“Life is all memory, except for the present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going.” Tennessee Williams
This quote is particularly poignant right now, as I suffer the loss of my wife, Susan. The forgotten memories of the life we shared for 50 years are flowing in and out of consciousness uninvited now. I ask myself: did these things really happen? I now fully appreciate the feeling behind the tune “row, row, row your boat gently down the stream…. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”
Williams’ quote relates perfectly with how we experience and process trauma. Traumatic experience is also something that “happens so quick you hardly catch it going”. Our body doesn’t miss the experience, though. Every cell responds to the traumatic event. If our experience is overwhelming and beyond our control, it records EVERY ONE of its reactions in the form of a primitive, feeling memory…a complex fear conditioned memory…..Janov’s Imprint.
Thereafter, our suffering is caused by the constant coming and going of this unfelt memory content and our effort to NOT feel it.
We join the task of reducing our suffering by arranging the circumstances whereby we begin to pay attention to the re-awakening of the imprint in the present moment. We can then fully experience…make conscious… the content of those reactions for the first time…we can feel the feeling contained in the memory signals.
I am suffering Sue’s loss right now because I've not allowed myself to feel the awful feeling of her being gone from my life. I’ve had to attend to the nuts and bolts of her death. I have to keep paying the bills. There are so many things requiring attention... that need to be reported, filed, recorded, etc. I struggle to be present for my children. It is now solely up to me to complete the legal steps that will pass the legacy that Sue and I built together on to them.
Soon, though, I’ll have the time to process my trauma. I am thankful for having been taught the skill of knowing how to do that. Thank you, Suzie, for sharing your sweet life and love with me. And, thank you, my primal elders, for teaching me how to live in this life of great beauty and pain.
So sorry for this time of grief for you.