The wonderful hospice bereavement team continues to send me email meant to help manage grief, suggest helpful activities, and I think just simply remind me that I’m remembered, though I’m pretty sure the messages are automated. I tell myself I am important to them.

Recently, Ginger sent me a list called “A Wholistic Approach to Grief,” author unknown. The first area addressed Physical Care. We widows should exercise to help ease the stress, eat small amounts often, reduce caffeine and sugar, drink fluids, limit alcohol, sleep. Huh. I could have opened a page from a health text book, read a magazine article, any online health site, a pamphlet at a gym. Basic health 101.

Basic health practice flies out the widow’s back door. We widows swirl and twirl right around all the basics. We forget about water. We eat whatever is on the counter, eat the entire refrigerator, or don’t eat. We walk/mope around the living room, around and around. Thus, the refresher course.

They don’t even know it, but gals in my life motivate me. I’m trying to hang with their physical maintenance. I don’t let them know because it isn’t easy, and I don’t want to let them or me down. But I try to salad and to water and to no-sugar my days. I walk, run, sometimes bike. What I seem to do without trying is… nap.

I’ve never been a napper. Something happened. My pillow, no, my whole bed became my favorite thing in my house, and I cannot, I mean cannot, resist it. Don’t even want to. So I sleep. Wake up. Go back to sleep.

Maybe I’ll stay awake one of these days. At least I know, according to a wholistic approach to grief, I’m doing it right. Yawn.