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Grief, Its Impact on Those Left Behind and The Moments That Count Most

Grief, Its Impact on Those Left Behind and The Moments That Count Most

Grief, Its Impact on Those Left Behind and The Moments That Count Most 1707 1280 Jason Stadtlander

Grief is defined as:

Deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement

(ref. Webster’s Dictionary)

What is grief really?

I lost my grandfather this March. He was a man that was my moor in the turbulent sea of life, and most importantly, my best friend.

Virgil McConnaugheyVirgil McConnaughey lived to be 92 years young and went on to have three children, ten grandchildren, and many great-grandchildren. He served in the Army in Tokyo and traveled the world with his wife Doris. He worked for Ford as a Tool and Die maker, retiring and having a chance to spend more time retired than he worked.

These are the facts of his life, but are we just merely the facts of what we accomplished in the end? No, I  don’t believe so. There is a depth to our existence that cannot be defined in words. If someone asked me who Virgil was, those facts listed above would not be the first thing that came to mind.

To me, Virgil was a friend. A man who was not afraid to tell me his true feelings and perspectives on things, even when he knew I might not have the same view. He owned his strengths and his flaws (good or bad). He was not afraid to take on challenges that were far beyond most people in his position or point in life. He had a way of looking at anything mechanical or electrical and could tell how it went together, even if he did not see it disassembled in the first place – this I get from him. He could visualize things in 3D and look around them without doing so. Virgil had a love of all things nature, birds, and dogs especially. He would sit in his solarium (a room enclosed by glass) for hours, photographing, studying, and detailing the life in his small window of the world. He had his prejudices, most likely because of his age, but I loved him regardless. He taught me that one of the wisest things you can say is “I don’t know.” and that truth is more important than acting like you know what you’re talking about.

Virgil loved with all his heart those that he felt would reciprocate it, but kept those who might hurt him at arm’s length. Family was his gold and his fortune. Even those in the family that did not maintain communication with, he still loved them, he just felt at a loss on how to reach them and confused about why they wouldn’t talk to him. He could be the warmest man you have ever met, and the coldest person if you crossed him. He loved new technology and enjoyed meeting new people and the small moments in life that make life worth living. He was rigid in most of his views and unwavering in his perspectives but still managed to be flexible when it came to learning or understanding the world around him. My guess is, that this rigidness is what drove him away from some people.

But, I have learned in my own life that not judging others and accepting people despite their flaws, allows you to truly get to know them better. It also allows you to accept the good things in people – and there are always good things in people.

The thing that I learned most from my grandfather was “the moment”. The present – right now, this very second. You can’t go back and replay it. You can change some things in life but once you’ve passed this moment, it remains in the past. My grandfather is gone, forever. However, the thousands of singular moments that time paused for us and I learned something, heard something, or simply gave him a hug… made it all easier for the “past” that it is.

Grief is more than just the words that define it. It is a hole in our souls. The emptiness of what is missing. For me, it is those “present” moments that are missing. I cannot pick up the phone and call him anymore. I cannot text him and tell him I love him. But it really is okay. It was his desire that I (and everyone) treasure those individual moments that he had with all of us. One day, we all will reach a point where we do not have any more moments left in our lives. Hopefully, between now and then – We can provide everyone we care about with those moments. Because “grief” is not nearly as intolerable as leaving behind a life that is not grieved.

Living in the Past & Resisting Change

Living in the Past & Resisting Change

Living in the Past & Resisting Change 1920 1080 Jason Stadtlander

I feel stressed and I retract my thoughts to a specific memory in my childhood;

I am seven years old, sitting in my father’s green 1970 Chevy pickup on the grey bench seat, more specifically it’s a grey seat cover that covers the original green seat. The aroma of the hot chocolate I’m holding in my gloved hands is strong. Dad had ordered it for me as I was finishing my breakfast at the Howard Johnson’s restaurant in Wooster we visited on the way to the job site. It was our regular ritual for us, having breakfast at Howard Johnson’s during our weekend drives from our home in Canal Fulton to the farm in Loudonville.

The grey floorboard has some scattered dirt and dust on it and it’s lightly raining outside. The old windshield wipers are slowly swishing back and forth, “I love a rainy night” by Eddie Rabbitt is playing on the AM radio and I can feel the warm heat blowing on my feet. I’m wearing a red hooded high-school sweatshirt with a faded eagle on it that my father used to wear his senior year of high school, jeans and a pair of over-sized work gloves ready to help my dad do some landscaping. I’m waiting on him to come back to the truck as he’s talking to the customer. I get bored and lean over to change the dial on the radio, sweeping the little red needle back and forth. I move it down to the 500 kHz range and I hear the dot-dash beeping of Morse code. I have no idea what they are spelling out, but it intrigues me.

My dad then gets into the truck and stops, looks at the radio and then at me. “What is it, dad?” I ask, referring to the beeping on the radio.

“Aliens,” he replies back matter-of-factly. My eyes grew wide.

“I’m kidding. It’s just someone sending a message by Morse code. Probably a HAM radio operator nearby.”

It’s just a memory, one of many from my childhood that brings me peace. A memory of a simpler time (for me) when money, responsibilities, and life didn’t stress me out. There was no internet, no cell phones and no need for anyone to get anything instantly.

It’s not exactly a news flash that our world feels like it is moving and changing faster than ever in recorded history. The reality is of course that it is changing at pretty much the same speed it has for the last hundred and twenty to hundred and forty years.

A little over a hundred years ago, adults (fifty and over) at the time were grappling to understand why on earth anyone would want to get from place to place so fast using a mechanical vehicle when for thousands of years horses and carriages had served just fine. Seventy years ago adults in the same age bracket were resisting the change of getting a television when a radio worked just fine for the family.

Today it befuddles many adults why technology is changing so often and why they are constantly being forced to learn the new innovative technologies. Many of the changes are beneficial, making life easier. Although the constant need to adapt to newer hardware or applications roughly every five years may not be difficult for someone in their twenties and thirties, by the time a person reaches their fifties and beyond, the ability to learn these new innovations becomes profoundly difficult.

It’s only natural to want to return to the simplicity of your youth and fifty years from now, no doubt our children will want to return to the simplicity of a hand-held mobile phone and being able to text one another to keep in touch.

It is this stress of needing to constantly change that forces many of us to reminisce about those times that were perceptively easier in our own lives. But is it healthy to do so? Retreating to those memories is a stress reliever for most people, including myself. There is, however, a difference between thinking about the past and living in it. The past is familiar, we know what happened and we know what the outcomes are of how the past played out. However, pick a memory, at that exact moment in the past your life was changing. You didn’t know what to expect or where your world would go. It stands to reason that at that moment – you thought about your past beyond then to cope with stress.

We as a civilization move on. The world moves forward and we have no choice but to move along with the flow. We may be able to divert the waters of change here and there, but ultimately there is nothing we can do to stop the fact that it changes. We will never “make things great again” and most likely things were not as ‘great’ as we remember them. The truth is, fifty years from now you will look back and remember how great things were in this time. So, as I continue to tell myself every day – enjoy your memories and hold on to them, but embrace the change of the future and work to make a difference in controlling how that change plays out.

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