After Mom's death, recovering from what is apparently irritable bowel syndrome (sigh) and someone breaking into my office...
At the analyst's. My dreams have no particular focus; I can discern an echo, like an invisible superstructure, of response to Mom's death around the edges, but otherwise there is not much to work with.
He finally says he thinks I am avoiding having any feelings about Mom's death.
I explain that it is entirely reasonable to not have any strong feelings about her death; that she died on another continent, and it was not an experience that was very real to me.
And that she has been barely 'there' for about three years in any case, and we all said good-bye some time ago.
If we said good-bye at all, anyway.
And besides death and dying have been so familiar to me for years, what do you expect anyway.
And on top of all that I haven't been feeling very well, and besides in any case I explain.
After I've been justifying myself for about half an hour, his eyes are glazing over slightly....
At least I got the point, if on a cognitive, and slightly embarrassed, basis.
Came home and pulled out Verena Kast's book on death and mourning, I've been meaning to read it anyway, she teaches seminars I've attended in Zürich.
I've now been reading it for two days; it is quite articulate, very intelligent.
Not entirely surprising material, but it clarifies a lot of things I reread, trying to remember them, somewhat like people learning Kübler-Ross' five stages (which are an oversimplification but oh well, I should simply memorize them anyway, at some point).
I carry the book with me a lot and read it, but admittedly don't read it for terribly long.
It seems only two or three pages at most before I mostly feel as though it's time for a nap.
And yes I know this is a different kind of cognitive, processed response.
Well, what do you expect.
It's a kind of spinning....
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