A Loss They Don't Prepare You For in the Early Days of Grief

The following is a post on what has become a series.  If you have been through an illness or death of a parent/loved one, 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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I can't speak for anyone else but there was an aspect of grief when I lost Mom that I wasn't prepared for- a loss of identity.  In the week or two following her passing, I felt like I was falling down a glacial crevice with marble walls and nothing to grasp as I was free falling.  From age 9 on, it was her and I against the world.  Dad left and we were on our own and she made less than $10k per year that first year back in the mid 80's.  My world was full of envelopes and notebook scribblings of budgets, to do lists and figuring vacation time...all habits I have now.  After she was pregnant with me, I didn't know there were scans done to try to explain her weight gain and when none were able to be found, so began her lifelong struggle with weight, just like me.  We clung to each other and spent many nights in deep conversations about life, the divorce and crying together developing a fierce protection of each other which are traits I carry into relationships with anyone who proves they're in it for the long haul.  She had thin skin until she got her hysterectomy and my skin may as well be made of vellum.

Obviously we were different from each other in just as many ways from our likes and dislikes, hobbies, etc. but you don't realize how much of them, good and trying, are a part of you particularly when there was so much struggle early on.  When they're gone, more than a piece of your heart is gone, so is a part of your identity.  Because you want and require stability in any form, you may try to find your own new identity or try to incorporate more of theirs into yours in an effort to keep them close.  I went from wanting to be a death doula (to help others the way I felt we weren't helped) to a jewelry maker (to be creative like her and also to do some jewelry with her casket flowers so I jumped in with a $200 investment) to a demonstrator for the party plan she was involved in (to keep her friends in the products and maybe try my hand at doing something that would make her proud.)  I befriended a few of her closest friends on social media because I thought maybe she'd want me to even though I didn't when she was here.  I thought her closest sibling and I, whom I love very much, would get closer and bond through this experience.

None of those things panned out. While death doulas are rising in popularity, I don't know that I wouldn't be a puddling heap on the floor with the family.  ("Uh, we're going to have to ask you to leave, you're bringing the rest of us down.")  The jewelry thing will be done eventually but I'm not putting a timeframe on that.  I have everything preserved and when I need a distraction, it will be there.  The party plan I pretty quickly talked myself out of because her friends expect something specific from the experience they had with her and I would never be able to fill those shoes.  They all have also said the only reason they bought that product was to spend time with Mom at the retreats she would put together.  Imagine being so great that people would buy stuff just to be around you?  I don't have that gift.  Her friends are nice but there's really been no reaching out after the initial befriending though I was told that meant a lot to them that I did.  Her sib, who was her absolute best friend in the whole world and honestly had a relationship with her that I envied, doesn't lean on me but their spouse.  I get it because obviously I do that with the Mr but I need family too because my immediate family is gone and I feel like our grieving styles are not allowing that to happen.  I know we have a lot to sort through both physically and emotionally but I would be lying if I said it didn't hurt a little.  I'm not writing off the possibility to come together in the future but none of this is going how I thought it would.

I built up this future in my head where Mom's friends and sib would meet up with us, maybe make some of Mom's favorite dishes that she made or saved online, sit around and share memories and they could be a connection to her.  I envisioned our sliver of a core family that's left on this dying family tree would come together and get close in her honor but I just found out that my grandpa's wife was ill and I didn't find out for a week and that was only because I was talking to the sib.   I don't think it would've been mentioned otherwise if it wasn't brought up as a secondary thing.  It feels like floating in the ocean with no hint of land in sight when you feel like your entire sense of family is gone.  These lifelines I built in my head in the early days are not panning out.  I didn't realize how much of her was a big part of me which sounds stupid, she's my Mom!  But when she died, I didn't expect an extra part of me to die with her.  I didn't expect to feel like a stranger in my own skin.  I feel like I've been forced into shedding this shell of who I was and it's just lying in this desert behind me for me to stare at; to mourn in addition to mourning her.  This is where the toxically positive would try to tell me to look at this as an opportunity to reinvent myself.  Be better... you know, for her.  Fine...then you do it.  You stop your way of life, abandon all hope and have half the people you thought you could count on turn away from you and tell me how that feels.  It is something you can't even fathom and there is no positive thinking your way out of something you would never choose for yourself.  

So in addition to going through the complex grief of losing Mom so quickly, unnecessarily, and the suffering she had those last days, I get to mourn myself.  I get to let those words several of my closest friends said to me before she passed ring in my ears..."you will never be the same."  I have to pray that in going through all of this, that my marriage doesn't suffer.  The Mr has been nothing but supportive, wonderful and tells me to stop apologizing but it's in my DNA... Mom did it too when she felt like a burden.  If I lost him, I would truly be alone in the worst possible way.  I cannot tell you what it's like to sit in the rubble of your old self in addition to your old life even if you didn't like your old self very much.  I know my posts make some people uncomfortable; we're conditioned to tamp grief down, medicate if necessary and slap on a happy face for the masses.   I'm looking for those one or two people.  The ones who can't quite put into words what I just did but feel seen now.  The ones who thought they were alone when they had expectations for their grief process that turned out nothing like they thought.  To the rest who actually read but haven't gone through it yet, a resource for when you do to not feel alone on your new, unasked for reality.  I have no idea who I will be when the waves of panic, breathlessness, and sorrow are occasional instead of constant.  I have no expectation of who that woman will look like, act like, or give to others because I feel like I've been leveled.  I can only hope if the fog ever lifts that I have the Mr, the friends that have truly stuck by me through this and a goodly amount of you if I'm lucky.

I hope she doesn't suck.  

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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:

Crisis Text Line or text 741741

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (or call 988)

Speak Grief

Heal Grief

Books I'm currently reading:

It's OK That You're Not OK (Meeting Grief & Loss in a Culture that Doesn't Understand)

How to Carry What Can't Be Fixed

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