Eyes

Each of my EMDR sessions begins with the therapist reading this:

"Old disturbing memories can be stored in the brain in isolation, they get locked into the nervous system with the original images, sounds, thoughts and feelings involved. The old distressing material just keeps getting triggered over and over again. This prevents learning/healing from taking place. In another part of your brain, you already have most of the information you need to resolve this problem, the two just cannot connect. Once EMDR starts, a linking takes place. New information can come to mind and resolve the old problems. This may be what happens spontaneously in REM or dream sleep when eye movements help to process unconscious material"

Then our session starts, the therapist tells me to "step back" and envision the scene of finding Bob on the morning of May 28th. To watch this "scene" as a spectator instead of a participant. Which is often hard to do -- then she stops me or I stop her, and we discuss what's going through my mind.

This last session was especially hard because everything came up, starting with the "men in black" from the funeral home who were cold and impersonal, just, you know doing their jobs, and left Bob's wedding ring and watch on the nightstand without telling me, and I would find them after they took Bob away.

And that led to the very sympathetic people who picked up Boomer after he died, who actually hugged me, asked me if I wanted Boomer's collar and called the next day asking me if I needed support through one of their "pet grief" counselors...

And that led me to talking about Zenith's death, then Chris...

And we started EMDR again and all I could see were eyes.

Bob's beautiful blue eyes, wide open, staring blankly at the ceiling on that horrible morning.
Boomer's deep brown eyes rimmed in black and staring blankly at me as they carried him off in a cart.
Zenith's blue eyes, scared, staring at me, still alive, when I left her at the vet hospital and told her, "don't worry, Mommy will come back for you" but where she would later die.
Chris' unopened eyes -- in a coma when I last saw her.
Even One Fish -- one dead fish eye staring sideways at me.

Dead eyes.
Moving like a slideshow.
One after another after another after another... to the tune of the therapist's finger movements.

Bob's eyes, Boomer's, Zenith's, Chris', the fish.... over and over and over and over again and again...

I had to stop session.

And my therapist said it would be good to write about the eyes.... So here I am.

They say the eyes are the window of the soul. When I think of these eyes, I know, I know that it is the truth....

Then, the strangest thing happened, when I took out my checkbook at the end of my session to write a check for my session, I found a blue pen in my purse which I did not recognize, so I looked at it and saw the name of the funeral parlor on the pen which cremated Bob, Zenith and Boomer --- and my therapist looked at me and said, "What's wrong?" and I showed her the pen and she said, "Well, that's definitely a sign that someone is watching over you."

Still not sure how that pen got into my purse.