How My Grief Has Changed

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, dark humor and not holding back my feelings about my experience.  If that's offensive, go elsewhere as this post isn't likely going to benefit you.  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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When you are in the days of anticipatory and early grief, your world is leveled.  There is no better word for it.  Everything you are, were, and hoped to be is gone because that person that was so a part of your core is gone.  Never to be seen again.  Your entire view of the world, your life, the life you used to have (because that dies with them) and people changes.  People you thought without a doubt would be there for you, aren't and those you weren't sure what to expect, step up in ways you could never imagine.  You learn a lot about how other people grieve and if they've ever been through it because they tend to rush to you to let you know they know a bit about how devastating it is.  I grieve loudly and in the early days, some find that acceptable and others walk around you like if they step in you're grief they're going to somehow catch it like a disease.  But what happens when you're a few months out?  When society deems if you're still talking about it that you've got a problem or need counseling.  Mine or anyone else's grief is no one's problem to be solved.  

I have dealt with the last thing hanging out there that was my responsibility on the sucky post death to do list.  I went over the heads of the cemetery douches to the owner and finally got her headstone ordered after they dicked me around for months.  I know there is still some things from her sib that will come to me after they have gone through them and they are handling probate which is "easy" according to the lawyer because Mom wasn't living high on the hog.  She always joked "I hope you're not expecting an inheritance!" and I said "uh, I was there Mom and I'd want you here over your money anyway."  So there is no estate to settle anymore, it's just getting a judge to sign off to say it's over.  The final thing to say she's really gone.  When the second by second tremors of loss stop because you have checked the last thing off of the post death 'to do' list and all you have is wading through the rubble, you just look around and think 'how the hell is this my life now?' 

There are so many remnants of how she was failed and medical settings are very triggering for me.  The shitty tissues they provide in the hospital?  They've been at every doctors appointment I've been to since July.  Dermatologist (two of them), primary care physician, and gynecologist.  Everywhere.  They sent me into panic attacks early on and now they just make me want to set them on fire when I see them.  Most doctors are very understanding, holding my hand or hugging me which is nice.  Then you have my 2nd-year-in, new-to-us primary doctor.  While she's better than our previous doctor, which wouldn't have taken much, she's also clearly incentivized by drug companies.  Let me tell you something lady, just because someone is crying when talking about their mother's death story less than 4 months later does NOT mean throw anti-depressants at the problem.  Grief is not a problem to be solved and any book worth the pages it's printed on will tell you that.  I was venting to a friend of mine who is a grief counselor and she said how often she hears that BS and it's maddening.  Again, society trying to tamp down the process and get you back to 'normal.'  I am allowed to be sad and I am not going to mask my feelings.  Period.  I let her know as much.  I am so tired of people sweeping other people's pain under the rug.  Think about how many people have lost a parent, spouse, child, close friend.  I mean the ones that just level you as a person when they go.  They are amongst us everyday even if you never leave your house.  Driving beside us.  Standing in line at the grocery store next to us.  Singing at a concert with us.  Delivering our packages.  Helping us with returns.  Answering phones wherever you call.  They are surrounding us more than people who have not experienced those losses and our answer as a society is either shut up about it after a few weeks, or, medicate yourself and get on with it.  Look around at our world.  You see how well that's going, right?

Anyhoo.

So how am I currently doing?  Honestly, my brain has done a very dangerous thing.  It's convinced me it didn't happen.  I know it did, I'm not delusional but as a coping mechanism, it's like "it's the holidays, she's busy.  That's why you haven't caught up yet."  That's the problem when you don't see someone as much or if they don't live close to you or whatever the circumstance, it's easy to think that.  It's also easy to get dropped to your knees when you have moments throughout the day that remind you that they're really gone.  The Mr said the other day I don't cry as much, and I don't, but I don't do it in front of him unless it's a landmine.  Just as I've done from day one, I cry in the morning and at night in private if I need to but that emotion has slipped into numbness and I feel like a sponge that sadness has soaked into every crevice of me.  No, this isn't the 'acceptance' stage, which by the way that author never intended for those stages to be taken so literally and has spoken out against them, this is just another step in coping right now.  But, you know, now let's throw the holidays on top of it.  We would've met by now at grandma's grave to chat and catch up.  This was going to be the year we were going to work out a way to safely see her if she wasn't already sick.  (October-December every year of our marriage it seems like she was always snotting up from something! 😆)  We'd been looking forward to that and it's gone and now there's just a pile of traditions to tie us to her and new ones we have to do to honor her to sort through.  

Then you have the secondary losses.

The losses of what will never be.  The things I can't email or chat with her about and telling it to the air hoping she can hear me isn't the same.  I will never see her grow old and while no one wants to really see that and the issues that can come with it, I knew she would be a sassy old lady if given the chance.  The hugs that will never be given.  The way her eyes lit up when she saw us even in the hospital initially.  The asking her not to get us candy in our stockings because we had enough but she'd get it for us anyway.  I had a grand kumbaya vision that maybe her sibs and friends would rally around me after mom's death and we would comfort each other in our mutual grief over her.  We would have a get together or maybe my cousins would reach out to me as we were always so close years ago before they were so busy.  I mean, I know they lost her too but I'm the one who lost a mother so that has to count for something, right as far as people making sure you're okay?  Nope.  Her closest sib has kept in touch with me but not like I thought it would be.  I know that they need to have their personal grief journey as well but I guess I just thought maybe I would be more a part of it.  It's abundantly clear as I continue to shout Mom's name, stories and memories on my personal social media page that I am still grieving and that sharing her will not stop anytime soon.  The 'likes' are getting less; signaling people either don't want to hear it anymore or maybe think by acknowledging it that it's encouraging me to 'wallow' or whatever.  Last time I checked, love wasn't something to be ashamed of.  Of course, I can only assume but when it's something obvious where you can literally track the numbers it's right there in your face.  "It's holiday time...fuck your grief, it's time for celebration!"  Yeah, with your family...that's still here.  Some of us are newly thrown into basically no family when all of our memories include what you still get to have if you're lucky which is a room full of people you love (and tolerate.)  So cut us a little slack and click a button for God's sake so we don't feel any more abandoned!  I see the same thing here.  Far less interaction with posts, less likes.  It happens.  I remember back in 2011 when a food blogger lost her husband suddenly and the whole blogging community bonded together all making his favorite peanut butter pie for Mikey.  Because of that, I began following her and reading her heart wrenching updates as she counted off the days until she saw him last.  Sharing his favorite recipes, what it was like to never feel his touch again, how their lives had changed as she continued sharing into the hundreds of days.  I remember getting to a point where I couldn't read it any more because I hadn't known loss of someone so a part of your core yet.  I can understand even people who have endured deep loss but don't want to relive it would not want to read about it anymore.  I won't lie that even if I understand it, that it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.  In addition to the Mr, I have three friends who make sure I'm okay and it means everything to me even as they are all going through their own crap or just life.  Grief is lonely.  Like, REALLY lonely even if you have the most amazing support system you could ask for.  It's in those moments you look skyward and wonder is Hell actually here?  I mean what is more cruel than watching the people you love, grew up with or who were closest to you die?  Yes, there is joy and laughter but look around...we are not a society of happy people.  Most people go on social media to give the illusion of it but especially if you know their current circumstances, you can clearly see when people are projecting something else when they're actually not living what they're posting.  Yeah...you ain't gettin' that here for better or worse, yo. 

As time passes, new ways to show me just how I'm not in my old life anymore pop up all the time in unexpected ways and I just have to hope I'm in a headspace to handle it.  If I'm not, oh well!  Cry where  no matter where I am or who I'm with.  (Flashes to GP sitting there uncomfortably behind her mask wishing she could teleport to anywhere but there.)  Unfortunately, there is someone around you who gets it, I guarantee.  Or I thought "hey, let's watch Scrooged, that's always a funny one!"  Yeah, until I got to the part of him being cremated at the end and burst into tears.  Everything is a new landmine waiting to be stepped on.  Some days you could jump up and down on it and nothing happens and the next day, you could walk 30 feet from it and it goes off.  You just don't know and you can never predict it no matter how long it's been.  

The other thing is, life just continues to blast you.  There is no get out of jail free card just because you're grieving.  The empathetic angels I dealt with in the beginning of it all when having to make phone calls I thought were 20 years away were replaced in a month for follow ups with the same sighing, apathetic jags you were blessed not to answer the phone initially.  Health issues still pop up for one or both of you as well as pretty much everyone around you it seems.  I have never seen as much death and disease as I've seen the past 5 months and it is relentless.  Irritants like spending a month of time and money and stubbornness on two pantries that should've been 2 hours of the Mr's assembly time then became a month of research, purchasing products hoping they would work, buying other products when some of them failed and basically being a big, fat pain in my ass.  Now it's time to decorate for Fall and Christmas and meals to prepare for holidays.  Yes, I could skip it but what happens if GOD FORBID (lookin' skyward at you big man) this is the Mr or I's last Christmas and we looked back and didn't have one?  I know now more than ever that you can't take anyone for granted.  You definitely can't assume the people around your table, texting you, sitting next to you at work or the cute couple you pass with their dog on the sidewalk and give friendly waves to will be there in any minute other than the moment you have with them.  So even if it took me a week to decorate the tree when it would normally take an hour or another week to get the rest of the decorations up, so be it.  It eventually got done and yes, it feels nice because Mom got me some of these decorations when I was 20 years old for my hope chest.  She gazed upon them all and took pictures of them because she liked the way they looked when she was here on Christmas Eve's.  As I hung the tinsel on the tree, I swear I could feel her happiness of Christmases past infused into each strand which is why I'll never stop taking down and reusing the same tinsel I've used for decades.  You learn to take those small bursts of energy or motivation and ride them no matter how long or short it is.  That hasn't changed for me yet because grief is effing exhausting regardless of how far out you are.

The day before Mom's interment ceremony, I was pulling rose petals off the stems for bags to sprinkle on her grave.  While grabbing one of them, a rogue thorn pierced the side of my right thumb.  It felt like it went straight to the bone.  It hurt like a mother but I knew it would heal.  A week went by, still there.  A month went by, still there.  Four months... still there.  So every morning, as I reach for my phone, the first thing to start my day, every day, is this physical reminder of the day I said goodbye to her forever that still cuts me to the bone.   A pain that is literally never healing and with me every day.  A reminder of what I lost, and what I had, that I can't ignore.  It feels like a metaphor for what I'm living.  I'll endure that pain Mom because it's infinitesimal compared to what you endured for me to raise me.

The journey continues.

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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

(The above are affiliate links.  Should you buy through them, I may receive a few shekels commission at no cost to you to help keep the blog up and running.)

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