Approximate Reading Time: 2 minutes

WHAT?

Where did that come from?

I’m getting resource material together for a class I’m teaching on Digital Game Based Learning that starts next week. As long as I’ve been keeping this blog, some of the posts I’ve done have been things I would say in a class if I were teaching a class on this subject.

What’s that got to do with crying?

I’ve been reading through my past posts to find the ones that are a good fit for this class. In the process I’ve also come across the posts I made just after my brother and my mother died. They both died last year – less than four months apart. It’s been a really hard year.

I mean REALLY.

It’s only been in the last few weeks that I could look at pictures of either of them without starting to bawl. But I can now. I have pictures of both of them right where I can look at them while I type. My mom’s pictures are on the shelf right above my monitor. I look at them dozens of times a day. 90% of the time they give me comfort. BUT 10% of the time I can feel that thing we feel just before we start to cry – you know – almost like a sneeze coming on.

I got the same feeling reading through the posts from the times that they died.

Throughout the last 18 months I’ve felt compelled to apologize each time I start to cry because of my grief. I fight that ‘about-to-start-crying’ feeling every time. Sometimes I even  avoid talking to people I care about because I just KNOW that those feelings will surface and it will be all I can do to NOT cry.

Well, I’m done with that.

If I am brought to tears because I am still sad that I have lost my entire immediate family, so be it.

If you don’t like it – tough.

If it makes you uncomfortable, that is no longer my problem.

Until my brother and mom died, I had no idea what to do or say either (for all those people who told me about someone they lost and who got nothing more than the traditional, socially acceptable “I’m sorry.” from me, I’m REALLY sorry. I had no idea what you were going through.) Admitting you have no frame of reference is far better than pretending something false.

 

Just to round things off – here’s a picture of my dad. He died when I was a kid (he committed suicide).

I miss them all.

Every day.