MADDvocate - Summer 2009 - (Page 22)

healing journey ■ By Wendy Bianchini Waltz Wendy Bianchini writes about her dance with grief ’m sad today. But I must be the only one, as it feels like the first day of spring in this cold mountain town and everyone else is celebrating new life. It’s hard for me to celebrate this time of year. Instead, I anxiously await the anniversary of death to creep up on me, hiding behind the joys of spring. This year will be the 17th anniversary. I can’t believe it was 17 years ago that my father went away on a trip and never came home. His life was cut short by an old man who had had too much to drink and decided to go for a drive. They told me my father died instantly when the cars collided head-on. On the morning he left, I was a 10-year-old tomboy full of sass who had stubbornly refused to say goodbye. Keeping It Together The I The day we found out about my father’s death, I got up and went to school. I didn’t know what else to do. I immediately discovered that the people around me were much more uncomfortable about the death 22 MADDvocate | summer 2009 than I was, and I worked hard to convince people that I was OK, not an outsider because of my tragedy. I became much more concerned about other people’s comfort levels than my own grief. I don’t remember grieving—I didn’t know how to do it. I could not cry, scream and fall apart over this incredible loss. It wasn’t safe. It felt like everyone else was on the verge of going to pieces, so I certainly needed to keep it together. How can a child possibly feel comfortable falling apart when she isn’t totally convinced that someone is going to be there to catch her? When I was young, I saw a Fantasy Island episode in which an old man’s wish was to have one more dance with his deceased wife. And in the magical world of television, his fantasy came true. I was only able to re-create that fantasy in my sleep, dreaming the same thing a few years later about my father. ■

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of MADDvocate - Summer 2009

MADDvocate - Summer 2009
Contents
In the Know
Court Reporting
Bonded by Love, Forever Apart
Searching for Greener Grass?
Painful Reminder
Legally Speaking
Healing Journey

MADDvocate - Summer 2009

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