Marla the Blogger

My husband's grandfather passed away this week, so I've been thinking a lot about loss and grief. I've always felt like I'm not particularly good at helping others deal with their grief.  I never seem to know what to say and whatever I do say always seems so inadequate. I think it's primarily due to the fact that I hadn't had any real experience with a significant loss myself until my grandfather passed away a few years ago. And then less than a year after that, I was pregnant and suffered a miscarriage. So I went from almost no experience with loss to two significant losses within a short period of time. I think, though, that dealing with my own grief in those two cases helps me feel more at ease when trying to help others with their grief.

Everyone grieves differently. When my grandfather passed away, we knew in advance that his time with us was nearing the end and I even had an opportunity to fly out to see him and say goodbye. So when I got the call telling me he had died, I was expecting it. I was at my in-laws when I found out and we were about to go for a bike ride. Some people might have thought it was unfeeling for me to continue with what I was doing, but I didn't want to stay back alone and it was a good opportunity for me to have some time to think while we were riding. I had been thinking about him constantly over the weeks prior and didn't feel like talking about it or dwelling on it at that very moment.

Sometimes listening is better than talking. Dealing with my miscarriage was especially difficult because it had taken us so long to get pregnant and because it was so unexpected. And wrapped up with the grief of our loss was my fear that we might never have a child. Although it was a difficult subject for friends and family, I felt it helped me to talk about it even after several months had passed. I know this was hard for others because they often didn't know what to say, but the truth is I didn't really expect them to say anything. It just made me feel better to be able to talk about it whenever I needed to instead of keeping it all inside.

I think often grief makes us uncomfortable. It's hard for us to have our raw emotions exposed to others and sometimes even harder for us to deal with other people's sorrow. A natural reaction is to try to make the hurting stop right away; to change topics or cover it up or pretend like it's not there. I caught myself starting to do that this week when my husband's grandmother was talking to me and crying. And then I remembered that sometimes people just need to be allowed to grieve. So instead of changing the subject or trying to cheer her up, I tried to just let her talk and acknowledged her grief. I don't know if it helped her or not, but we had a nice talk and for once I didn't feel like I didn't know what to say.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm generally pretty well-organized. My friends and family even tease me about it sometimes. I live by lists and I am always planning ahead. That's not to say, though, that there isn't room for improvement. My hectic week last week with a parking ticket, late bill and overdrawn account was proof that I'm still not as on top of things as I could be. So lately I've been thinking of how I could make some changes to try to get even more organized.

• Automate more - There's a lot of tasks that can be automated, especially bill paying. I already have most of my bills set up for automatic withdrawal but since we moved we have some new bills I haven't set up yet.
• Consolidate - True, I'm a list keeper. And avid calendar user. But I have several lists (short-term home projects, long-term home projects, work projects) and different calendars (personal and work). Combining them into one location when it makes sense, especially the calendar, will hopefully help me stay on top of things better. Maybe if my niece's birthday was on my work calendar I wouldn't be over a month late sending her birthday present.
• Stock up - Really, there's not a lot I dread more than a trip to the grocery store. Usually, I have to go once a week and it seems to take forever. So recently we joined a warehouse club and I'm buying a lot of the stuff we need frequently in bulk so I don't have to buy them so often and saving a little money. For the items we still need more frequently, I'm going to try home grocery delivery occasionally. It's not very expensive and I can think of a million things I could do with my Sunday evening other than go to the grocery store.
• Delegate - Seriously, both at home and at work there is WAY more to do than I can handle all by myself. I need to be better about asking my husband to help with some of the household tasks. I've got to delegate more of my tasks at work to my employees. I know my husband is more than willing to help, and my employees, well, that's part of their job and a good way for them to develop new skills. I tend to be a little bit of a control freak, so learning to delegate more could also help me learn to let things go.  

Being organized isn't something you can do once and forget. I'm starting to see that I need to keep working on it to keep things from falling through the cracks. Sure, getting organized takes some time and effort, but in the long run it helps things run more smoothly. And even someone fairly organized like me could make some improvements to be more organized.

This week Dr. Rippe wrote about taking time out to spend with family. Perfect timing, as last weekend we took a family trip together and I think it really helped all three of us feel closer and refreshed. Well, I can't really be sure that our 20 month old son felt "refreshed" but he sure seemed to have a great time.

Of course we've taken trips together before. For Thanksgiving we went to see my sister and her family and then for Christmas we visited my in-laws. But this was the first time in a long time that we took a trip with just the three of us that wasn't to visit family. It was really relaxing and fun to get out of town and get away from the day to day routine.

Traveling with a toddler can be stressful and our trip had the potential to start out on the wrong foot. I had a busy, stressful day at work and then rushed home to try to finish up packing. My husband was late getting home from work, which meant we weren't able to leave as early as we had planned. I started to get frustrated and anxious, but then I took a deep breath and remembered why we were taking the trip. The whole point was to spend some time together; it didn't matter when we got to our destination. We'd still be together on the trip there. So, we piled everything in the car, sang a million verses of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" as we drove and stopped for dinner along the way. We got to the hotel later than we planned, but in the end it didn't matter.

I think spending quality time together reminds us of what's most important that sometimes gets lost in the hectic pace of work and the day to day routine: our family.  Obviously, we can't take weekend trips together all the time. But we can make time to spend together and that no matter what we're doing, if we keep the focus on being together and what's most important, we'll have a good time.