I recently learned that the term glimmer is being used as the opposite to trigger, psychologically speaking. While a trigger is defined as a moment when the senses jump to a feeling of sadness or fear, glimmer is defined as a moment when the senses are taken to a place of joy and hope. I love the word glimmer. I suppose, to an extent, it has always meant that. After all, "glimmer of hope" is a saying. But it has only recently been brought into conversation about psychology and the sensation that various stimuli can have on the brain. For me, I'll take all the glimmers I can get.
The funny thing about grief is that often those things that trigger us at the beginning of our relationship with grief become glimmers as we go along. After Chris died, I had a hard time listening to Erik Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1 without dissolving into a lump of teary sadness. But, with time, I have come to a place in my grief where I forget that it was a piece of music my dead husband loved. Now, it's just a piece of music my still-very-much-here-in-my-heart husband and I loved together. The death part of the memory has faded to almost nothing. It's the same with so many of my former triggers. I can look at photographs now and feel joy rather than sadness. I can hear music or watch a film or read a book and, where it would have once filled me with a sense of tragic loneliness, now I remember the joy I felt when Chris and I shared that particular book or film or piece of music.
Triggers are weird things in the beginning. I couldn't look at the Pizza Express restaurant in Inverness without feeling abject sadness. That was the restaurant Chris and I always went to when we were in town. (Chris loved pizza!) In the early days, seeing that place just made me remember that I was always with Chris when I went in there. In fact, when we scattered half of Chris' ashes down in Sussex a year after he died, I purposely chose the Pizza Express in Lewes for our meal after. It's what Chris would have wanted. It felt strange at that point to be in the restaurant without him, but I know that now it would be a place for remembering sitting there and laughing and talking and enjoying each other's company. I can listen to Afro Celt Sound System or Moby and feel happy that Chris introduced me to their music rather than sad that he can't listen with me. I can watch television programmes he loved, a film he enjoyed, all the things that made Chris happy make me happy too...now. The only trigger that remains a trigger is Vaughn Williams' "The Lark Ascending." I always loved that piece, but after I met Chris, it was his "theme." There was something about it that seemed to be the musical version of him. I still can't listen to it. It is way too personally attached to Chris. Hopefully, that will change with more time.
In the beginning, even a photograph of him would make me cry. But, over time, I found that photographs of him were not only loved and cherished, but that each photograph would remind of the moment the photograph was taken - and his smile would take me back in time and I would feel that rush of happiness he always brought me. The thing is, with grief, the things that trigger sadness are often the things most associated with the person we have lost. You know you are making progress in your grief when those things don't make you sad anymore. In the beginning of this transition, there may be a feeling of guilt that it doesn't make you sad anymore. You fear you are forgetting or feeling less bereft by their absence. But that's not the case at all. For me, it means a kind of acceptance that our loved one is no longer physically present in our lives, but it doesn't remove their presence in our hearts and minds.
All that being said, I still find triggers that completely undo me. My daughter suggested I might enjoy "Grey's Anatomy." I watched and there was an episode in the first season where a former nurse at the hospital is in the final stages of cancer. They include the moment of her death, and I gasped and wept. Her portrayal of her last breaths were identical to the way Chris breathed his final breaths. I get triggered by adverts about cancer - be it research, charities, etc. If they portray people as happily living their lives fully until the end, I just get angry. It's not that pretty; it's not that ideal. Cancer research adverts show someone being told that they are cancer-free. Okay, but fast forward three or four years and see if that is still the case. So, yeah, those trigger me - a lot.
Grief, if nothing else, is a progression of dichotomies or opposites. What once would reduce you to a weeping pile slowly becomes a welcome part of your memory. It's no longer the fact that the person is gone, it is the fact that they were. They stood by us, they loved us, they shared everything in their life with us. And for that we can be nothing but thankful.
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I adore this photograph. You can't look at it without feeling happy and uplifted. I call this one "Make a Wish." Again, taken after the cancer diagnosis, Chris loved just going out into our garden and finding things to photograph. This one is a real treasure.
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