damn hormones?

I'm beginning to think that my emotional roller coaster of grief is strongly correlated to my hormonal state of mind.

It's peculiar that I am always interested in finding patterns but can't actually ever remember details to confirm a pattern. It's always just a hunch. For example, if I would like to figure out whether my emotional sensitivity is related to my hormonal balance, wouldn't it make sense that, at one point, I would start recording the weeks during which I am unusually prone to more than average depression and then examine where I am in my cycle?

I would also like to know why I am feeling better today (and this week) than I have felt the week before, during which I spent most days in a depressed haze, crying my eyes out, at least, once or twice a day. Could it be that my kids returned from spending most of the mid-winter school break at their Dad's house? Are my children saving me from complete rock-bottom? It's possible. Because, even though they can be demanding, annoying, frustrating, and just a whole lot of teeth clenching work, they are the sunshines of my life. I realize, that sounds a bit contradictory (and kinda corny) but the mothers among you will understand. Parenting is like a love-hate relationship. Fulfilling and draining at the same time. I have said it many times - without my kids - I would not have survived this year. And I do not know how parents, who have lost a child, go on living. I would just want to die. It is the only thing I can think of that is worse than losing your partner. I would take any other strike of fate over that. ... (Note to God: please don't strike me anymore this year... please.)

**
Before the kids returned on Sunday, I got myself downtown to, at last, engage myself in some gallery hopping. I've been wanting to go for months. J and I used to go often. What I didn't calculate was the fact that J was not part of this life anymore and how this may affect me. As I went on my trail of galleries, surrounded by clusters of people - nobody alone, it seemed - I became more and more depressed. I missed him so much. Memories everywhere. Finally, on the way to one of my favorite places, the Aperture gallery, I turned around on my heel to abort this awful afternoon. I needed to get back to my car before I had a nervous breakdown in the middle of the street. Alas, I did not make it.
I had to duck into a building entrance to release my tears and I pulled my scarf over my face because I was so embarrassed. I was just standing there, helpless, sobbing. When I finally got my composure back, I walked to my car and, just before I got in, I heard it. The cooing of a mourning dove. At first, I thought, I made it up. But then I heard it again and I exhaled. I hadn't heard a mourning dove since the weeks after J died, almost a year ago.
The next morning, I woke up to a mourning dove cooing at my window. Just as it had woken me every day in the week after J died. I felt comforted but also self-conscious, in a way, because it probably meant that my sadness was so powerful in its energy that it seemed like I needed an intervention from beyond (or wherever).

Now, my rational brain is wondering whether it is maybe just the season for these doves? Perhaps, the mourning doves are appearing because it is almost March and that's when they return to this area.. or, at least, that's when I last saw them. Maybe I didn't notice them ever before because they had no real significance to me ... but then I have to remind myself that I have always loved the sound of a mourning dove and, I think, I would remember if I heard it before - because I so rarely have in my life. ... The only time I distinctly remember hearing the doves was when my grandfather died. But, knowing how faulty memory can be - maybe I'm just making this up in my head. Maybe I heard them much more often than that...