“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“They’re in a better place now.”
“At least they’re no longer in pain.”
“Time heals all wounds.”
“This too shall pass.”
“It’ll get better.”
All things people say to us (and we’ve said to others) to try and help them during their time of grief. But, the thing about grief is that it never really leaves you. Grieving ends up being a life-long process that starts out consuming you every minute of your waking hours and ends up being way, way off in the distance of your mind…and then all of the sudden flooding over you at the most (seemingly) random of times.
Unfortunately, nobody prepares you for this while you’re growing up. It’s one of those life lessons that you get the “privilege” of learning on your own. How you learn how to handle grief ends up being through a lot of trial and error. I guess it’s something that parents really don’t want to bring up with their children unless they’re actually confronted with death in their lives. But the reality is that we’re all going to lose someone, probably many someones, that we love and hold dear as we grow up and live our lives.
Sure, losing dear ol’ Fido or Fluffy when we’re a child helps us to understand that the concept of death is one of permanent change. But when we get a Fido 2.0, we begin to replace parts of our grief with new, happy memories. While our pets can be a big part of our lives as children (and adults), their role in our psycho-social support system is somewhat minimal. The same cannot be said about the humans in our lives. We cannot simply go out and pick up another parent, sibling, grandparent, or cousin at the nearest Humane Society or ASPCA to create new, happy memories with to help us move on in our grief.
Our people are our support system. We share DNA and physical features and character traits. Our people have distinct sounds and dialects, verbal and body languages that they use to communicate with us, teach us, and dream with us. When we think about the milestones that will come in our lives—graduations, new jobs, new relationships, marriage, kids, grandkids—we picture our people being there with us sharing in the joy of those happy moments in our lives. So when we lose one of our people, it can crush a bit of our soul. And not just for today, as some people would like to optimistically think. It is life-altering loss, and life-altering grief comes with it.
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the death of my paternal grandmother, Virginia. My parents divorced before I entered primary school and my father had majority custody of me, so my Grandma became the surrogate mother figure in my life. A few years before she passed, she began to develop Alzheimer’s. At first, it was just subtle things; but, after about a year and a half, the decline felt quicker. Or maybe it was just that in knowing she a disease that was developing in her brain, my family and I became ultra-aware of what she did and didn’t remember as time progressed. At any rate, it was a sad, torturously slow decline in her health and we all knew that we were at the point of counting our remaining time with her still in our presence.
So, you’d think that when death comes knocking at the door of a loved one with an incurable disease that you’d be prepared for the knock, right? Trust me, you’re not going to be ready. Even with years of preparation, you will not be ready for the permanent heartache that comes with such a great loss.
It does help to know about the Kübler-Ross model of the grieving process. This model is based on the idea that there are five stages of grief—Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. And it’s important to know that though there are stages of grief, there is no rhyme or reason as to when or how long you will be in each of them or how you will progress through them. It’s also important to note that just because you’ve transitioned through all five stages doesn’t mean that you, personally, are “done” grieving. We are all capable of relapsing into grief under the “right” circumstances.
For me, the first stage of grief was Anger. I was angry that I hadn’t stayed by my Grandma’s bedside the entire night that she died. I had wanted to stay, but I gave into the wishes of my Father who wanted to go home, but had given me a ride to the hospital. I didn’t blame him for my not being there with her when she went; he personally needed a break from the overwhelming sadness of being in the hospital and feeling helpless while watching his mother lie in a coma in the ICU. I understood that pain and he had a right take a breather. But I returned to the hospital approximately 5 minutes after my Grandma’s body decided that it was time for her spirit’s curtain call and it devastated me that I had been so short-sighted as to think that I needed my car at the hospital with me when I could have instead spent another half hour holding the hand of the woman who raised me.
I was also angry at myself for something I’d said to her just a few hours earlier. I was sitting at her bedside, holding her hand and when my Father left the room for a few minutes, I bent down and laid my head next to hers and whispered to her that I knew she was in pain, that I knew she was fighting as hard as she could to stay with us, and that I knew she missed Grandpa and wanted to be with him again. I told her that it was okay for her to let go, that we would be okay, that we would understand, and that we would still love her.
We have ended up okay. We do understand. We do still love her. But we also miss her terribly.
The next few weeks was a whole lot of denial mixed in with anger and depression. In the last 6 months of her life, my Grandma was in and out of the emergency room for what the doctors always diagnosed as constipation. We found out that she had been over-medicated by her doctors because each was treating her for a different condition/specialty and none of them talked with one another (even in a small town of only 20,000 people!), which caused the constipation. Being that doctors were (and still are) in the mode of spending 10 minutes or less with each patient on an office visit (even if you’re seeing them in the ER), not a single one picked up on the fact that her symptoms could be caused by something other than constipation. As it turns out, she had developed Diverticulitis and, in turn, Peritonitis. The weakened lining of her bowel (caused by the diverticulitis) ruptured (which caused the peritonitis) and her body’s waste spilled into her abdominal cavity sending her into septic shock and organ failure.
I was angry with the medical system and the business side of medicine (profits and “efficiency” over thorough medical care). I was angry that my Father and I had been helping my Grandma, who was in excruciating abdominal pain for 6 months straight, and had absolutely no clue that what was going on with her was even potentially life-threatening! To explain how clueless we were of the direness of her actual health when she entered the hospital on 12/11/2007, I’ll tell you this: we still went out and purchased Christmas gifts for her and wrapped them and put them under our Christmas tree because we thought she would be discharged from the hospital within a few days and still alive on Christmas Day to actually sit with us and open them.
So the Christmas tree stayed up for 3 weeks longer than normal that year and every single present sat wrapped under the tree as it was on the day that she died. There was no joy at the thought of new, shiny things in our lives. Thinking about opening our presents just reminded us of the new, big, black hole in our hearts.
We did eventually take down the tree, and a few days later begrudgingly open the gifts (but mostly because we began to feel rude in not having sent out thank you notes to friends and family who had sent us gifts). The anger and denial began to subside enough to get a little bit of sleep each night. And a few days after that we held a memorial service for her, where all of those phrases at the beginning of this post passed over the lips of friends and family only meaning well and trying to provide a sliver of solace in a sea of heartbreak.
When you’re on the giving end of those words, you think that your empathy and sympathy is conveyed and can only provide comfort. But, when you’re on the receiving end, you realize that it’s also possible to become numb to such common phrases and be given no comfort by them.
Grieving is different for everyone. It took me 5 years to get to the Acceptance stage of grief. Before that, the Christmas decorations coming out in the stores just after Halloween and the radio stations bombarding listeners with holiday themed music made me see red in an instant. Houses decorated with Christmas lights did not bring child-like joy to my heart like it had previously. Plans for holiday parties and friends’ excitement over their plans for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with their families swole my heart with jealousy (and sadness).
It wasn’t until year 5 that I realized I was closing myself off from people during a time of happiness and joy. The thought started crossing my mind that if my Grandma was looking down on me, would she be proud of how I was handling myself or would she tell me to “Snap out of it!” It was then that I started thinking about what I could do on Christmas Day and my Grandma’s Death Day to stop feeling sorry for myself and begin honoring her life and her presence in my life.
So, I called my Dad and asked him if we could put up a tree that year and open presents like we used to and even make a traditional Christmas dinner. I asked him if on the anniversary of her passing we could go to her favorite place to be when she was alive—the coast.
On 12/26/2012, we spent the entire day at the coast doing things that she loved to do when she was still with us. And I think that she was indeed looking down on us that day and happy that we had decided to try and round the corner and live with our pain instead of stuff it deep down inside to hide from it because as we were walking on the beach, on that dark, cloudy, overcast day, the sun began to break through the clouds and shine over the water.
Now, another 5 years later, I still have to deal with the twinges of sadness and feeling lonely even when I am in a room full of people on Christmas Day and the anniversary of her death. But, I remind myself that they are only twinges instead of days and months. I remind myself that that is progress in dealing with my grief and that it is okay to slip back into any of those 5 stages of grief for a moment, hour, or even a day because grieving is a life-long process.
About
Hi, I’m Krystal! I’m a freelance writer and editor originally from the West Coast who’s now living in New York City. I'm stubbornly independent and tend to talk like a sailor, but I'll try to hold my tongue. No guarantees, though.
You can learn more about me here.
Krystal
Thank you for this beautiful,poignant sharing story about your grama and our wonderful aunt Virginia.
I will reread this many times I am sure. Your gift with your writings are exceptional and I thank you for helping me understand what’s coming up. It’s such a fog. I so miss Mom and her being with me and her outlook on life.
They were all so exceptional.
Looking forward to reading all your blogs.
Love, cousin Kathy
Thank you for the kind words, Cousin. I’m glad that my experience and the lessons I’ve learned in my journey can be of help to you. Your description of it as a fog is very accurate. I know that it feels like you’re walking on legs of rubber, wobbly in even the most mundane daily task and surrounded by the fog at every angle right now. If you ever need to talk to someone, I’m always just a phone call away.