parkinson a few years before ours did from cancer. Take & make memories when you can… so TS did. Sigh.

these are really lovely memories, thank you for sharing them. i think they'd be honored that you remember them in this way, and you have my thoughts and sympathy on their losses. *hugs close*

there's quite a lot of grief and memorializing reflection on evermore, i know there's debate in the fandom about which album is heavier, but evermore is much more difficult for me (some of this could also be it being clouded by darker memories/a fragile emotional state at the time of its release), and yet the way it confronts loss does contain some catharsis and definitely can stir those emotions and reminiscences. marjorie speaks directly to that of course - i should've asked you questions, i should've asked you how to be; you're alive in my head - but i think little evermore itself contains quite a bit of that too. i couldn't be sure, i had a feeling so peculiar that this pain would be for evermore...and then slowly you breathe and the ice begins to crack and the pain fades away a bit. it doesn't mean it's gone, it isn't, but you realize that you survived it. whether weather be the frost or the violence of the dog days, whatever steps you're taking, whatever is real and good enough to get you through. it's a powerful thing, but often very quiet, and might go by unnoticed to others. i always feel that in that song. both folklore and evermore embody that quote from wandavision, which i still find very affecting - what is grief if not love persevering?

[septembersghost]

I enjoyed this AG clip - youtu(.)be/_u_TswLQ4ws I found it as I was listening to Epiphany by TS. It struck a cord because my sister is a nurse (I was scared for her during covid) & then we lost our father to cancer. The song reminded of things unspoken. I loved the interesting dialogue & stories in the Epiphany comments on YT- a granddaughter (elizzybec in top comments) realized the unspeakable trauma of war to her grandpa had a ripple effect only after he was gone- she wished she understood.

that interview of andrew's is so touching, his vulnerability and eloquence in saying that just...moves me to tears every time. and it's true, we always live with that well of unexpressed love, all the unspoken things we realize afterwards we desperately wish we could've said, and there's never enough time, no matter how long it is, to give enough of that love away.

i can only imagine how worrisome it must've been to have a loved one who was a frontline worker during the pandemic, and my sincere condolences on the loss of your father as well. there's something powerful about art that can tap into that vein of grief with clarity.

my grandpa served in wwii, though he was a pilot and was never really on the ground, he shared many stories with us grandchildren when we were little, and looking back, i wish we had them on tape, just like i wish we had more of him singing. i know it affected him and to some degree echoed through his life. we don't think about preserving those irreplaceable moments sometimes until it's too late. epiphany is difficult for me to listen to, not because it isn't great but because it is quite affecting, she manages to distill and capture that pain and quiet fear of both war and the pandemic and layer them together with such poignancy. it makes me think very much of that lyric in marjorie too - i should've asked you questions...asked you to write it down for me.

[septembersghost]

Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses - Kristen O'Neal

[septembersghost]

so i've talked about this in the past, but since it's decided to rear its unpleasant grim little head again - grief, for me, likes to manifest quite often as shame. it's a strange phenomenon for a woman who is such a weepy that she'll cry at happy songs or particularly lovely photographs, but the wellspring of really deep, raw grief tends to fester and become a form of blame/self-hatred/harm. i've tried really hard to be better at this, but it still crops up on me anyway, especially if it's a combination of factors or feels very beyond my control, which a lot has for...a long time. even if i expose/share it and do it very much out of love (persevering), it will loop back around into my mind disgustedly whispering that it's too much, that i shouldn't say that, shouldn't feel that, should be quiet and apologize because i don't deserve to express it. grief is just. difficult. no matter the myriad reasons for it. and there has simply been a lot of it stacked against each other continuously. anyway i'm not sure there's a point to me writing this at all, other than to say, if you're hurting over anything right now...i understand in my own way and you're not ugly or wrong for it, as hard as that is to believe some days, and i know love hurts inexplicably as much as loss and absence and struggle does. you're allowed to have your open heart and your thin skin and your sadness and your light.

[septembersghost]

today serves as a reminder that sometimes you just have to cry your heart out, and sometimes it doesn't make sense how much things hurt, but you're allowed to feel it

[saferincages]

Angel is gone. I held her in my arms while she was given the injection, cradled gently to my chest like she’s been so many times, with my hand right over her strong heartbeat, and I felt when it stopped. It was very quiet and peaceful, she licked my tears from my face to take care of me like she always did beforehand, and some fundamental, irreplaceable part of me went with her. Someday maybe I’ll have more to say but right now I’m just shattered and hollowed out and am sitting here hardly able to breathe in my room knowing she’ll never sit at my feet while I’m typing again.  

My beautiful, blessed baby girl. She was my saving grace for her entire life and I could never repay that to her. I loved her with every atom of my heart.

[saferincages]

I never consciously realized or truly appreciated how much I talked to and laughed with and sang at my sweet girl until she wasn’t here anymore, and now it’s just nothing but quietness and empty rooms and me having nothing worthwhile to fill the day. even being mostly homebound, I never felt totally caged and trapped here before, no matter how often I leaned on the metaphor, but now...I don’t know what to do with myself. I hurt and hurt and hurt and didn’t have time to prepare for the totality of that heartbreak, even if I thought I’d tried to brace for it, I don’t think you ever can.

eta: not five minutes after I posted this, the veterinary clinic sent us these beautiful flowers and a card with this poem in it and we went through the cycle all over again:

To have loved and then said farewell, is better than to have never loved at all. For all of the times that you have stooped and touched my head, fed me my favorite treat and returned the love that I so unconditionally gave to you. For the care that you gave to me so unselfishly. For all of these things I am grateful and thankful.

I ask that you not grieve for the loss, but rejoice in the fact that we lived, loved and touched each others lives. My life was fuller because you were there, not as a master/owner, but as my friend.

Today I am as I was in my youth. The grass is always green, butterflies flit among the flowers and the Sun shines gently down upon all of God’s creatures. I can run, jump, play and do all of the things that I did in my youth. There is no sickness, no aching joints and no regrets and no aging.

We await the arrival of our lifelong companions and know that togetherness is forever. 

You live in our hearts as we do in yours. Companions such as you are so rare and unique. 

Don’t hold the love that you have within yourself. Give it to another like me and then I will live forever. For love never really dies, and you are loved and missed as surely as we are.

💔