Grief and loss
Cancer sucks
It has been almost five-years to the day since my mom passed away from a form of non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a particularly aggressive form that our family just was not ready for. I remember telling her to go to the hospital on New Year’s Eve after she started have some concerning neurologic symptoms and a fall. Twenty-nine days later we were saying goodbye.
For twenty-nine days I was swimming in a living nightmare surrounded by the two worlds I lived in: the world where my sweet family existed, and the world of healthcare that was my second family. I was angry at both worlds. Angry that my family didn’t understand what the doctors were saying, couldn’t see how this was going to end as early as I did, angry that I felt like they weren’t listening to me. The healthcare world—well I was very angry at them—angry they couldn’t “fix” this after years of helping them “fix” it for seemingly everyone else. My anger at both worlds was both founded and unfounded.
It was grief rearing its nasty head. And I have been carrying that grief since. The phrase “it gets easier with time” is total bullshit. Something might feel better in transient moments across time. But the biting sting of loss comes repeatedly, over and over again, in little moments that are unseen by most. Like when I pull one of her recipes out and I feel my eyes burn. When my children mention Grandma in casual conversation while referring to sour cherry candies (a favorite of hers). Those moments feel like a gut-punch EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. A knot deep in your stomach that feels remarkably real and uncomfortable.
I am convinced that when you truly love someone, fully and unconditionally, when they pass from this world in an unplanned, unintended, too early sort of way it becomes a brand on your soul---that is what grief and loss is too me. The bitterness I feel toward her death is unimaginably deep and complex for me (transcends more than one blog entry). I was unhappy with the hospital for very valid reasons. I was unhappy that she had to experience things I had seen in multiple patients over the years but never once imagined could happen to our family. I was unhappy I couldn’t take off more time from work in her last days to be there (COVID restrictions and employment requirements fucking sucked back then).
But what did make me happy is that deep down I know she did not have prolonged suffering. She did not have pain that she would ever consciously know or remember. She passed peacefully, with her four daughters and son in laws at her side. Her siblings and business partner all had a chance to say goodbye. Those are what make this grief I have bearable, or tolerable when it feels its heaviest. Most days are OK. Some days are not. And as we near the 5-year mark of her passing I feel the insatiable NEED to write more than I have in years.
Grief and loss are fixtures in our existence as living creatures. Even in biology we see grief documented in other animal species, like dogs, whales, and primates. It is further evidence that with life there must also come death. So that with joyfulness there is also eventually grief. No one person lives a life without grief and loss. Everyone’s journey to it and through it is wildly different. This is what makes remembrance and storytelling pillars of our existence. Tell the silly stories at holidays about your loved ones here and gone! Pass the recipe on even if you only make the dish for special occasions! My grief, while always there, is quelled by remembering what made her smile, wearing her red cardigan, or buying sour cherry candies to share with the kids during movie night.
This week I will have many quiet tears remembering the mom I had a troubled relationship with as a child and teen but grew to love deeply in my mid-twenties. To the mom that seriously had a shitty card-hand delt her but made the most of it while she could. To the mom that had four daughters but doted on her grandsons more than the four-of us cumulatively over our whole lives. She is the grief branded on my soul but even in death is still teaching me about joyfulness. What is your grief, and will you let it break you or rebuild you?