The Fog of Grief

Originally posted on facebook 8/27/11
Have you ever sat in a chair and felt like a zombie?  Just staring off into space, quite literally thinking about nothing?  Maybe you have felt overly tired or not quite awake?  This is part of the fog of deep grief.  I am not sure you can simulate it.  It's like your brain and body hit overload from taking in too many awful details, and your mind shuts down for a little while.  In some, it lasts a very long time.  Hours go by, days go by, in this state.

For me, it started to lift after the first time I actually had *fun* and laid down my grief for a few hours - 8 months after Max's death.  It still comes and goes.  This is partially why time feels so distorted to those grieving.  You have no idea or awareness of the passage of time when your mind is in this state.  I have vague memories of being like this last summer, sitting out on the back porch completely oblivious to the weather, to the bugs, to the humidity, just sitting, just staring off.

Todd describes it as part of his brain missing.  I feel like an idiot sometimes, I just cannot connect thoughts like I did before Max died.  I think it's still there, but it's clouded over.  The chemicals that are released in trauma literally do change the makeup of your brain, and it takes years for those chemicals to clear - or so I've heard.  It's just one more aspect of grief and trauma I didn't know about until Max was taken away to heaven, all those days, weeks, months ago last August.