Just Remembering, Just Calibrating, Then and Now…

I was recently triggered (unintentionally) by a friend’s blog to return to a place of feeling …it’s hard for men to feel so we repress those feelings and live in the moment.  Often we forget that there is a history to the present moment  … a continuous thread which pervades life and living.  I needed to go back and remember Adam prior to July 24, 1998, the moment of his accident and a point in a timeline of change and personal growth.  These moments below allow me to remember and experience that “chronic sorrow.”  That is good…because I know that today is the same as yesterday, and, in many ways, better.”Chronic sorrow ” is a set of pervasive, profound, continuing, and recurring grief responses resulting from a significant loss or absence of oneself (self-loss) or another living person (other loss) to whom there is a deep attachment.  The way in which the loss is perceived determines the existence of chronic sorrow…a painful discrepancy between what is perceived as reality and what continues to be dreamed of.  The loss is ongoing since the source of the loss continues to be present.  The loss is a living loss.” p.26

“While chronic sorrow is conceptualized as being normal and understandable, there are no formal and customary social supports and expectations, rituals or recognitions of the catastrophic loss, since the person who is the source of the loss continues to live.  Adaptations are usually drastic and disorienting.  Simultaneously and absurdly, the person who is the source of the sorrow may at times be socially unrecognized, as if he or she does not exist.  If there is no existence, there is no loss; therefore  the grief is unacknowledged and unaddressed by society.” p. 2

The above quotes are taken from a book, “Chronic Sorrow”, by Susan Roos

Couldn’t crop out the stomach and  double chin, but that was long ago …

bit different today (sayin’ that makes me feel better)

Taken just days before the accident (near-drowning)

…..everyday is better than yesterday….the honor of caring for a severely disabled child/man.

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Philip - Healing, Empowering and Thriving

A father of a son who survived a near drowning experience, twenty five minutes under water. I care for my son who is now 26 and blog about the events in his recovery.

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