18 9 Picking Up the Pieces: Pollyanna Takes Charge

Navigating Grief and Rediscovering Purpose

In this heartfelt episode, the speaker reflects on their month-long journey through grief following the death of their father on March 9th. They share their emotional struggle, the impact of familial losses, and the challenge of dealing with frozen ground in Canada's cold climate, delaying the burial. The speaker recalls fond memories of their father, his life with dementia, and the meaningful tasks of sorting through his belongings. Despite feeling overwhelmed and disconnected, they find resilience by recognizing the importance of stepping back into life, practicing gratitude, and making a commitment to listening and supporting others. The episode concludes with an announcement about next week's guest, John Lee Duma, an ex-army veteran and successful entrepreneur.

00:00 Introduction and Apology

00:28 Coping with Loss: My Father's Passing

03:07 Memories and Reflections

07:42 Sorting Through Memories

16:18 Realizations and Moving Forward

26:19 A Call to Listen and Support

27:57 Upcoming Episode Teaser

with Elaine @TheDarkPollyanna

©2025-2018 Elaine Lindsay SZF42.com All rights reserved.

Elaine @TheDarkPollyanna: Suicide,

forgiveness, shadowing, stigma, igniting,

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and.

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Stigma.

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Stigma, the shame surrounding

suicide ideation, and mental health.

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We talk about the hard stuff

because asking for help

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should be as easy as order.

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Here we share real stories.

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Who

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survived live ideation,

mental health challenges?

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Why sharing.

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Days note, suicide and forgiveness.

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The podcast is for education only.

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Some of the subject matter could be

triggering for those who are either

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grieving or having mental health problems.

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If you are in North America, you can

text 9 8 8 for immediate support.

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And if you're elsewhere, please

reach out to your local suicide

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hotline for mental health services.

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You matter.

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My aim is to normalize the

conversation so you feel safe

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enough to speak up and ask for help.

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So now let's start the show.

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Hi there.

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It's good to be back.

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And I'm sorry.

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It, I realize it seems a little,

I don't know, self-indulgent.

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The past few

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episodes have been me mostly,

and I'm afraid this one will

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be as well yet, I think.

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This is important, and I'm putting this

together because I'm really relieved to

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say today I am on an upward trajectory.

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It took quite a while for

me to catch myself falling.

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See, my, my father died on the

9th of March and, it's currently

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the 8th of April.

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It's been a full month, and yet

I am still waiting to be able to

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incur my father because I live

in Canada in the world's second

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coldest capital, and in all honesty.

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The ground is frozen.

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It's basically the bottom line.

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Now I realize that's not a big deal

'cause it has to do with everyone

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who has to bury someone now and

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people who said he had

a great life, he was 92.

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I totally get that.

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And yes he did.

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My father is my hero.

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Yet, it doesn't stop me from

being so sad, and from basically

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boarding the grief chain

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and basically reboarding the grief train,

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I thought I had a handle on it.

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In all honesty, I've lost a lot of

people over the years, and as people

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who watch the episode know a lot of

them I've actually lost to suicide.

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This was not the case.

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My father

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peacefully in his sleep.

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I had asked the night before.

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I literally asked my mom to come and

get him because he just wasn't getting

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to live life as he knew it anymore.

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See, my father had dementia.

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I feel truly blessed that he only had

dementia for a little over two years.

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In that time, he knew who we were.

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He didn't have a great short-term memory.

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It actually became a bit of

a joke with him and I, it's

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the blind leading the blind.

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'cause he'd asked me what day it was

or what the date was, and invariably

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I'd screw it up and then we'd laugh.

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And then a moment later, he'd

ask again because he'd forgotten.

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Our conversations during the

week were almost, I wrote

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on Mondays, we talked about the fact that

he didn't get a paper on Monday anymore.

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And no, they didn't lower the price.

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It was still the same price.

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For two less papers 'cause it was

no longer a paper on Sunday either.

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Did you sleep well, dad,

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basically I would get some smart all

answer and he'd say, I'm still boots up.

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That was his idea of funny.

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He had forgotten over this last year

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that my mom died.

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There were many painful conversations

about him wondering where she'd gone,

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and then in between those, he would

wonder where my sister had gone.

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My sister.

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She beat cancer for 24 and a half years,

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and then she got a Moderna shot

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and she was gone in three weeks.

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She had trouble breathing.

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The cancer had left her, the

chemotherapy rather had left her

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with definite breathing issues.

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She had COPD

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and unfortunately.

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No one was home but her.

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She fell down the stairs

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and we had to let her go four days later.

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That was in 2021.

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Dad didn't have a lot to do after that.

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That

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was October the following May,

Lucy, the Boston Terrier died.

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It left that with no daily routine

anymore, other than our phone call.

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We were very lucky.

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My father lived five minutes away.

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He only had one absolutely iron

clad wish rule request, and that

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was that he would stay in his home.

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The home that he and my mother purchased

when they were finally able to settle down

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and he wasn't being transferred anymore,

the home they lived in for 45 years.

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I was able to honor that wish

against doctor's suggestions and

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many other people's suggestions.

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Never asked for, but given.

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People didn't understand

that we came to this country.

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My mother, my father, myself

with my grandmother and my aunt.

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Instead of bringing with us worldly

goods and furniture, et cetera,

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my parents used the money to bring

my grandmother and my aunt with

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them because family is everything.

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That's what mattered most to my dad.

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We have been immersed in putting things

together, setting up the funeral mass,

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having a visitation at the

funeral home, getting memorial

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cards done, informing people.

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All of that takes time.

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The strangest thing is time

seemed to wow in and out.

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It got shorter, it got longer.

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It felt weird,

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and all through the time,

people were wonderful.

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People kept asking how they could help.

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Could they come over?

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Could people bring me coffee?

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Could we have lunch?

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All the things that friends do.

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People checking on me because most people

who know me, oh, I was Daddy's girl.

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I called him Daddy used

to drive my sister crazy.

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That's who he was to me.

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He really mattered to me.

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Whole family did.

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Dad was the last one

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of his generation, the last one

of the friends here in Canada,

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of all their group that chum together

of many of the veteran peacekeepers.

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He served with,

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of all of those he served in the RCEF

with in the various sections where

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he worked and most definitely all

of those he served with in the REF

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and he spent 13 months in Aiden when

it was a crown colony of Britain.

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All of these things and more

kept going through my head.

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And yesterday we went to my dad's,

my husband, myself, my son, my

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nephew, to start sorting through,

oh, an absolute house full of

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memories, all kinds of memories.

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And in actual fact, although heartbreaking

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throughout the day, we found ourselves

laughing uncontrollably some of the

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things that had been kept and saved.

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Some break your heart like every card.

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My father had ever given my mother

and a bunch she'd given him.

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My mother was more like me,

a little more practical.

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Try not to save every single thing.

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Dad never missed a

holiday, an anniversary.

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God, he even got her

something from Groundhogs Day.

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He was a romantic, he was poetic

and she was his everything.

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And every single card had a beautiful

verse inside that he had written.

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And

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some of them were gigantic and

they were fabric and padded and.

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Just absolutely beautiful,

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and a lot of those were sad to me.

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All this stuff really has nowhere to go,

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and yet through it all I.

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It was my grade four report card.

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No surprise.

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Surprise, yes, I got good grades,

but it said I was very talkative.

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There were things from the children

and an awful lot of pictures.

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There were pictures everywhere.

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Tucked into the dresser mirror

beside the bed in the night tables,

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in the kitchen, in the dining room.

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Everywhere you looked, there were

pictures of the three grandchildren

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and the seven great-grandchildren,

and of course my sister and myself,

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nowhere near as many of us as there

were of our kids and their kids.

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It was

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draining, exhausting,

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and

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I have to say, by the time we came

back just before six last night,

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I was desperate to sit down.

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I.

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I hadn't sat down in over five hours

and puttering back and forth, putting

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things in bags, putting things in plastic

bins, things that had to be destroyed,

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paperwork, other things that could just

be thrown out, and things that we're

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going to be in sorting to give to.

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Clothing for the men's mission and

other things for, household goods and

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what we can offer as donations for

newcomers to the country, et cetera.

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We got a lot of that done.

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We had more than a dozen full

garbage bags when we were done.

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As many bins and three big

garbage piles of paperwork.

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My father kept every piece of

paper I believe that he ever had.

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Imagine my shock when in his night

table, I found my first communion card.

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That was 1962.

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A long time ago.

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Just imagine how much more stuff

there was if he also had that.

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All of this

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when I got home came down

on me like a ton of bricks.

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I

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yet.

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I realized that I wasn't

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as broken as I thought I would

be after the first full day of

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starting to clear the house.

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And don't get me wrong,

we barely made a dent.

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There are two full more floors

we have not even touched, so

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it's going to take a while.

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However,

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last night I slept

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the longest.

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I have full of four

hours since my dad died,

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and that was a little shocking.

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I.

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This morning in reading through

some emails and other things, I

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realized, my God, I had allowed myself

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to put myself back in a box

and just let myself fall.

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I had said no

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to.

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Every request I've

received in the past month,

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I hadn't even returned phone calls

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because, and this may come

as a shock to people who know

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me, I don't wanna talk now.

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Even Mrs.

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Pug said that I was quote

unquote talkative in grade four,

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have always been talkative.

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At the moment, it's the

last thing I want to do.

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I don't know if I can hold up

the other end of a conversation

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and I realized at eight o'clock

this morning I that I was heading

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down a very slippery slope.

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And if I allow myself to cross that line,

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it's going to be hell to

crawl outta that hole.

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And so like I've done so many

times before when life became

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too much and I was on the edge.

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I made the very difficult choice,

although much less this time.

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Must be maturing.

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Finally, I made the choice

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to dust off, pick myself up

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and step back into living.

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I can't just be like Flo or

Jetson floating along on the

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top of whatever comes next.

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That makes no sense.

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Not only that's boring, but

there's one thing I hate.

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It's boring.

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And I realized as I puttered away

this morning with still a lot of.

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Chores to do that, relate to dad's

death with notes, to write memorial

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cards, to send thank yous to write

as well that sitting in stasis isn't

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gonna get any of that done for me.

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And I know in looking

back in this past month.

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There are a few days where

I think, wow, where was I?

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Did I skip a day?

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Did I miss a total day?

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Where on earth was I?

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I'm back.

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I'm here

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and I'm actually,

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I'm actually a little proud of myself.

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For seeing the warning signs.

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Yeah, I know it took a whole month

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yet that's not as long

as it could have been.

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I spent a lot of time.

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Not in myself not being present.

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I spent a lot of time

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basically being a victim

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and for a number of years now, that

is absolutely not a place I wanna be.

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And being the dark Pollyanna

that, difficult balance of

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playing the GLAD game every day

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and having ideation be the tail

end of almost every thought

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can be so incredibly difficult.

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It can be hard to explain to people how

I could make a joke and even before the

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last words are off my lips, thoughts in

my head are dark and dismal and about

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ending, which never made any sense to me.

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Which is why I'm so thankful

that there is the Pollyanna

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piece of me that keeps me here

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because truth be told,

these past few years,

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Pollyanna is much, much stronger ideation.

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Peace is not in control.

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And that at first was a little scary.

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Yet now I think it's more

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I'll pat myself on the back

for realizing where I'm at and

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acknowledging of far I've come.

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Now that my dad has passed, I can be

much more brutally honest about how much

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of my life was dictated by the ideation

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about how difficult

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life was.

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Constantly battling with oneself.

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I never knew from one day to the

next if I'd win, Pollyanna would win.

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If ideation would win,

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I can more confidently say

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Pollyanna got the reams.

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Even though we've boarded

the grief train yet again,

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I believe I can be more useful

to those in the cars around me

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because I've come so close so many

times because I've had so many losses.

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Because I can truly say that the dark

Pollyanna does value living, and I know

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that I have an awful lot more of it to do.

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What does that mean

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from the perspective of I've made

that choice, now what do I do?

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I reinvest in my daily meditations.

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I am going back to the drawing

board and writing out what

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I'm grateful for every day

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and something I've done

for many years now.

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I do what I call my

flyboy fly by messages.

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I tell those around me that I love

them, that I'm thinking about them.

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I'm here to listen if they need me.

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And stepping up to listen, I

think is critically important.

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It's my way to give back.

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It's just as important to let people know

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that I was right there.

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I'm in the pit and I'm now climbing out

so that I can fully step up to listen.

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Because we each have to help another.

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It doesn't matter whether

you know them or not.

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I have asked before and I'll ask again.

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If you could just take 10 minutes

every month and give it to someone

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you don't know and just tell them.

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You will listen.

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You are going to step up and

listen to what they have to say.

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I'm not asking you to fix anything.

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I'm not asking you to give them

solutions, not asking for any of that.

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I'm asking you simply to listen.

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We all need to be seen and

we all need to be heard.

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And I believe it all

starts with each one of us.

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So this is my pledge for this month.

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I will actively seek out those

to whom I can step up to.

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Listen, I hope you can find

that one person as well.

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Or if you are struggling.

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You can be that one person that

one of us can step up to listen to.

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And I thank you so much

for hearing me out.

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I look forward to seeing you next time.

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Make the very most your today, every day.

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And I also want to say that.

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The next week's show, he is going to be

a friend I hadn't seen in a long time.

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I'll be chatting with John Lee Duma.

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He's an ex-army veteran.

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He is an amazing entrepreneur.

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He is a podcaster extraordinaire

who does Entrepreneurs on fire.

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I met him back when he

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I actually met him through

Google Plus, which is a platform

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no longer with us, sadly.

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I thank you so much for listening

and be sure and tune in next week.

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It's going to be really good.

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Bye for now.

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We'll see you next time.

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Voiceover: Thank you for being

here for another inspiring episode

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of Suicide Zen Forgiveness.

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We appreciate you tuning in.

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