RelationshipDoc's Blog

I understand myself just what you mean about rving transporting us to a less stressful world. A world were even grief can be healed.

We have walked in your moccasins with the death of our 19 years old son, also a motorcycle accident. Though it has been some time ago ... time helps but it never heals. The emptiness is always there. Selling our home and full timing has been very helpful, our choice has sustained us. Being "away, alone, together" is so very special ... then with family and friends in our time frame is where we are in our lives. We feel for your pain. Wally & Iris Schmidt iris.bac@mac.com

I understand myself just what you mean about rving transporting us to a less stressful world. A world were even grief can be healed.

Thanks for your note. I appreciate your thoughts and comments. And btw, I like your profile.

Wayne

We have walked in your moccasins with the death of our 19 years old son, also a motorcycle accident. Though it has been some time ago ... time helps but it never heals. The emptiness is always there. Selling our home and full timing has been very helpful, our choice has sustained us. Being "away, alone, together" is so very special ... then with family and friends in our time frame is where we are in our lives. We feel for your pain. Wally & Iris Schmidt iris.bac@mac.com

Thanks so much for your comments. It's helpful knowing others have been in our moccasins. Well, knowing it intellectually is one thing, but hearing from those who have 'been there, done that" is helpful. We still have to work full time for a few more years, but that just makes the "away, alone, together" time all the more precious to us.

Four years ago, my husband lost his arm above the elbow in a motorcycle accident. We both rode touring bikes and toured nearly every state in the Union. Three weeks after he was discharged from the hospital, we went to an RV Show and purchased our very first motorhome (36 ft Winn-Adventurer w/3slides). Now, 4 years and 54,000 miles later we rejoice in the healing times we have spent with each other. Last week, our aunt died (we were her guardians). after a two week slide into profound dementia, kidney failure, and excruciating pain. Insurance, her creditors, relatives showing up to pick her bones, funeral preparations, etc. have left us frazzled!!! We buried her on Friday and we are leaving for a two week "getaway" to the FMCA rally in VT and then onto coastal Maine. Only another RVer can understand how staying with your loved ones in a big box for a few days can be so healing.

I could not really put it in words until I read the post by the Relationship Doc. Thank you!

Thank you so much for sharing your experience, redbeelips. Hearing about your healing is helping ours.

We're leaving Monday for a week-long trip to east Tennessee. We can't wait. Things continue to get more complicated following Drew's death, and we're spending a LOT of time with our daughter helping her walk through this. We need to get away to re-charge so we can come back and walk with her through the valley some more. We can't wait.

Hope your trip to VT and coatal Maine brings you the healing you need, too.

Wayne

My deepest condolances to your family on this loss. It is so hard to loose someone so young, and so unexpected. I congratulate you on your great way of helping the healing by just getting away from it for a while. There is so much to do after a death with paperwork, belongings and all the legal stuff that getting away to recharge was just the thing. We went through a similar thing with my husband's sister a couple of years ago. Their mother is elderly and she had just the two children, so it fell on my husband and I to do everything. (She was 47 and never married) We, thankfully, had our motorhome and could escape for recharging, too. It does help!

I feel your grief in the loss of your son-in-law. I lost my baby brother just before his 21st birthday due to a motorcycle accident. The driver that caused it was clearly in the wrong, he fled the state before his arraignment and as far as I know has never been apprehended (this was years ago). My father died at 63 due to a brain tumor, 10 years after my brother died. Grieving the loss of a loved one is always difficult and sometimes people who haven't had that loss have little understanding as to the many paths it takes to accept it and that sometimes, unbidden it can return while in the middle of a happy, fun moment because of a memory. I also had to get away after my Dad's death, at the time I had a sailboat in San Diego Bay, and I spent way too many hours on it.

My mother-in-law died due to pneumonia caused by the flu the same year my grandson was born, she was my daughter's favorite Grandma, I had to take care of all the paperwork for her, my wife is the oldest child. That legal stuff seems to take forever, it lasted almost a year to close that stuff up.

I'm glad you could be there for your daughter, I'm sure she really appreciates having a Dad and Mom to love her and hold her when she cries as I'm sure she does even if she is a strong woman.

Oh, partly because of my brother's accident, I teach motorcycle safety. He had all the wrong advice from friends who rode and I hope that by virtue of the lessons I teach I might be able to spare another family some of that grief we went through, even though some of what happens on the road can't seem to be avoided.

I hope some healing has happened by now, but I do know how long the process can take, hope to see you at a rally we end up at some time.