April 2012
38 posts
11 tags
Email notes, texting, paper notes and sorrow
Shared self-hatred
Yesterday I delved back in to the process of transcribing Chris’ notes. He’s got coil notebooks, little paper notes, scraps of lined paper and folded bits of paper. On them are critical notes to himself, lists of things to do, names of bands and artists and musicians and writers, scraps of prose and poetry.
One of the notes I found yesterday was a piece of white...
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Watch
Chri Is
11/1/11
to me
Being sick is crappy. Almost as bad as being under the weather! Speaking of weather, I picked up a compilation of garage punk rock bands from bc. I guess the loose theme is that they were supposed to write songs about where they are from. And one of the many bands from Vancouver wrote a song called ‘it rains’. The song is about thirty seconds long and...
5 tags
revised mourner's bill of rights
(The original Mourner’s Bill of Rights, by Alan D. Wolfelt).
You have the right to regress.
You have the right to break down; to spend 1 and 2 and 3 days in bed.
You have the right to fuck up at work.
You have the right to make decisions and plans that are the best decisions and plans for you and your healing, even if such decisions and plans are inconvenient to others.
You have the...
soundpony: Advice for Assisting The Grieving,... →
soundpony:
In the first weeks following a major loss a grieving person will receive flowers. Actually, lots of flowers. So many flowers. The house of a grieving family will become filled with bouquet upon bouquet. They will be beautiful, but they will be a constant reminder of the fact of the loss and the…
2 tags
Best search terms leading to...
Not WordPress’ top, mind, but my favourite:
1) chris love talent entertaining
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4) how do you know if ponyboy will stay gold
5) what page is it’s like the mist is what’s pretty
6) wherever you are always be happy my friend
7) my life is bro
8) rena chris reimer
9) live webcast christopher joseph reimer celebration of life (we...
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9 weeks
Yesterday I took his name off as beneficiary of my RRSP.
Financial planners will tell you it only makes sense to name your spouse as beneficiary, but I was thinking emotionally when I set it up 6 years ago and named Chris and Jonathon as 50-50. Because I thought it would be another way to look after him even if I wasn’t there.
Today I went looking for a card for something, in my stationery...
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8 weeks 6 days approximately 19 hours
i wonder if my heart will ever stop this incessant pounding.
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grief is ugly
grief is all ugly feelings at once.
grief is inveterate rage. grief howls.
grief is self-indulgent. feels sorry for itself because its parents went to Mexico and it’s jealous and abandoned. goes to sample sales and comes home with bagfuls of new clothes, shoes, purses. writes terrible sentimentalities and broadcasts them all over the internet.
when grief gets really agitated, it starts...
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Baba
Excavating my underwear drawer today I discovered the funeral card from Baba’s funeral. It was funny in a way to see it because I was not involved at all in the creation of it, whereas I put myself in the centre of everything to do with Chris’ service. I’m not sure what I was doing when preparations needed to be made for Baba; shirking off and being depressive, likely.
This...
mrmoonbeam:
Somewhere between melting...
17 tags
tribute
This is an edited version of the tribute that I read at Chris’ funeral/celebration of life on February 29, 2012.
I loved my brother even before he came to be gestated in our mother’s womb. I was five years old when she got pregnant. I was so excited about it, and I was beside myself with joy when my father told me that I had a little brother, that he’d been born at 6:02 p.m., and that his...
8 tags
sick sick sick sick
I feel sick to my stomach all the time. Morbidly fixated. Everything is triggering. Can’t stop thinking about how they had to put the top of his skull back on after the autopsy was finished. Can’t stop thinking about how it’s my fault that he is dead—-when he was 18 or 19 he told me he didn’t think he was going to live very long and I said What the fuck are you...
sleep.
is tough. had a traumatic dream about him last night and tonight i don’t want to go to sleep.
the last photo i ever took of him was this shitty...
Four months later he was dead.
he tries to sleep on my floor. i tease him...
April 2009.
oh my little buddy.
"Do you still have your parents?"
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six weeks
i feel a deep depression coming on. can’t stop eating. can’t focus on any task. so exhausted.
Video of the Day: In Memory of Chris Reimer →
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April Fool
Postcard text reads:
Dear Sister,
I bought this postcard for you many months ago in Berlin. I think you would like it there. Cheap falafel sandwiches, art, etc.
Anyways, I may be very forgetful, and may have the worst penmanship ever, but it doesn’t mean I don’t love you very much.
I am very glad you is my sister.
love,
reimer
(He’d sent it to me in January).
...
13 tags
Towards Healing: My Father
Tim Reimer lost his father in a plane crash in 1971. Tim was 18; John Reimer was 43.
Tim Reimer lost his son to suspected electrical heart failure in 2012. Tim was 57; Chris Reimer was 26.
My father has every right to be angry, bitter, depressed, hateful, vengeful. But he isn’t. He isn’t at all. Don’t get me wrong; my dad is profoundly sad. Exhausted with grief. Like me, he says he’s able to work...
