Grief is like a hangover...

...an emotional hangover, at least it is for me. All I want to do is sleep it off. That’s what I’ve been doing all week. I finally feel like the haze is lifting.

Coping mechanisms – everybody has them. I make jokes...that's how I know I'm getting back on my feet but I have to watch what I say because not everyone deals with this kind of stuff in the same way. I wouldn't want someone to think I'm being insensitive or that I don't care. So I bite my tongue, I swallow the punch line, I suppress the sarcasm. My friend would have laughed but he's not here any more...

They brought in a grief counselor for us at work to help us cope. I've never had any experience with grief counseling. I didn't think I really needed it but I went to the group session to show support for my co-workers.

From my observations, grief counseling is basically a bunch of sad people sitting in a room with a grief counselor telling us it's okay to be sad and anything else we might be feeling is absolutely normal. You can tell who the counselor is because he looks sad but he is the only one not crying. Obviously, there's more to it than that but you get the idea...

I was kind of hoping for puppets but they didn't have any and that made me sad. They did have pamphlets - puppets would have been cooler (there's that coping mechanism I told you about).

Still no hard core information on why my friend died, "lung failure due to an unknown cancer..."; doesn't really do it for me. Maybe it doesn't matter but I would really like to know why but it seems morbid to ask.

I went to the visitation Thursday night and the funeral on Friday morning. It was a very nice service – lots of tears but still very nice and comforting. My friend and I went to the same church. Pastor R is great – when you listen to one of his sermons it’s like you’re the only one in the room and he’s talking right to you. I always feel better after the funeral.

I finally feel like I’m getting back on my feet with the exception of this head cold I came down with on Thursday. Spiked a fever last night and darling husband is out of town till Sunday. Darling daughter will have to be self entertaining today – so far so good, thank heavens for the VCR and our Disney movie collection.

Enough with sadness - I’m going to shed it like an old winter coat. The sun is out and I hear spring knocking at the door.

Sorry for all the downer posts – if you need a good laugh, I know I do, check out the new link under Funny Stuff – The Gallery of Regrettable Food - guaranteed laugh-out-loud-roll-on-the-floor funny.

The picture is one of the freebie things that was pre-loaded on my computer.