For reasons
I will explain later in this post, I felt impelled to reflect on personal
experiences with loss and their effect on me.
As children,
the closest thing most of us have to loss is that of a beloved pet. We had so many kittens and cats growing up
that I can’t remember most of them. I
vaguely recall crying once or twice at a passing. The memory so fleeting I can’t be sure which
cat it might have been. I also recall a
couple of “burials” in shoeboxes on the side of a hill down near the pond on
our property. During my last visit home
the hill is not recognizable anymore, any trace of long gone pets has
disappeared.
I supposed I
was lucky that my first recollection of a human death was my grandfather in
1969. I was thirteen years old. I recall a few things from that period of
time. I knew he had fallen and was in
intensive care. I remember not being
able to go visit him there. I remember
crying after he died – and equally remember one of my cousins not crying which
left me baffled and feeling I was doing something wrong. I don’t remember much about the memorial
service, but others tell me there was lots of crying going on. My grandfather was a beloved man by so
many. But, once the memorial service was
over and everyone returned home, I don’t remember anyone talking about it much more.
Being raised
in Christian Science, people don’t die, the “pass on”. While my thirteen year old self probably
wanted to grieve, the behavior of those around me did not teach me how to do
so.
In fairly
short order, two more grandparents died within the next year, my dad’s father
and step-mother. There was no service
for them. In fact, they were hardly
mentioned at all. Were they gone and
forgotten too?
Many years
would pass before I would experience close, personal loss. By that time, I was on the West Coast and
these deaths were on the East Coast. My
maternal grandmother, a college roommate, aunts or uncles. I remember feeling sad but, being far
removed from any activity going on in relation to these deaths, it was easier
to brush the feelings aside.
And so it
was in the year 2000, when I received a significant blow in my loss experience,
that I found myself lost in a world I didn’t know how to navigate. When my first husband died, I found myself in
counseling at the recommendation of one of my attorneys. Only then did I realize I had never learned
to grieve in a productive manner. Only
then did I learn how much those prior death events had impacted me. I needed to learn this process at the age of
43.
Looking back
at that year of grieving, I realize there were many things I should have done
differently. I was more self-involved than
I though I was - and I didn’t recognize what my daughters needed from me. Not one to want to be stuck in a quagmire, I
was determined to push myself through the grief as quickly as possible and move
on. I wanted to be happy again. It’s not bad to want to be happy, but the way
I went about it was probably flawed.
However, in
this process God put another man in my life.
A man who would help me cope with some of my grieving issues, who could
help put things into perspective, who allowed me to cry yet could also make me
laugh. Someone I could lean on as I went
through more personal loss in the years to come.
In 2006, my
dad started to deteriorate from dementia.
I was on edge just waiting for the phone to ring. Knowing this, George suggested I fly home to
be with him and to help my mom. This
time with Mom and Dad proved challenging yet rewarding at the same time. I was able to assist Mom with the care of my
dad. By the time I arrived he was
bedridden and not too responsive. I went
between periods of caregiving in ways a daughter should never have to
experience – to periods of just snuggling with him and being father and daughter. It was as if I had a toggle switch on my body
– being what I needed to be at any given moment. Daughter – caregiver – daughter again. I was with my dad when he took his last
breath. That was such a profound
moment. Heart wrenching yet peaceful as
his pain was finally gone. To this day
it is an experience I would never trade away.
While I miss my dad, I recognized he had been fading away for a few
years and thus my grief was not as deep as other experiences.
Over the
next few years I lost other family members – aunts and uncles mostly. Again, not being back East when these
occurred made it relatively easy for me to not experience much in the way of
grief. When I lost a cousin who was just
a few years older then me, I could scarce believe that “my generation” was
starting to die.
Today marks
the sixth anniversary of my mom’s death, which is why I pause for reflection. I was just days away from a planned vacation
to visit her for a little over a week. I
was super excited for this trip because I had been relegated to taking care of
George’s mom for years at this point and needed to get away. To say that I was devastated to receive a
call from my sister telling me that Mom had died would be an
understatement. Mom’s death shook me to
my very core. My vacation turned into a work week as my siblings and I took on
the laborious task of clearing out our family home, organized a memorial
service, and leaned on one another. As
we went through the house to determine what to keep, save, toss, etc., we had
some opportunity to reflect on memories.
With my mind concentrated on getting through this house cleaning, my
grief was temporarily suspended.
In the
ensuing months, that grief would slowly take over my life. I carefully hid it from my loved ones. Yet I could feel myself slipping further and
further into a dark hole. By the end of
the year I didn’t mind that I had to help take care of my mother-in-law as I
had no desire to be out with the living.
I didn’t care about going to church or seeing friends. I was “perfectly content” to hole up at
home. Thanksgiving and planning for
Christmas were tedious – doing them out of a sense of obligation. Then, over
the Christmas “holiday” time, I knew that I had to somehow pull myself out of
my self-made hole and start to live again before it got any worse. It was then that I stumbled on a volunteer
job that would not only pull me out of my slump but lift me up and give me such
joy again. I knew that Mom was my angel
as I did something she loved to do (volunteer).
This volunteer job turned into a paying job for me within a few months. Wow!
Today I
spent a little bit of time in the backyard that I designed with some of my
“inheritance” from Mom. In a way, it was
spending time with mom as I trimmed a few things that needed to be taken care
of. I can picture my mom in her yard and
her garden as she bent over to weed, trim and plant flowers.
While it was
difficult last year to lose George’s mom, her death also brought with it a great
sense of relief. Like my dad, my
mother-in-law had been disappearing for more than a decade as she spiraled into
her Alzheimer’s riddled brain. Although
we had experienced some truly joyful and fun moments in the months before she
died, in the last few weeks she had truly started to leave her physical body.
As I sit
here today and tell you about some of the people I have lost in my life, I am
remembering some of the fond and fun memories I have of these people. Lessons
they taught me, laughter we shared, conversations that connected us – these are
things we gave to one another and things we must remember beyond the pain of
loss.
My
grandfather had a great smile. He used
to take us “grandchildren” for walks on a lazy Thanksgiving afternoon. My cousin recently informed us that my
grandfather will be inducted into a local Hall of Fame later this year to honor
him for decades of blazing walking trails the area.
My
grandmother was a short, stout woman with a great smile and laugh. One of my favorite photos of Grammy and
Grampy is them in their dining room, my grandfathers arm around the shoulders
of my grandmother and both with smiles on their faces. Their home was always open to family and we
did have many family times there.
My college
roommate was a tiny woman with a fierce loyalty to her family and a great sense
of humor. She married her high school
sweetheart and had three children before her untimely passing.
My dad did
much with little, raising a family of five on a limited budget. He was a role model of someone who worked
hard to make a living. He also took us
on many vacations, giving us a sense of the world around us.
My mom, well she was our role model for love,
for learning acceptance of others, for learning how to give to others. I enjoyed my chats with mom, ones I had with
her weekly for the last eight years of her life here on earth. We could chat on almost any topic, bounce
ideas off one another, relive memories together. She had and amazing memory – so much better
than my own. The last time I visited her
I recorded some of my talks with her so that I could remember them (I didn’t
know it would be the last time I would spend time with her.)
My parents
together gave us a home that was safe, warm and loving. One always felt welcome
there.
My aunts and
uncles are woven into the tapestry of my life.
Reunions, holidays, spending time together. I was fortunate that most of them lived close
enough and some were close enough in age to be playmates when we were
young. While many of us moved away from
our “home”, my memories of them are fond ones.
All so different, yet all so loving and supportive of one another.
My first
husband, unknowingly, taught me how to be independent. I had to do a lot on my
own as his jobs or his hobbies kept him away from home a great deal of the
time. I watched and learned some basic “repair”
skills as he did those things which seemed to come naturally for him. He was playful, he enjoyed creating things,
he enjoyed fixing things, he loved his kids.
He was passionate which could be good but also bad as he could easily
get fired up about things not going right.
My
mother-in-law taught me patience. I had
to have a lot of it to help her over the years as there were times she could be
a sharp pistol as she fought to maintain her memory and dignity. She couldn’t understand that there was no way
to fix herself. There were times she
would yell or fight – and five minutes later not remember a bit of it! A roller coaster of highs, lows, ups and
downs for so many years. But I will
always remember the funny things that occurred over those years. She gave us many things to laugh about – yet
had no idea she did that!
Loss is
inevitable in our lives. The stronger our love for that person was, the harder
we feel the loss. For if we didn’t love,
we wouldn’t hurt. Yet if we allow
ourselves to look, we will find the positive things those losses teach us. We have to look for the rainbow, look for the
pot of gold that waits for us as we begin to heal. It may seem cliché to say that heartbreak and
loss makes us grow stronger, but it does.
It truly does. It may not happen
right away. Not everyone finds that pot
of gold because they don’t know how to do so.
I am
stronger for having known these people who are now guardian angels. Each one gave to me something which has made
me into the person I am today. While I
don’t relish the thought of more loss journeys, it is inevitable as “my
generation” creeps closer and closer to our twilight years. I will cherish these relationships while I
can. As I experience more loss going forward, I
will be able to look inside myself to see what it was these loved ones gave to
me. So, while I am thinking of it, I
want to say “thank you” to those who are reading this blog – because likely you
are one of those people who has made an impact on my life, someone I am glad to
have met in my lifetime whether for a short time or a long time. Because of you, I am a better person!
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