"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum, Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come....He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong."

Thus expresses the speaker losing the love of a lifetime in W. H. Auden's "Funeral Blues." Yes, true, the expressions are of grieving a dead love (while we may wish our departed were dead--he/she is surely alive and well and moving on to the next relationship), but the feelings are so similar when we lose a long-term love that we want the curtains drawn, the sounds stopped, all of life and living halted for good.

But that never happens, does it? As long as we ourselves continue to breathe, we inevitably endure the stages of grieving--the shock (but he asked me to marry him!), the anger (how dare he find me not good enough?), the depression (I will never find love again), and the bargaining (if he calls, I will promise to be a better cook, housekeeper, lover), as we pray for closure and for the final saving grace of stages: acceptance.

Acceptance does come, but it takes time. It takes many early mornings of empty beds and cold pillows. It takes many grievous nights of stark silence and vacant aching. It sometimes even takes a number of holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, when everyone on the planet seems to be happy and in love, their togetherness mocking your pain.

So strategies for passing the time, for making the best use of the time, and for taking the best possible care of ourselves are imperative. We will heal, we will love again, but in the meantime, we need to take steps to empower ourselves, attempting wholeheartedly to avoid that misery--which is actually optional.

EAT

There's a reason you see the maudlin jilted girlfriend scarfing a carton of ice cream, a case of Doritos®, and a mound of chocolate. Milk, cocoa, and caffeine--among other ingredients--trigger the serotonin and other feel-good chemicals that have plummeted. They simulate drugs (especially chocolate, which is often referred to as the "love drug"), but at the same time won't land you in jail or have you crashing the car or worse, calling the ex.

FEEL

Crying is healthy. Have you ever held back your tears or anger and gotten a sore throat or a cold a week later? Some scientific evidence holds that crying prevents such illnesses. Crying is cleansing, yelling is cathartic. Do it on the phone late at night with a good friend until the anxiety, fear, frustration, cycling, and pain exhausts you. Do it to the saddest song you own. Do it til you drop if you have to.

REMOVE

Stroking the handmade Valentine or gazing at the wall-sized poster of your loved one will only prolong the past and the pain. You will only glamorize the best parts of the relationship, staying in denial about the very reasons you are in this harsh state. Pack the pictures, the jewelry, the car keys, the love letters. You don't have to destroy them (though some tell me they feel great release from burning everything associated with the one who walked away). Put everything in the back of a closet you only go into once a year, so you aren't tempted to revisit the misery until you are well over him/her.

MOVE

f you have been an active person who exercises, keep exercising. If you associate everything in your house with the lost one, go to the beach or a bookstore. Create new memories at the same time that you continue your usual healthy activities. You might recall in the first movie, "Oh, God," George Burns (playing the Almighty) tells John Denver (playing the one in shock) that he must shave and shower and brush his teeth every day, doing what was normal on a continued basis...to normalize his life as much as possible during this upsetting time.

WRITE/CREAT

Many artists have translated their grief in art. If you aren't an artist (amateur, professional, or other), write a letter to the offending one that expresses everything running like a hamster in the endless wheel of your head. Do not mail it. Just write it and...keep it, read it to a friend, burn it. Or write down everything you miss about the person and everything you will miss on one side of the page; on the other side, write down everything you will not miss. At the bottom, say goodbye.

ACT

While it's tempting to stop all the clocks, draw the darkness around you, and climb in bed in self-pitying paralysis, it will more than likely behoove you to go to work and do a better job than you have ever done before. Because our brains are set up to keep conflicting, dissonant thoughts separate--thereby making it difficult to focus on flying a plane or waiting tables while thinking complex thoughts about your ex--if you are 100% dedicated to the task at hand, you will (at least temporarily) suspend the obsessive thoughts.

GIVE

If you happen to be on an extended vacation because, say, the doorknob left you the day before your wedding, leaving you with the unattended 6-week honeymoon time free from work, go volunteer at a soup kitchen; go rock crack babies at the hospital; become a big brother or sister to a child growing up in the projects. You will get a certain perspective, to be sure.

MOVE SOME MORE

Join a support group, a hiking club, a charity drive. Not to meet the next ONE, for you are too broken and too vulnerable, but to get out of yourself.

LAUGH

Besides crying, stomping your feet, sighing, and eating certain foods, laughing (yeah, right) is scientifically proven relief for pain. Rent a stack of Adam Sandler or Chris Farley or Ellen DeGeneres videos. Watch sitcoms. Read Woody Allen or Bill Cosby or Erma Bombeck or David Sedaris. Call up the craziest friend you know and take him or her out for lunch and laughs.

LEARN

Know that people come into our lives to teach us what we need to learn. Know that they leave when the lessons are over. Or, if you don't believe that, know that, as the brilliant psychiatrist, David Viscott, once said, "The failure of a relationship is not the failure of a person." It may feel like it. It may feel like you could have should have would have done things differently and the leaving lover would never have left. Let it feel that way. But let the reality slowly sink in that what's more important now is what you have learned from the beauty and the bruises.

And read all you can, listen all you can to the advice of others who have been there--take only what you need, though, and leave the rest. Even one thing will help pass the (mourning) time. How do I know? Well, of the six long term partners I have had, one turned gay; one made a pact with a 21-year old to leave me (his fiancée) if she left her boyfriend; one told me because he used a Mac and I used a PC that we were of two different worlds; and one, as we reconciled and frolicked together, bought a plane ticket to his native country where he flew to purchase/find a wife. So I have done what I here ask you to do: embrace your pain, love yourself, and honor all of the amazing and wonderful things about you that you must praise yourself for in front of a mirror every day, crying and broken or raging and numb--faking it til you make it.

Then go put the phone back on the hook (without calling him or her), open the drapes, take off the black arm band and start all the clocks again.

©2004 Roxanne McDonald

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