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It was biting cold and rainy as hell on Tuesday night, but I managed to make it to Grass Valley without much trouble… unless you call weeping like a baby “trouble.”

Seemed like a really long drive in that cruddy weather, and I’ve found that the worse the weather the worse my mood––so by the time I got there I felt like curling up in a ball somewhere and crying myself into oblivion.

I had to keep reminding myself why I was doing this; why I was driving up into the foothills by myself every Tuesday night for the next three months, when I’d much rather be at home with my dogs, surrounded by the memories of my lost life.

I found myself with an hour to kill, so I drove over to Nevada City and found a warm cafe to slip into while I waited for the Grief Recovery Workshop to begin.

I shot this photo as I ran through the rain and into the cafe––ironically this is the church that refused to marry Lori & I because we weren’t of the correct denomination.

Turned out to be a blessing though… we got married a few blocks away, in a much prettier church.

Sadly, a hot latte and a white chocolate/macadamia nut cookie did little for my desperate mood… still, it was warm in there, and the people working behind the counter were quite pleasant, but every single customer was staring into a computer screen of some sort, faces lit up with a soft white glow.

Doesn’t anybody read a book anymore?

I could have used some nice conversation, or at least some small acknowledgement that I existed––maybe a quick nod of the head, or even just a glance as I entered the room––but there was none to be had.

The rain poured on, and I read my book in silence. Around quarter to six I headed over to Grass Valley, and meandered my way up to the workshop.

I guess it says a lot for this group that I arrived on a gloomy Tuesday night after a hellishly emotional day, feeling just about ready to crawl away and die––and two hours later I got in my car feeling refreshed and enlivened again… not necessarily wonderful and without a care in the world, but certainly a helluva’ lot better than when I got there.

Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing easy about doing “grief work.” The workshop is all about exploring the darkest reaches of the soul––those places of fear and loss that fester inside us, sending tentacles of pain and remorse up to the surface of our lives, where they can torment us endlessly without risk of ever being extinguished.

The goal of the workshop is to dig up those darkly infected spots, expose them to the light, and then let them die.

Sounds simple, in theory. Of course it’s painful as all get out to actually do it.

What person in their right mind wants to dig deep into their psyche and examine a life’s worth of pain, loss, and emotional anguish––all through the terrifying clarity of a magnifying glass?

That’s the Grief Recovery Workshop, and it’s certainly not going to be easy… but I have to believe that it will be worth it.

In reality, the pain and anguish I go through over the next three months (three meetings down, eleven to go!) will be a drop in the hat compared to the emotional trauma that Lori and I both experienced over the last five years.

If it will help me live my remaining days here to the fullest––in the name of the woman I love more than life itself––than it will be worth every tear shed, every sleepless night endured, every lonely mile driven up the hill and back.

Give me strength, sweetpea. I’m gonna’ need it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 11:12 am and is filed under prose, the rest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.