The following is a post on what has become a series. If you have been through a death of a parent, consider this what the young'uns call a 'trigger warning' as it deals with the raw emotions of an unexpected death which may include cursing and not holding back my feelings about my experience. If you are new here and want to see the posts leading up to this one, you can start with posts on July 7th and go forward.
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There comes a point way sooner than it should that people appear to have moved on without you. It all starts trickling off a week after the death. You might have those straggler cards from a few people you didn't expect to hear from that may have been getting your address from a family member. It's good to hear from them and makes you feel better especially if they've shared stories that are new to you. You will have those very few people who are just super star friends or who have been through something similar as far as losing their parent that will check on you two weeks out and maybe into the third, if you're lucky.
People don't seem to realize that while the death may have occurred X date, that is not when your true grief begins. Yes, you cry, you're upset but your body is also protecting you. The thought of that person being gone will absolutely kick your knees out from under you... but there is work to be done. You have funeral arrangements to make, pictures to hastily gather hoping you can find the right ones to represent their life, ones that they would choose, not just what is available. (That's if you are only having one service because they are being buried. You'll need to plan an interment ceremony if you are having a viewing and then cremation.) Then come the myriad of phone calls. The three credit unions to put a freeze on their credit, social security, their work if they aren't retired, their life insurance company, retirement benefits if they are retired, hope like hell you have access to their passwords to check email for recurring bills, death certificates to order which aren't free and you're going to need at least five of. There are accounts to close, mortgage companies or landlords to work with, utility companies to notify, probate and someone's ENTIRE life's possessions that you likely now have a deadline to go through. So you know, when the month mark hits, you should be starting to move on right? Because doesn't it sound totally reasonable that you should have to deal with all of the above AND have sorted through your grief after a month? I mean, that's when people stop checking on you almost completely.
I'll admit, I was guilty of it before too but not because I wasn't thinking of them. It was not wanting to ask someone how they were doing and then have them mentally say "well, I WAS having my first day where that wasn't the first thing to cross my mind but thanks for throwing it back in my face." So I said nothing. I gave my condolences, checked in a few times and said I was there if they needed me anytime. I didn't want to bombard them or remind them of what they lost. Um, trust me... that ain't happening ever much less in a time period with the word "months" attached to it after the passing.
If you are a child, parent or spouse going through the loss which means you are directly involved in wrapping up their lives and are now thrust into this unasked for, horrifying "to do " list, you do not even get the luxury of what people consider grief for 3-4 weeks. Yes, you get your moments of breaking down, crying until your eyes swell shut and get knocked down by waves of grief so powerful you are drowning on dry land, but there's shit to do. Shit you have to slap a pulled together demeanor for so that affairs can be taken care of properly and hope the brain fog that has rendered you unable to remember to brush your teeth is going to allow you to somehow get done what needs to be done. You are numb. What you're feeling is nowhere near what it is assumed you are going through because people forget or don't know about all of the tasks you are forced to deal with. I mean think about how absurd it is that within four days, in our case, you are expected to plan an entire funeral, write an obituary to sum up someone's life to be out there forever, write a eulogy to do the same, find pictures and music for slide shows (which we were lucky enough to have put together for her 50th so we just had to add on to), pictures for memory boards from your own pictures and others, any favors if you wanted them and then YOU end up being the one to have to comfort others at this service you're supposed to hold it together for.
F**KED. UP.
Then all of the stuff I listed above which takes weeks to sort through but you know, don't mind me... I'm just over here getting the wind knocked out of me every 20 minutes going through her stuff, getting screenshots of posts going back over a decade and pulling old emails into PDFs so they are not potentially lost, remembering the good times, the hard times, the divorce and what she had to sacrifice to make sure I was okay because we were getting a laughable amount of child support. That one time I called her a bitch when I was 14 and ran, the way the videographer at our wedding caught her with a sweet smile on her face looking around at the reception with love in her eyes as Celine Dion's "Because You Loved Me" played in the background, the moaning sounds she made her last two days on Earth. The talks we had, and mourning the talks and life that will never happen. All while making sure everything that needs to get done to wrap up this beautiful woman's life and get all t's crossed and i's dotted like some sick transaction gets signed off on while you're sitting in the rubble of your old life.
Believe me, that is your old life. There is NO getting back to that...ever. No amount of support, therapy, converting to some religion, food, drugs or booze to help you cope will get you back to the shadow of the person you used to be especially if you were remotely close to your parent at any point in your life. If there were things left unsaid, distance whether on purpose, because you moved or because of covid, filling in the blanks over the years on either side (and likely getting it wrong), then your grieving is a layered experience of not just loss and all that goes with it but guilt, regret, shame, anger at the human condition, and gutted at not appreciating someone more while they were here. It's not something you share with most people, maybe just the people you trust most not to judge you because they know your heart. It chisels at your very core as you swirl in a tornado of self flogging as my dearest friend called it and you don't know how you can ever forgive yourself for taking a second for granted. You see all of the froofy quotes on social media about "we're only promised today" or "appreciate your parents while they're here because one day all you'll have are memories" and you know all of that is true but some of us are masters of "later." We don't know the true cost until it's too late.
But when you're about six weeks out, there's this feeling of abandonment that happens. You're into month two to the rest of the world but for you? You may have only just gotten possessions where they need to go due to the sale of their home or moving out of the apartment. Maybe you've gone through them and put them away if you needed tasks to complete for your sanity or maybe you're surrounded by them; unable to comprehend the task of how you are supposed to look at each item the person you love so dearly chose and decide what is "worthy" of keeping. What a horrible feeling of guilt and pain that process is! It feels like judging them or their taste when all you want is to smother them with love and keep every ball of lint in a purse or scrap of paper you find. You go through the big stuff, the small stuff, the collections, and endless paperwork from decades old bank statements to budgets written randomly cherishing their familiar handwriting to legal papers from a divorce. If this is your parent, you see things they went through that you never knew about and hid from you to protect you both as a kid and an adult. You die a little inside wishing they would've come to you for support and hope they didn't have to go through it alone. This is a whole other level of grief doing this process that no one prepares you for. You hear people say with a sigh that they need to decide what to do with all of X's stuff but you don't actually grasp what that task means both physically but more importantly, emotionally until you've had to dig through every single piece of someone's existence.
But you know... it's 6 weeks out. (Or seven now) You should be learning to adjust, right? Because all of the hard stuff has been over for awhile. 🙄
If you do have anyone still checking in on you at this point, this is the time when you start to consider if it's time to lie and you do. You don't want to be a downer, I mean who wants to hear about this?? Who wants to be reminded that it isn't wrapped up in a neat little self help bow after what society deems an appropriate amount of time. (Which if you're wondering seems to be three weeks before you start getting comments about "moving on.") You don't want to be the emotional vampire and drive those people away or burden them. So you start saying things like "hanging in", putting a cheerful tone in your voice to mask the panic attacks while someone is talking or keeping anything you do say brief. You have lumpy sides of your cheek and back of your lip from trying to stop from randomly crying. You want to give the people what they want which is you all better. Everyone else in your life has firmly moved on. Birthdays have been celebrated, vacations have been taken, school and work are consuming people, doctors appointments happen, binging of TV takes precedence to unwind from all of those stresses and rightfully so. But you're stuck over here unexpectedly crying on your first road trip when you listen to Sugar Ray's "When It's Over" because it hits different. Or trying not to break down at the doctors office lobby when you have to update information and now have to add this death into the family history. You're in this world of doing the least to take care of yourself because you need easy, not normal and you feel like you're failing at life. If you're on social media/the internet, you notice less likes after posting something mentioning them (or much less traffic to blog posts) because now you're making people uncomfortable. No one wants to be reminded of that from someone who grieves openly. People want you to get through your first month, then get back to posting funny dog videos or don't emerge from your social imposed exile until you've "moved on" because no one wants to read about your grief. You should be taking care of yourself! Oh, you sweet, clueless bastards. (Not you, the one next to you.)
Try to remember this post the next time someone in your life is grieving and maybe even refer them to it so they feel less alone. So they know that someone understands and that they know the grief process is truly just beginning for them and they get what it feels like to feel left behind. They are not alone even though it feels like they are. Someone understands and they know there is a long road ahead to pick up the shards of their old life and are holding them in their hearts. They understand that just because you're not sobbing every 10 minutes like the day it happened does not mean you are fine/healed/moved on/your old self. It means you're smiling on the outside while on fire, screaming and crying on the inside...and it sucks. It sucks because we as a society are sadder, angrier and more medicated than we've ever been and then have the nerve to turn around and give people who have had their hearts ripped out and lives pulled out from under them cheery quotes they saw on social media.
If you've managed to get here and honestly, I doubt many will, I don't need you to leave comforting words. (Though I do love your responses so feel free!!)
Just consider responding here or on FB with the following word: bingo.
That'll speak volumes.
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If you or someone you know is going through a grief process, you may find these resources given to me by a friend helpful:
Books I'm currently reading:
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