The stages of grief: four months in Daydreaming on the Porch
- May 25, 2020, 5:02 a.m.
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- Public
This Thursday will mark four months since Mom passed from this earth. After taking care of her for so long, I still can’t believe she’s gone. But I have to correct myself. She may be gone in a physical sense from this house she loved so much, but she’s still here and always will be. Her presence, her spirit is here, and in many ways it’s as real as the person I love and miss was during her physical existence. I created a book of photos of her to see her whenever I wanted to and have her with me. I wander around this house and innumerable little things remind me of her: a wooden backscratcher, a small teddy bear, a piece of her fine antique porcelain, a floral teacup I bought her for Christmas probably 50 years ago.
Every night Mom used to take that or another small cup out of the cupboard and make a cup of instant decaf coffee with a spoonful of Cool Whip in it. One of my regrets is that I didn’t help her keep up this little nightly ritual when she could no longer do it by herself. She did so love coffee and had a trusty old percolator that she used every morning to make her coffee: I did continue this, and she and I had coffee I made for her up until the last week before she died.
Grief is different for everyone. For me it has primarily manifested itself in short, intense bursts of memory that are can be horribly painful for a moment, given the content of the flashback, and then it’s gone. One of the reasons they are so painful is that much of the time the memory is of something about Mom that is so sweet and unforgettable that although it brings the pain of loss into sharp focus, it also makes me grateful that I was privileged to experience all that and know that I did all I could to care for her and love her. I know that’s why she lived as long as she did. Despite her advanced dementia, she knew she was loved and cared for. She knew who I was even if during the last year she started asking me, “Who are you?”
The last year of her life she slept very soundly and peacefully in her bed. I’d go in and get her ready for breakfast and she’d sometimes take a while to wake up. But eventually her eyes would open and that beautiful smile would flicker across her face and she’d say, “I love you!”
Torrey Curtis wrote this eight years after the sudden loss of his wife of 35 years: “Two blessings were critical for me in her loss. First, a conviction that Jesus knew what he was talking about when he said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” There were many days, especially in the first two years, when I would weep and scream in the pain of that loss. The scream was not “Why?” Just “It hurts.”
That is how it is with me. I’ll have a flashback to the last time I saw her and I’ll hear my self crying out, “Oh,God, no!”
I can now begin to understand what someone in the grips of post traumatic stress syndrome goes through. My flashbacks are very intense, but they are quick and go away. Can you imagine what it’s like for those flashbacks not to go away so quickly?
I wrote this in a long note back in February in response to a comment someone left at an entry written not two weeks after Mom had died:
Grief is something I’ve only had to deal with once before in 2003 when an aunt I dearly loved, and who was like a second mother to me, died. I was in the hospital room when it happened. I deal with losses like that and the passing of my mother by steeling myself and not letting emotions have their way, what’s left of them anyway after years on antidepressants. Yes, I don’t get depressed, but I don’t cry or feel things as intensely as I used to. A huge trade off. But with my mother the grief has come in very, very intense little bursts of anguish, so deep and painful they are unbearable, but just for a very short time, seconds, a minute and it’s over. Then I move on. I don’t deliberate too long on what I’ve just experienced. Actually, I’m very grateful for that. It shows I can still feel grief. I’m human after all.
When my father died in 1992, I felt only numbness. I had battled him my whole life. How else could I feel at the time? I never felt any significant sense of loss after he was gone. I still don’t to this day.
I don’t think our loved ones would want us to be wailing and distraught. I really can’t imagine that myself. Maybe men are different in that regard, as they say. But I’m actually more relieved than sad because my mother’s suffering is over. She told us for so long that she was dying. I’d say, “No you’re not, Mom. You’re living and we love you.” She just reply with a kind of soft defiance and resignation, “Yes, I am.”
It’s very strange, dealing with the dying process, which itself is very natural. We make it unnatural. When it finally comes for a loved one, we wonder how we’ll cope, as if we’ve never thought about it before.
For our immediate family, there was never any talk of embalming, caskets, pallbearers, services by the graveside, etc.. None of that. Simple cremation and a memorial service, that’s it.
With my mother, I witnessed a long dying process for years because her decline was so incremental. She was 96 when she passed. In her last weeks, I was still thinking whatever condition she was in, she would go on and on like that, she’d be bedridden and I’d somehow adjust. But she and her body had other plans.
This afternoon thinking about Mom, I opened a weekly appointment calendar illustrated by an artist I’ve greatly admired for decades, John Sloane. He truly had a divine gift for showing us how good and beautiful this world can be. Here is the illustration for that last week in January of this year:
Last updated May 25, 2020
Telstar ⋅ May 25, 2020
When my mother died, my dad purposefully tried to keep himself busy. At the time he was able to work outside for much of the day and my sister still had two kids in school which he often delivered to and from their respective campuses.
That's when we started going to see him almost every week. It's an almost two hour one-way drive, but he seems to enjoy our visits.
He also doesn't complain. But he never complained even when Mother was getting worse either. Our idea is to give him ANOTHER life to help take the place of Mother being there. It may or may not help him, but it's become a part of our lives as well.
Oswego Telstar ⋅ May 25, 2020
I’m so glad you and your sister are doing that. He’s very fortunate to have daughters like you.
mcbee ⋅ May 25, 2020
I've actually had many family deaths to mourn. Both grandmothers (I was close to them) my brother at 54, My father at 79 and my mother at 84. Also a cousin who comitted suicide and a close friend who was killed in a robbery at his place of business. The two hardest were my dad, who lived and loved so brilliantly, and my brother who died way too young tragically. I also tend to just hide inside myself, but I do know the pain eventually finds its way to the surface and has to be dealt with.
You are different because you cared for her so long and because you were there to the end. I wasn't the caretaker, just a visitor for my grandmoms and my parents. I wasn't with any of them at the very end. I think that helped to deny my feelings and stretch out the mourning process in small and more manageable ways.
Oswego mcbee ⋅ May 25, 2020
Mom’s care stretched out over many years. This made losing her harder for me because after all that time this beloved person, my mother, was my family, my life. My long-time final career was secondary. By the time I ended up in that career I had already had a number of other job experiences. There is therefore a pretty significant void in my life now. I’m coping pretty well because I’ve always been a pretty solitary person.
mcbee Oswego ⋅ May 26, 2020
I lost my dream job of 11 years, one I worked my whole profession for in 2013 (company buyout, massive layoffs) and I was only 59 at the time. I really couldn't seriously compete for jobs at that level in the world because of my age, and efforts to start my own business failed. By 2014 I was in the deepest depression of my life. My job had not been secondary, it had been my identity. I know that does not compare to your grief, but I do relate to having your main life responsibility fall out from under you. I am also solitary, but realized that I wouldn't be able to find meaning in life unless I reached out in some ways. So I focused on my granddaughter and some volunteer jobs, and became a lover of lawn and garden work. The void never quite leaves, but I hope you will find meaning in other of life's opportunities in time.
Marg ⋅ May 26, 2020
I’m so glad you are able to write about your grief so well here and that you’re working through it in your own way. It must be lovely to sense her presence around the house so much as you live your life now. My Dad wrote a poem for my Mum on one of their anniversaries - the way you described the intense bursts of grief made me think of it.
“I think I’d rather have if I could choose
This load upon my heart I never lose
This weight of loving you
The constant care
Of bittersweet concern for how you fare.
Than walk the world carefree
And never know
The rapture and the pain
Of loving so.
Kristi1971 Marg ⋅ May 26, 2020
Oh, Marg, how lovely and intense all at the same time. How wonderful for you that you had parents that loved each other so much, too! :)
Marg Kristi1971 ⋅ May 26, 2020
I know - although of course I had no idea how special it was when I was a kid because you just accept whatever situation you’re in at the time! I did feel really sorry for Mum though - she lost him at age 54 - they were together around 30 years which is a long time, sure, but she was without him a long time too - longer than they’d been together as she died at age 94. Never looked at another man in all that time too. I really hope they’re back together now :)
Kristi1971 Marg ⋅ May 26, 2020
That's like my Nana and Papa. He died in '74 at 59 or 60. Massive coronary. Just died right there in their bed. Nana spent so many years without him. She never took her wedding ring off. She just loved him so until the day she died. Like you, I like to think they are back together now.
Marg Kristi1971 ⋅ May 27, 2020
Dad died in ’76 - same thing - massive coronary. I used to think it must have been so hard on them to know that if the same thing had happened in later years they may well have been saved. Mum was the same with her ring - wore it until the day she died :)
Kristi1971 Marg ⋅ May 27, 2020
I don't know. My Uncle who passed in 2010 died the exact same way just a couple of years older. He was in the hospital when it happened, it was just too massive to save him. He just died. It was horrible.
He had a smaller heart attack and that put him in the hospital in the first place. He was worked up and monitored and deemed ready to go home. He was literally waiting to sign paperwork and such to go home when the massive one happened. My mom was with him and had to witness it.
She has been all over my brother to go get checked out, because she is afraid that it will now happen to him, too. She even went and got herself a full cardiac workup, and she is fine. She is concerned it's a male thing.
Marg Kristi1971 ⋅ May 28, 2020
Gosh I was thinking it was similar enough with both of them having massive coronaries around a similar time in the seventies but Dad died in the same way. I thought you said your uncle died in his bed - Dad was put into hospital with the first attack and was also deemed ready to go home - in fact had been at home for a few weeks recovering when he got an infection which put him back in hospital to be monitored where he had the second bigger attack and they couldn't save him. And Mum was also there when it happened. It was her one biggest regret that she never got to say goodbye properly to him. And I also had a heart stopping moment on the bus to work one day when I realised my brother was going to be the same age as Dad was when he died - thankfully he's been fine but my other brother recently had a triple bypass which annoyed him so end because he's by far the fitter of the two!! :)
Kristi1971 Marg ⋅ May 28, 2020
My Papa died in his bed; my Uncle in the hospital. It's all so similar. :(
Marg Kristi1971 ⋅ May 28, 2020
Oh right sorry - I was getting mixed up!
Kristi1971 Marg ⋅ May 28, 2020
Totally understandable and OK. Like I said, it's all so similar....and sad.
Oswego Marg ⋅ May 27, 2020
Thank you so much for your words and the beautiful poem. How comforting they are! I’m so grateful to be able to write about my sense of loss and what it has been like for me, and also, to be able to share with you, and so many others here, this new path In my life, just as I shared an earlier part of my journey in my “Dementia Journal.”
Marg Oswego ⋅ May 27, 2020
I sometimes think I know much more about my friends in here than the ones I have in real life! :)
Oswego Marg ⋅ May 27, 2020
Lol. Same here. Such a diverse group of friends, too.
Marg Oswego ⋅ May 28, 2020
Yes!
Kristi1971 ⋅ May 26, 2020
I love that illustration. It's so full of innocence, fun, and beauty. Hugs.
TL ⋅ May 26, 2020
You are not breaking, you are healing and you are doing a great job at that. Wounds need air. Hang in there kiddo
ConnieK ⋅ May 26, 2020
I've mourned so many losses (both parents and beloved in-laws, all siblings, all aunts and uncles, save one, and my middle child), I'm numb. After my son, Nick, died, I find myself incapable of tears, except for him. It's very odd, but I do not beat myself up over it. I figure God understands it all and knows my heart.
That photo looks like my hometown homes
Newzlady ⋅ May 27, 2020
I totally get the burst of pain thing. Hang in there.