Grief is a strange thing. It expresses itself in myriads of ways. Yes there is shock, anger, sorrow, guilt, longing, numbness, as basic reactions. But within each of those things are layers and layers of reaction so that you hardly recognize yourself. One minute you are a complicated family. The next minute, one of the complications is missing and everything is sent off-kilter. The larger the family, the more complicated it becomes because each of the family members will experience the loss of their sibling differently. My experience with intense grief is limited. I know this is different...a different kind of grief. I have lost a chid that I adored. She adored me until she didn’t. Mental illness has its many expressions and so, yes, we all have a complicated grief.
The shock of The Phone Call is not new. Many of us have received that phone call … or phone calls. It is then that the heart thuds and you ask what happened. You hang up and sit, stunned. Memories flood in but you still can not process the feelings it brings. It does not feel real. I do not know if it will ever feel real.
There can be anger. I felt it. How dare she rob me of the opportunity to love her through her trials and tribulations? How dare she turn against the family who would most love her? How dare Creator allow hr to be so ill? I tried to make it something or someone else’s fault that she was distant, hateful, and the laughing, sparkly-eyed little girl lost to us forever because of her illness. I was angry at myself for not knowing early enough to be able to help her.
Oh, thee is sorrow, all enmeshed in all the other feelings. It is a rollercoaster of feelings. You are up. You are down. It is a tsunami of feelings. They wash over you until you can hardly breathe. Sometimes you are able to strike out and make it on your own. Sometimes someone has to haul you out. Sometimes, you just sink in and wish to stay there in the depths of the storm. All the voices calling from safety make no difference. They are safe. You are not. You simply give into it and if it hauls you under and keeps you…well, then, that is okay as well.
In fact, being hauled under feels better than the guilt. Could I have done differently? Of course. Could I have been better at it? Definitely. Was I? No. and today does not change yesterday. Today there is no mountain tall enough to call, “I am sorry!” from. There is always regret. There is always a sense of guilt. Always the IFS. And, so, I can get stuck in the mire of I wish, or I can walk through it, over it, knowing I was the best I could be, at the time, considering the circumstances.
This is what leads, at least me, to a longing. I long for a second chance, a chance to go back and have, with me, that sparkling-eyed, laughing, giggling, little girl who was full of delight, and wonder, and love. I long for the bond that grew while she was carrying her son, and her struggle to give him birth, and the moment he was handed to me and I was the first to hold him while the doctor attended to her. I held him down close to her and we were “family”: a mother, her daughter and her son. I long for the daughter she was before she expressed her illness, deeper and deeper, and caused her to withdraw from her siblings and father… and me, totally. Where does a mother put all that love she has for that child who refuses every attempt made to try to bridge over that gap she created and the story she told others and herself. What happens to that mother’s love that is thrown to the winds of her illness? There was, and most likely, will always be, that love waiting for her to receive and reflect back, like mothers and daughters do. That kind of longing.
And, then the numbness, including bumbling, sets in. Since June 12, there has been chaotic feelings, disturbing feelings, extreme, deep, jagged sorrow that, also, has no place to go. Eventually, all the sorrow, guilt and longing seem to go stagnant. A mother is struck dumb with the inability to fix her, to fix this. Her heart could take no more. I am numb until something triggers reality and I realize she is gone. Gone are all the hopes and dreams that she will come, again, to me, as she did over the years, and all was as it should, could, would be, for a time. Those moments of memory, both the good and the not good, have no where to go either. There is a void and I feel it right too my very bones. But “feel” is the wrong word. It is a dark fog of a mother’s love dissipating into the nothingness, the void, and it colors everything in the world a dull color. It is a foggy disassociation with reality of “she is gone” and in that fog comes the stumbling, the dropping of things, the rote-ness of doing and going but not being Present. There is a type of inability to stay concentrating on anything. It is like living half here and half wherever she is. I go through my day without clear thought. They are still jumbled and rumbling somewhere in the back of the mind, keeping me from being clear, purposeful, and in any way who I was just before The Call. I am lonely for her and that loneliness washes back and forth in my thoughts without guard or attempt to stop it.
This is grief for me. It has been over a month and it has not eased. I stay productive. If I wake up in the night, I refuse to lie there and let thoughts draw ‘dot to dot’ pictures that I try to solve. I keep background noise going day and night. This grief is unlike any other. Eventually it will dissipate, but then, that is a fearful thing, as well. What would it take to go? Will I have to lose another dear heart for that new sorrow to take over the last one? I have another vulnerable daughter: my middle daughter. When the phone call came, I expected it to be about her. I have been waiting, in dread, for that late night call. There is fear attached to all this. I fear grief and the potential reasons for it. One cannot live long in this kind of situation. And, so, I let the memories flood and deal with them in love or sorrow…whatever it takes for it to run itself out and be replaced with another memory to deal with. Do not expect that I can jump right back into full life living. Right now, I need you all to hold some space for me as I get through this. Grief is, indeed, a strange thing.
©Carol Desjarlais 8.2.23
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