Grief
Hearing the front door open after seeing our Sunday visitor’s car in our driveway, I try to move closer to the wall in the furthest corner of the kitchen as if I could somehow crawl into a crevice unseen.
Clutching tissues, trying to cry silently, freezing still as if it could cloak myself invisible. Praying in my mind that it’s not our guest’s steps approaching. As he turns the corner entering the room, I glance down at myself dressed in the same grey pajama pants, blue Brooklyn t-shirt with a dried-out elbow stuck to it from a shitty mac n cheese dinner from days ago, partially covered by my white robe, and blue sock slippers with white stars on my feet.
My son’s adult best friend smiles and looks happy to see me. He starts chatting and seems to think blowing my nose is from the sickness I’ve had for 2 months. I try to talk to him but can’t hold the conversation or my tears.
Grateful he stepped away, I race out and up to hide in my room. Not wanting to be seen, I lay in my bed crying for hours.
Hard to believe I had started this same morning thinking I was feeling better and looking forward to the Sunday ahead.
That thread seemed lost forever now. Momentum so hard to build, so easily extinguished.
Once I inadvertently discovered that my 23-year-old son would not be off from work for our President’s week road trip, I lost my glimmer.
The tears started flowing and would not stop.
The hope of a car trip that week with my two kids had been bigger than I’d thought. My something to look forward to amidst this abyss of grief.
Hours of crying. Again.
Hopelessness. Not a feeling I am familiar with. And there it is.
The grief of losing my Mom on Christmas morning seems to be enveloping me in a shroud of self-doubt, fear, deep sadness, and anger. Magnetizing and amplifying past traumas, losses and pain.
A spiral that seems like a quicksand – the more I try to fight my way out of it, the deeper I pull under.
2/11/25
Another vacation disappointment ending in tears as I pull into a deli to pick up lunch for my son and I. He called to tell me the February vacation week was definitely off, and now the week in April as well. And there it went again. Instant unstoppable tears.
Driving home, I stop for a Stop sign being held by a construction worker. I reflexively stop my car, look around and start again. The man holding the sign starts waving his arms and yelling at me to “Stop! Stop!” This was not a regular sedentary Stop sign. It was a Stop sign telling you to wait for the opposite direction line of cars to come through the single lane until your side’s turn to use that same lane in the opposite direction.
I hit my brakes hard and cried even harder. I was looking down in shame and then decided to roll down the passenger side window and apologize. Even with my sunglasses on, the man could see my crying and quickly said, “I didn’t mean to yell at you.” I said, “No, you were trying to be safe. I was in the wrong. I was already upset and I made a mistake that could’ve been dangerous. I’m so sorry.” He looked at me with such kindness and said, “It’s okay. I understand. I’ve been going through some stuff lately too. It’s hard.” I thought to tell him my Mom died, but stopped myself.
Driving forward when he told me to, he said, “I hope things get better.”
I cried even harder.
He seemed so kind. If only life were simpler, could I ask him to let me lay on his shoulder, hold my hand til I fell asleep? Obviously not a real thought, but a desperate fleeting wish for a shoulder to cry on.
This place of grief feels so lonely.
Now I feel disappointment and sadness with my son for taking away the vacations I had been holding onto as a hopeful turning point, displacing me from the only other adult in my home.
They say this will pass, that you will find joy again. I know it must be true, and still I feel like I’m drowning when disappointment comes. When my son offered Memorial Day weekend as the next potential getaway together, I felt myself pulled into an undertow that felt like I’d never make it until May like this.
Maybe the kind guy holding the Stop sign might want to go on a road trip with me?
The thing about grief is that when you are in it, the world keeps moving on outside of you as if this monumental loss never happened. People will say things like, “Take your time,” “Allow yourself to grieve.” And those same people a couple weeks later will be making small talk, acting like business as usual, and then become visibly uncomfortable if you show your true sadness.
Businesses will allow you 2 days off for bereavement. Two days.
Grief can quickly become very isolating as you withdraw from the external world that you can’t seem to grasp. Conversations become difficult to follow, reading seems impossible to comprehend.
Even your immediate personal circle will continue turning on its axis. Your work demands will not hold past that initial week of shock. Your ex-husband will continue on his harmful path towards you regardless of your loss. Your children will continue to need you to parent even as they try their best to support you through your sadness. Your cats still need to be fed and cared for, especially the one with the broken leg.
Your bills will still arrive and expect to be paid on time. The broken window needing to be replaced, the septic tank must be emptied. Your mother’s funeral needs to be paid for. Her home needs to be cleaned out and planned for.
Your tears for your mom flow easily and seem capable of endlessness. Any disappointment or stressor, small or large, can start them, even in moments you thought you were doing better.
The misery and suffering run deep and spill onto other aspects of your life, other losses.
For me, the loss of the person I thought I had married (through separation not death) coincided with my Mom’s diagnosis of dementia. As my Mom’s health worsened over time, my husband’s treatment of me did as well.
In these months of grief, I find myself longing for a partner to lean on and into. Someone to care for me, hold me up when I feel like caving in.
Grateful for my family and friends, and my two children who clearly love me dearly, and still I struggle.
Desperate to feel better, to come out of this painful place, I am seeing other places of loss and grief in my life beyond losing my mother in the forefront.
My need to rest and self-care is showing me how hard I work, how much responsibility I carry. As I try to follow doctors’ advice to allow myself rest, it is impossible not to see how much I do as a sole parent, business owner, and head of my household.
At times, I have felt like my grief was getting in my way of my productivity. Now I am beginning to think that grief is shining a light on things in my life that need to change. Perhaps the expectations on me have been too high all along, and this period of grief is accentuating that in ways I can no longer look away from.
As I need to step back and care more for myself to get through this tremendous loss, I also need to find a longer term balance in my life. My long neglected needs for leisure and pleasure and time for myself need to come more to the forefront. Others in my life need to take on more of their own responsibilities.
Losing one’s parents brings forth feelings of your own mortality. Fears of suffering as they did in illness, and the reality that you are moving up next in line towards death. You look at your age and subtract it from the age they just died at. Is that the number of years I have left? Could be less, could be more. But if more, how much more?
At times, I find myself reading about ways to prevent dementia. I think to myself: use this fear to motivate yourself to prioritize your own health. We all know what we need to do - exercise, eat healthy, minimize stress. Can I really consistently follow through on that for myself now?
To do so, I need to hold others I love accountable. If I want to really make a go at a healthier, hopefully third “chapter” of my life, I can no longer set my own needs and well-being aside to care for others, to carry what is theirs’ to carry. Sounds logical, reasonable, simple even. And yet this concept has evaded me from early childhood on up to age 54. The “parentified child" grows up to continue sacrificing their own needs to care for their children, their spouse, friends, family, and still, their parents.
And now, my single mother is gone. Painfully forever.
I hope as I try to climb out of this grief, I can learn from it. As they say, “If not now, when?”
Perhaps as I am forced to let go of the mom I held on to my whole life, I can also finally let go of my intrinsic habit of taking care of loved ones above my own needs, no matter what the cost to my own health and well-being. Perhaps this is my time in life to finally learn how to take care of myself first.
My therapist keeps telling me I grieve this deeply because it is a direct reflection of how deeply I love. My love for my Mom, my sisters, my husband and my children has been limitless. I go all in for the people I love. The heartbreak of my marriage was realizing that I could give all of myself to someone, thinking we were a team, and that that trusted person could selfishly use me and then discard me when I finally demanded some semblance of reciprocity.
In this wave of hopelessness from my grief, I had been looking towards a road trip, a vacation, as my glimmer of hope to pull me out of this. When that possibility of a vacation was taken from me, I fell deeper into despair, thinking there went my hope of feeling better,
Perhaps the hope is appearing in the changes I need to make in my daily life vs a one week getaway.
