How we grieve
 

In The Wasteland, TS Eliot wrote, "April is the cruelest month". I know he meant it for reasons other than I'm going to speak about here, but April is definitely a cruel month for me. Both my parents, whom I loved and respected deeply, passed away in April;my father when I was 15, and my mother four years ago. Their passings were quite sudden, my dad's without any warning, my mom's after an incredibly brief malady. While I suppose it's true that for them it was the best way to go, as anyone who's experienced a sudden loss knows, the ensuing wake leaves one reeling. There is a lot written about all the stages of grief, and the different ways we might or might not experience them. As a universal experience, I'm guessing there is also little that is more subjective. My father has been gone for more than twice as long as I knew him. My mother was younger than I am now when she lost him. She told me many times over the years how grateful she was that I was the kind of person I am, that I was so helpful in her struggle to keep carrying on. My brother was only seven at the time, so it was hugely important to both of us to maintain for him. Perhaps because it's been so long, and maybe also because I never got to know him when we were both adults, I don't anymore experience any pain when I think about my dad. Certainly I think about conversations and experiences we missed having together, but even those considerations, while they might make me a bit wistful, aren't unpleasant. I so wish I could say the same about my mom. It's only been four years, it's already been four years, it seems like ages and mere moments at the same time. When she died, I lost one of my best friends. I might've mentioned this before, but it is still the case that she gave me one of the best compliments I've ever received when she said, " A lot of people can make me laugh Lise, but you're the only one who makes me howl." After four years I feel I should have a better handle on this than I do. I make my way through my days, through the world, and for the most part, the façade holds. And then…then I have times when I miss her so keenly it takes my breath away. These moments are unbidden and so unexpected. I can be doing something totally banal, and am completely caught off guard when a tsunami of sadness tumbles me. Intellectually, I know this experience will eventually change for me. Emotionally, I can't wait for it to change.

As with so many things I write, I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. I suppose what I really want to say is that I've learned a couple of things about grief. There is no incorrect way to experience it. Allow yourself to feel and think whatever you want or need to. Just be there for someone going through it. Truly, sometimes all that's needed is your presence. I don't ever laud a grieving person for being so strong in the face of it. When that was said to me as a
teenager, I realize in hindsight, that it became a great pressure to maintain that impression. It's a burden that ought not be put on anyone.

This is a great post, thank you for sharing. It's taken years, decades for me to start really grieving because of the above stated sentiments. It was also pressure I put on myself. The oldest. The strongest. The one who knew the answers. The one who dealt with doctors, made decisions, held it together. For all of them. I appreciate that it allowed me to function, to keep going. I took great pride in the holes that the absences left in my heart. I *wanted* to miss them. I quietly gloried in my devotion to being stoic. And now, it has marked me. Paralyzed me in still being "The One". I can't deny that it has made me who I am and provided me with gifts. But it has also made it harder to grieve, harder for anyone close to me to understand when something "hits" me. I have no idea how to move on or not feel the holes anymore. I don't talk about it much, but when it comes up now, because I didn't properly grieve then (which I still only can do on rare occasions, when I piggyback the grief onto something more current), I have no idea how to express it, how to receive support - and now - now I just hope it is seen because I don't even know what to do with it. Actually, I don't even know if I want to do anything with it. The holes have become my dark friends, in places where I wonder if I should have some living, breathing friends.

So - grieve - but also don't let it become your identity, don't exalt it, let it be what it is, but don't fret when one day you forget, or don't think about it. Let the missing become part of your topography, part of your story. But don't grieve forever because you don't know who to be if you're not "The One".

The grief i experienced when my parents passed away was/is as different as they were.

My father died unexpectedly...yes he had a heart condition, but his passing was sudden and numbing. I stood up at his memorial and gave the eulogy with not a tear until a year later. I was driving down the road, heard his favorite song "what a wonderful world", and had to pull over for hours while i sobbed and sobbed. I miss him every day, but it gets easier with time; he has been gone 15 years.

My Mother had a long illness where i was the primary caretaker...and i was the one who told her what her end of life choices were, and sat with her in the hospital while she died. I cried every single day for two years...sadness, guilt, pain so severe i wanted to die. If i had not had my family i probably would have followed her. Sometimes i am so angry with her for choosing the easy way out...and then i feel the guilt because if i would have been selfish and said "fight for us", she would have fought...but the outcome would have been the same with so much pain for her thrown in.

I'm sorry I've kind of lost my point here...but i guess it is too say that everyone grieves in their own time, and in their own way and does what they have to in order to survive the experience and keep living.

Ascot, thank you for starting this thread. April to June was when I lost both my parents and grandparents 35 years ago. I was 22 at the time and dealt with it through a lot of anger for many years. Something happened after 11 years of anger and I was able to release a lot of it. Then I heard a psychologist talking about grief. They said that it takes about half the time you had someone in your life to heal from the loss of them. Whether that's true or not, or whether there is any scientific proof of that I don't know. But it definitely was true for me.

I do remember the feeling that I had after one year. It felt like they passed away either yesterday or were gone forever....but saying 'one year' '2 years' '3 years' or in your case '4 years' just didn't feel right. As if the passing of the time should lessen the pain. It doesn't lessen the pain at that stage. At that stage it's still a struggle to figure out how to be You without them in your life. So, Ascot, you are not alone with that emotion.

Feel what you're going to feel, do what you need to do, but DO remember to be kind to yourself and try to keep in mind that there's still a lot of happiness in your future. We go on living happily as an honor to the people who helped shape us into who we are today....not in spite of them passing.

I'm glad this thread is resonating and I appreciate the candor of the responses. If talking about this helps even one person, it's a good thing.

I think it's true, Hominid, what you said about the importance of not letting grief define us. I think, too, that when one has carried something for a very long time, when it has become a touchstone, the letting go of it can be incredibly difficult. Even a thing that seems a negative, when it's been with us for so long, its departure, its absence creates a void that then needs to be filled with something else. Finding that something else can be hard. That whole "evil we know" thing, there's something to be said for it.

Virago, I found what you said about the timeline quite interesting. My initial thought upon doing the math was, "Oh, damn, my mother was in my life for 48 years. This thing is going to be with me a l o n g time." That formula is akin to something I once heard about how long it takes to get over a breakup. I don't remember exactly what it was, but I'm guessing there is actually something scientific to it.

Yes. This. Thank you for saying that. I sometimes lose sight of it.

You make a valid point, Ms T, when you talk about grief being as different as the people for whom we mourn. Them, the people we are when we lost them, I'm sure so many variables impact the experience.

My brother was only able to be in town for the last couple of days of my mom's life and before that it had been probably 2-3 years since he'd seen her because of work stuff. For the week and a half prior, I'd been practically living at the hospital and I finally hit a wall. Because he was there, I felt it was okay to leave for a while, separate, rest a bit. I'd been home less than 2 hours when Sean called me to say that I should come back because a nurse had said it wouldn't be long. The drive to the hospital should have taken about 10 minutes, but I got stuck behind a school bus. I'm sitting in my car, completely unable to do anything about the traffic situation when my phone rings again and I answer to hear my brother sobbing, "I begged her to wait". A fucking school bus. I've thought about it so often, talked about it with friends, and the reality is that I think her passing went exactly the way it was supposed to. My brother, who hadn't been with her for a long time, got to be be there. I live here, got to spend a lot of time with her over the last years, spent a lot of time with her during her last days...I think she chose to go when I wasn't there because I didn't need it the way my brother did. The thing about the school bus; my mother was a life long educator. Teaching first grade, particularly turning kids onto reading, was her passion. It makes sense that being behind that damn bus is the thing that kept me from being there when the moment actually came.

I've also been thinking a lot about April and grief lately. I don't have a lot of experience with the death of people in my life. Which makes me incredibly lucky in many ways. And though I have a lot of experience in grieving various kinds of losses--when it comes to the death of family members I just don't. This April marks one year since the passing of my grandmother. It wasn't sudden. It wasn't a shock. But it is a very heavy and complicated loss for me.

At the time, I didn't feel very much. I only cried twice and the tears were brief. I never once experienced a crying jag or huge, body wracking sobs. Just numbness. I cried when I saw my sister at the funeral home for my grandmother's wake, and I cried for my mom at the graveside service because I had never seen my mother in so much pain. I didn't cry for myself. I would have given my right arm to be able to feel something then. It was so frustrating. I felt gagged and suffocated and there was also some shame there for not being able to "really" cry or to feel things the "right" way.

Well, this April I am feeling. It seems like everyone else in the family is sad, but I am now wracked with grief. I am the one sobbing and freaking out and everything I felt stuffed with last year that wouldn't come out is releasing. Which is good, of course. But it's also incredibly painful. I've had to stop writing this post twice to cry my eyes out.

I feel enormous guilt over not seeing her enough in the last years of her life. (Though I happen to have an amazing last memory of her that I share with both my sister and my mom.) I feel guilty that I never got to her in time in the end. I still feel some guilt over her fall that led to the decline in her health, even though every rational part of me knows I couldn't have prevented it.

I don't even really know what I'm writing anymore. I don't really know how to grieve; I especially don't know how to grieve a year "late" when everyone else in my life seems to have moved beyond the place that I am in.

My mother died April 28, 19 years ago. Easily the first year, I was just numb. No real crying that I remember. I think it was because she had been in poor health and even though she died within a month of a pancreatic cancer diagnosis, it wasn't entirely unexpected and I came to peace with her. I missed her the most when I had a daughter of my own; they are so alike and would have absolutely loved one another. It hit me again when I received a photo album full of her pictures, and a recipe box with cards in her writing.

My father has been a different story. We were very close, and while he was in his 90's, his death was fairly sudden (again with the three weeks from diagnosis to death). I also never got to see him before his death. I think I'm grieving him a lot this month because I'm researching his family roots, and just attended that Scottish festival again and got reminded of him-again. He passed five years ago.

I think I'm "re-grieving" both of them because I just found my long-lost niece-their biological grandchild. She has told me that she has a book with their writing in it, which will stir things up all over again if/when I see her, and it. I know both of them always wanted to find her, and it was a grief that she was missing (it's a long story).

The biggest shock and grief this month has undoubtedly been Daktari. He was young and relatively vital, even with health problems. The other day, I was reading some old post of mine and he had "thanked" me for it. I bawled. I keep wanting to message him, or find a note for myself. Maybe that's selfish, but it's real.

Part of the reason i had a hard time beginning to grieve my father, was the death of my beloved Grandfather only 6 weeks later. My father died on Feb 22nd, and my Grandfather died on April 1st. I completely shut down emotionally, finally grieving them both a year later.

Ascot, you have helped me more than i can say...i carried guilt because i stayed with my Mom through the hospitalization, and then her time in hospice...but on that last day my sister said " please go home, i'll stay with her, be with your family tonight and come back tomorrow". My sister had spent no time with her during her illness, or during her hospitalization, so i gave her that time. I have always felt such guilt that i wasn't there that night when my Mom passed away; you're right, i think my sister needed to be the one.

Gemme, I hope you don't mind if I pick up your post, and talk about how 'grief changes shape, but it never ends' and the fact that I share the same sentiment as you, when your response was, "So, true."



As I have aged over the years, I hate that I have become so terribly sensitive. To the point that when I suffer a loss or losing something I have no say in whether they stay or go (expectedly or unexpectedly), it ruffles every wave in my universe, causing me such an upset that most often I tend to withdraw, deep into myself. Searching every place I can think of, so I can find some semblance of..... "I'm going to be okay."

But often more than naught, I am not okay.

I'm not okay with loss or losing something that was meaningful to me. And, that place of grief is sometimes a place that seems to never end or has no ending. Like it just changes shape, over time.

So I too concur: So true.

I am grateful for time and space to process the painful hurts in my own life, and the gift of more time to create space in my heart or life to experience life's better moments.

Like you, Kätzchen, the older I get, the more I find myself affected by things. Until quite recently, I was really bothered by it. I think in some ways I saw it is a failing or weakness. One day I found myself saying to a friend that I think I feel things so much more now because I'm actually allowing myself to. What with a lot of life under my belt, apparently the universe has decided that I'm more capable of surviving a submersion into pathos. Until that moment when I was actually expressing that idea, I didn't know I felt that way. Since then, about a month, I've been mulling it over and I think it has validity. At least for me it does. I'm still upright, so if nothing else that is concrete proof that I can exist in and survive great anguish. I'm not certain, but it is possible that my personal definition of being okay has also changed. Maybe I'm finally not only learning to, but finding a willingness to bend in the storm instead of vehemently trying to hold strong and breaking because of it.

The full quote is:

Grief never ends...but it changes. It's a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith...it is the price of love.

Author unknown

What a spectacular quote! It gives beautiful, succinct voice to my process around my own losses. I try not to let my losses define me, profound though they may be, but they're still potent, and still very present. Eventually they recede and become a part of my life rather than my whole life, but they all still take up quite a bit of room in my head.

I find that it's therapeutic to write. I wrote a piece about my late partner and how her loss intertwined with the death of my next girlfriend. Finishing that story walked me into a much healthier place. Now I'm writing a piece about the woman who raised me. Her's was first loss that knocked me off my feet. That was 1992. I cried for a solid year, and I still miss her terribly. I feel that if I don't write down everything I can remember right now I'm at risk of losing those really precious moments forever.

Grieving for a lover is...
 

...a long farewell

...a tribute to your love

...part of your love story

Over a year ago my father died.He died right before my eyes,a sudden heart attack.As I dialed 911 i didn't even cry.It happen(cried)when I was bringing back his ashes to be buried in the family cemetery and as I was driving back the 50+ miles home I broke down,still driving(i never pulled over once)and speeding down the highway I just bawled my eyes out.The old fart loved watching his favorite soap The young and the restless.He actually got to see one more episode before his passing,lucky bastard.
Rest in peace dad,I love you.

What emotive and powerful posts, thank you for sharing them.

I've been very lucky for those who have passed away have visited me in dreams ... my step dad twice (he has been dead 2 years now) and this has given me comfort etc

The only time I had an issue with a death was my granny's when I was 12 and being half Irish the wake means folk get drunk and celebrate their life. At the time I didn't understand that and shouted at everyone how could they be having a party when she had only just been buried.

But recently I struggled with a different kind of grief which happened when my best mate's best mate committed suicide and I had to be there for my best mate but deal with the issues that the suicide brought up too. We are a year on and I still watch my best mate struggle daily and sometimes I hug her, others I let her cry, and the rest we talk and laugh and remember.

Time is the healer but it's having the patience to go through the whole process until the pain becomes bearable