Originally posted 10/5/2020
Welcome back to another Mental Health Monday. Today’s topic is grief & grieving. When the phone rings at a time that you typically don’t see, you know that the news can’t be good. This was my Thursday morning. At 4:12AM, my phone rang. As soon as I saw that it was my mother, I knew the news that I was likely to hear. My grandmother had taken a sharp turn toward the end of her life. My mother was on the way to her nursing home to be with her. I was immediately fully awake and was making plans to rearrange the day to head that way as well. At 4:39AM, my phone rang again. It was too late. My grandmother had passed before my mother arrived. We talked for a few minutes, cried, and agreed to talk again after she had finished the business that needed to be done at the nursing home. By the time we spoke again at 6:15AM, it had fully sunk in. My sweet grandmother was gone. And I wasn’t able to be there. Death is hard. Death during a pandemic is even harder. I hadn’t seen my grandmother since a few days after Christmas due to pandemic restrictions. The things put in place in an effort to keep her safe meant that she died alone. I am extremely grateful to the staff of the nursing home who cared for her, loved her, and were there for her when we couldn’t be. They could not have been more amazing in their care, and in keeping my mother informed over the past 7 months. They are superheroes.
Grief is a strange thing. It is a huge mix of emotions that, at times, feel like they shouldn’t be possible at the same time. Crushing sadness and intense celebration should be mutually exclusive, but somehow, they aren’t. Somehow, grieving allows those thoughts and feelings to all happen at once, sometimes with equal intensity.
Words can’t express how thankful I am that she is no longer sick, no longer missing my grandfather and longing for him, no longer confused and sad. I am thankful that she doesn’t need the neck collar that she dutifully wore for 5 years for a neck fracture that her aging bones couldn’t heal. She is well, and I celebrate that! I celebrate the years that I had with her, the memories that we made, the stories that she told, and the lessons I learned from her. I will continue to share those memories and lessons with pride.
Words also can’t express my sadness. There are no more memories to be made, only previous ones to be shared. No more hugs, hands to be held, comfort to give or receive. I wasn’t there, and I so desperately wanted to be. Every time she has been sick for the past 6+ years, I have been there. This time I wasn’t—and I hadn’t been in months. I took time off from work to spend time with her over those years, trying to visit at least monthly to soak up all the time and memories I could. The pandemic had other plans. I didn’t want her to be alone in the final moments of her life—but that wasn’t a choice that I got to make.
Grief is strange. I long to have something to do, some sort of death related business that will bring closure or feel like I’m engaged in the process in some way. That doesn’t really exist. Plans had been made ahead of time, so now we wait until those plans have been carried out. In the midst of the emotions, it is difficult to keep the perspective that death is a regular occurrence—a part of life. The business of death is a fairly smooth operation to those outside of the emotion. I am grateful for those people as well. The business of this would not be smooth if the steps were up to me. In this moment, I am walking in a surreal fog. It feels as though I am out of step with the rest of the world, like I am living in a different reality or that time is moving at a different pace for me than those around me. Clinically, I know that is normal and a part of the grieving process. Personally, it is extremely tough—even as I know that I will get through it.
The emotions of grief—all of them—are real. They are valid. They are to be experienced as they come and for as long as they come. We don’t honor the person who left us by pushing off grief. We honor them by experiencing it, trudging through the good and the bad, and finding ways to be true to the memories, the legacy, and the person in the midst of our grief.
Thanks for reading! EW