Tag: loss

Categories
From Ordinary to Narrative

Grief Hereafter

person standing on brown rock formation
Photo by Arthur Brognoli on Pexels.com

When my mom passed I knew profoundly that my life would never be the same. It wasn’t the painful acknowledgement of the mourning period, the morbid checklist of grieving duties to perform, or even the agonizing distribution of my mother’s possessions that made me acutely aware. It was plain and simple. It was loss. I knew that each moment from then on out would lose the potential of its happiness trajectory. This is not to say life can not again be happy. My children bring me happiness. My husband, my family, and the seemingly endless number of pets I have traipsing through the house bring me happiness. A good cup of coffee or tea paired with a baked good can bring an almost spiritual sense of peace and I’ve been known, at least to the dog, to do a fantastic rendition of Jimmy Rankin’s  “Haul Away the Whale” as I do the dishes with all the passion of a late night pub patron half in her cups. And for the last couple of years even these things were wrought with grief. None of these things remain untouched by the loss of my mother. She has reached from the beyond and left a mark by her sheer absence.

There have been moments in my life when I have felt like a grown up. You’d think more given my age and responsibilities, but actually adulthood for me has come in realisations. I remember my grandmother well into her 70s said there were days she felt 17, 22, 35. She was often surprised by her age. When she said this, I was nowhere near adulthood. Technically, I was close but not in understanding. She was always my grandmother as far as I knew. She always had grandmother curls and wore grandmother dresses and made spectacular grandmother bread. So when she spoke about going parking with her boyfriend and another couple – needless to say I almost fell off my chair! Did she say parking? In pairs?  Perhaps I should have known that for me was a moment of embracing adulthood. Understanding that life had gone on before me, that we would all change and grow up and hopefully old, and the loss of times past meant a maturity only brought on through the pain. 

As I’m sitting here writing almost two years past my mother’s death and over 20 for my grandmother’s, grief is ever present. It has shifted. It doesn’t paralyse or knock the wind out of me as much as it did. But I can feel it, intangible as it is. I feel it like I can feel the keys under my fingers and the fur of my dog as he shuffles over to check on me. It is very strong with my children, almost sitting next to me. A look, a Halloween costume, an eye roll from our oldest and I know my mom would want to be here. For it all. I feel the loss then in both happy and sad moments. The sad moments are made sadder and the happy ones are happy with a taste of poignancy. Before the loss, happiness was happiness. I suppose this is the innocence of youth. After loss, happiness has a weight to it. An awareness of loss, time, and the lack of control of many aspects of life. I can see why adults need more sleep. Weighty happiness and sadness, pound for pound, is exhausting. 

My mother was a wonderful mother as her mother was to her. It is the presence and ironically the absence of both these women in my life that have propelled me unwillingly  into adulthood. They have given me great insights, set tremendous examples, and demonstrated the unconditional love of being a mother. Their role, even now, is the same. It just carries with it a deeper and heavier understanding. 

Categories
From Ordinary to Narrative

Detour

photo of pathway surrounded by fir trees
Photo by James Wheeler on Pexels.com

A wise woman once told me the only way through grief is straight through. While this is no doubt true, a new distraction surely isn’t cheating. Four months into the grieving process, I sought just this. I won’t say it was altogether clear to my disordered mind but it was happening all the same. My initial attempts at distraction consisted of partaking in obsessive late night depressive gorging and almost regretfully forgoing the gluttony of alcoholic oblivion. My email seemed bombarded with lonely ladies from China and Eastern Europe vying for my attention. Although feeling like quite the catch I decided to forgo these generous advances. Exercise was a possibility although a foreign idea as of late. I found it difficult to muster more than a shuffle with my heavy heart. Certainly calls with loved ones helped. Frenetic cleaning of closets and storage areas helped briefly but all were riddled with emotional traps. 

Then possibly because it was ridiculous, inconvenient and chaotic I came to the brilliant conclusion that what this grief stricken mind needed was to adopt a furry dependent to absorb into an already busy four-child, three-pet house. My husband, needless to say, did not feel the same way. His grief sought order. A much more reasonable approach. Nights of discussions and heartfelt pleas – on both sides – ended in my husband ever willingly but against his better judgement saying yes. Enter stage right – the object of my obsession, ahem, attention, became a 12 week old Newfoundland and Labrador puppy. While not exactly tiny, I’m not sure if he understood the weighty emotions he was going to carry on those furry and ever growing shoulders. 

Before passing judgement please be aware that in no way did I believe a puppy and all of its demands and needs was a cure for all that ailed me, but I reasoned in the long dark hours of the night that it seemed appropriate to add some joy where so much had been extinguished. And yes, getting a large breed was probably necessary to carry the emotional burden waiting to greet it. I have no regrets at all about adding another creature who wakes me up and competes for my attention. I would recommend a puppy to most anyone who understands the work involved. I would not, however, recommend getting a new puppy the same week one discovers they and their entire family have COVID. This was the reality for us.

We had a very happy ride to pick up a gangly and carsick puppy and about 26 hours of lively debate to discuss enthusiastically as children do, what its name would be. I am raising staunch supporters in various name camps. At an oddly advanced time of ownership, his name was Puppy with no resolution in sight when we had our first positive Covid test. That was about the time Puppy peed on the floor. 

For the next two weeks, IT came for us all. Some had fevers, the throw-ups, sore throats, runny noses or some combination of them all. The only thing it did not bring was sleep it seemed. Then there was the worry. As a parent I have scoured the information about COVID and yes, most was reassuring but there is always a sliver of doubt which makes just enough room between the cracks of certainty for all manner of monster to creep.  Through it all Puppy went outside approximately every 7.5 minutes being potty trained, ate a myriad of kleenex – both fresh from the many boxes available to him and those containing hazardous waste, – bit fingers and toes of the unwell and discovered one of the greatest joys of being a puppy – the cats. 

Mostly I stumbled sleep-deprived around the house during this time holding buckets, dispensing meds, reassuring sad, sick children, replenishing empty kleenex boxes both from Puppy and tiny sore noses, all the while attending to Puppy who although perplexed by his new surroundings was quite willing to fall into a puppy slumber beside a little child who felt terrible about most things except the fact her fingers were entwined in puppy fur. 

I suppose that is the problem with both grief and distraction. It isn’t orderly. It isn’t linear. It takes you places you can’t foresee. As a mother I dodged COVID as long as I possibly could and it came for us anyway. Also as a mother I sought distraction and I certainly achieved it just not how I envisioned. The grief, of course, remains. But alongside it are small but not inconsequential moments of joy. That I didn’t see coming either. 

Categories
From Ordinary to Narrative

Loss

A few weeks ago I walked straight into the edge of a door. I hit it squarely and the impact of it bounced me back and onto the floor collapsed in a heap and stunned. I could feel the swelling immediately upon staggering back to a standing position. This was the least painful thing I had done that week. My mother had just died. 

Like walking into a door, the news of my mother’s passing blindsided me. I suppose it shouldn’t have in some ways. People die and die unexpectedly and my mother has had a very tough last 15 months. And yet this news hit me far worse than any mere door to the forehead. I fell down then too. Unfathomable. This could not be true. And yet it was. And while I got up and walked down the hall to find my husband I could not believe I was about to tell him something that I could not believe myself. And then I started to throw up and did not stop for hours. My body was in agony reflective of my heart.

I ached for myself, my father, my children, my sisters, my aunts and uncles and my mom’s friends. And I ached for my mom. There was a selfishness there for me. I wanted more of my mom. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to say important things and have the luxury of saying unimportant things. I just wanted more. Not uncommon I know. I wanted more for my children. I wanted their relationship with my mom to continue. How can that be broken? They are so young and even if they can’t understand it, they feel it. The first loss. A big one.

I could call my mom and tell her anything about my children, her grandchildren, and she would light up. She would console. She would advise. She would reassure. She would find the humour and importance in it all.  My children and I have lost that. Without warning and no preparation. In a sense I  don’t think we can recover from that. 

There is more than sadness. There is rage. I’m angry for my mom. She was robbed. She struggled for over a year to be healthy again. She had hopes and dreams to be reunited with family under the strain of daring to live in a pandemic. We talked about seeing each other in the summer. No, the fall. Surely, Christmas. My eight year old daughter, sobbing many times, said she was afraid she would never see my parents again. I promised myself I would always be honest with my children but I told her, “Of course we would.”  We just needed to be patient and keep calling and writing letters. We will see them on whatever next important date hadn’t yet passed. And while I said these words I shared the same fears my daughter did and yet there wasn’t anything we could do. We waited. We called. We facetimed. We cried. And despite these fears we had hope. Hope to see each other again. What a reunion it would be. And then my daughter realized her mother didn’t know everything and couldn’t promise to protect her from this pain. 

Helplessly trying to help my mom we called for long chats. We called many times a day for just minutes or marathon calls. We cajoled and encouraged. We disagreed and cried for sad evenings after. We tried our best to carry on with school and groceries and work all the while knowing there was a real fear that my daughter had been right. We wouldn’t see each other again. 

The rage comes and goes. I have been plenty angry in my life but until now I could not say truthfully that I had known blind rage. One night I went from beaten down crying to another feeling altogether. I felt it wash over me just as someone might have suddenly poured a bucket of water over me. Blind rage. Named appropriately. I couldn’t see but only felt out of body and out of control. The feeling lasted mere seconds and then was gone. I was left crying again, but it was there and it was real. 

Prior to being hurt in a car accident my mom was an avid hiker, a forceful personality and a ferocious mother. She loved her family fiercely. While my mother’s death won’t show up on COVID statistics, she like most of us were isolated and scared and remained that way for an unbearable time. Her accident and the following pain was too much for her body to withstand. After so long fighting through surgeries and disappointment and loneliness, my mother should have had more time. Not more time battling medical issues, but more time seeing who she wanted to see, hiking those beautiful Cape Breton trails, regaling her grandchildren with stories from her childhood, sharing a laugh with her own children she gave up so much for, and making retirement plans with my devoted father. Instead she died.  And it is this that I can not grasp.