This is the rough, very rough draft of one of the chapters I have started on for my first book effort. I have decided that I am going to write about the year of firsts that follow the death of a girl's mother. It would not be complete without a chapter on grief. While it was very cathartic to write the chapter, on this day, and at this time...it doesn't make any of this whole grief thing easier.
“GRIEF is the last act of love we can give to those we loved.
Where there is deep GRIEF, there is deep love.”
Today, I was the last to leave. The last to leave as a man from my childhood was carefully placed into his grave. In my adult life, I have learned from one of the bad-ass women in my life that someone should always be there to the very end. She taught me this as we stood next to the open grave of a former colleague's 5-year-old son in the unforgiving bitter Missouri winter. Today, I stood there while the downpour of rain had turned to a mist. This humble man that loved the simple things in life. This man with the brightest smile with a boundless heart. This man who was the natural father … birth father to four, adoptive father to one, and surrogate father to some fifty plus foster children. This man that when asked by his oldest son for advice about adopting his now son said, “Do what makes you happy. Follow your heart.” This man who worked and provided for his family and still found time to volunteer his talents through so many places in our community. This man who supported his wife in establishing a small nonprofit that started in his basement out of an old deep freezer full of diapers for it to become a foundation of support for pregnant women and their babies. This man whose favorite hymn was “Silent Night.” The man asked me what my relation to this man was. I paused and said, “One of his sons is my best friend and has my heart.” The bright red urn with the Saint Louis Cardinals logo on it was completely covered when I asked if it would be okay if I could place the wreath on the grave when he was done. Outside giving both my parent’s eulogies, being able to do this was one of my greatest honors.
Grief is a strange beast. We all grieve so very differently because we are all human and different. I do believe that there are a number of commonalities that we all feel though. There is the numbness, shock, denial, anger but how it is displayed is unique to the individual. In conversations with my closest male friends, I asked the question, “Why do men grieve so differently than women?” My dear friend Huey, who I chose because he doesn’t know the man that has my heart, responded to the question simply with, “As in showing no emotion?”
“That but also pushing the people away that love you the most. Not family but like your girlfriend?”
He explained to me that it was “one of those things about not showing weakness and keeping emotions inside and dealing with it by ourselves.” That struck a hard chord with me because, since his father’s death, I had been asked, between I am sorries, to give this man that has my heart space. If you have not read any of my previous writings or do not know me personally, you will not understand that it is not in my nature to just give someone space. I have learned since Momo’s leaving that I need to communicate what I need from the people I hold closest and to ask them to clarify their needs if I do not understand. To most, when someone says to give them “space” it should be a simple concept. I am not most. I asked that “space” be defined so that I do not violate it and was told, “alone.” While it should not have been a surprise to me, it was. When Momo left, he did not understand my grief. My inability to communicate what I needed and our inability to communicate a lot of things. I had before Momo left, pushed him to visit his dad in the nursing home he had been in for about ten months following a stroke. I told him that he would regret it when he was gone. After Momo left, I was jealous that, while his dad was no longer the dad that had raised him, he was still here. (I have to put the disclaimer here that I am not angry with him. I am proud of him and the man that he is because he actually told me what he needed from me.)
My conversation with Huey continued with me asking for clarification, “Is it because society establishes that the weaker sex shows emotion and the stronger does not?”
“Most likely and the male is supposed to be stronger all around, emotionally and physically.”
My observation at this point was that “I guess then, in some circumstances, I probably come off as a cold bitch then.”
This is where my friend shows his wisdom and it starts to click with all the quotes I am reading and writing down from my Google image search. “In all reality, everyone handles emotion differently, (it) just depends on who you are and how you were raised.”
“I guess, because I am female and also pretty much one of those women that have said fuck you to society’s stereotyping that because you have a penis you have to be this way and because you have a vagina you have to be this way. I don’t understand pushing away and shutting out the person that does not have to unconditionally love you but does help you.” “I think (it) could also be family size and what has happened in your life. (My family) was just my parents, me and my sister. We were considered overly connected because of my pediatric cancer and (having) lived in another country during an Islamic revolt can do that to a family.”
“Very good points there.” He validated me. This, to me, meant that I was onto something or maybe coming to an understanding.
I explained the situation to Huey and that “I do but don’t understand. It hurts on so many levels. I thought (that) we had gotten to place where he knew I was there no matter what.” Again, validated by Huey that he was understanding and knew what I meant. I continued, “I guess my heart and mind think that if you tell someone that you (see) yourself spending your life together that you don’t push (them) away. Tell them what you need or don’t need or even how to comfort them but not exclude them.” It was at this time I felt it was important to let him know that he was helping me write a chapter in my book and he knew it.
“Yeah, just say, I’m going to deal with this, but need you by me, I may/will be short and I apologize now when I’m a dick.” This for me also validated the multiple I’m sorries.
As I was reading the quotes about grief, there was a number that stood out to me. Dr. Brene Brown is one of my go to bad ass women (that I have never met but hope to someday) for quotes. Again, if you have not read any of my other blog entries or do not know me personally, it is all about the right quote at the right time from the right person who notices that you need something to give you that extra boost to achieve something great. Dr. Brown’s quote from her book Rising Strong helped me understand where this man I love is coming from. “We run from grief because loss scares us. Yet our hearts reach toward grief because the broken parts want to mend.” The second statement is my broken heart’s hope that as we both heal from the incredible loss of a parent that was also our best friend, that our hearts can help each other mend. The first part statement becomes clearer as I find more words of wisdom.
There was no credit given for this gem, “Grief is love’s unwillingness to let go.” Thursday night after being told “space” and “alone,” I laid in my bed and sobbed because I didn’t have either of my best friends to really talk to. Momo had left and gone to heaven and well, the other is why we are here. My eighteen-year-old son asked if I was okay and I told him the stoic mother’s response while sobbing, “Yes, I am okay.” I then decided that I needed to go somewhere to just cry. I left my phone at home (an unheard of things these days) and told my son, I will be back, I promise. I found my way to the little church on the hill that I attend and had attended with Momo. I sat in her chair with the beautiful knitted blanket that my pastor had done that I had won at the previous year’s trivia night..plus a box of kleenex. The sun was setting and streams of light were coming through the stained glass window. I don’t want to let go of my Momo. I know that Tom (yes, not his real name) doesn’t want to let go of his father, a man that he shares his birthday with. In the early days of my journey of this first year, Tom has had to open my car door and gently take my hand and get me into my house. I sat in her chair and sobbed, asked God why, told him that I wanted my Momo back, that I didn’t want Tom to be feeling the same type of loss, pain, and grief that I have been. I knew then and do know now as I am writing this, that all those are not possible. I do trust that God has both my Momo and Tom’s father in better places. It doesn’t make me feel the pain any less.
As feeling human beings, we are always in search of love but, love has a price. I am not talking love as in what you see in the movies, that is scripted. I am talking that love that is unconditional and accepting of your greatest strengths and weaknesses or faults. That love that knows no matter what, no matter what … distance, which has nothing to do with miles...time, which has nothing to do with a clock or calendar...word, spoken and unspoken...love. David Malham said, “Grief, after all, is the price we pay for love.” There was a time in my life when I never thought I would feel any emotions again. I was numb to so much in my life. That numbness robbed my children of the mother I could have been. The mother that I had. It has been in the past few years that the numbness has left. I do know that I would rather feel that love that brings us to grief than to not feel at all. That love that is a strong, rough hand that gently helps me out of my car or pulls me into him in the middle of the night. That love that I want to give back.
I land into two similar but very different quotes that bring some things into clearer vision. The first from Cathy Lamb speaks volumes without discussion and backs up my need to have Tom beside me when Momo left and my need (which yes, I know if my need not his) to be beside him during this time. “But grief is a walk alone. Others can be there, and listen. But you will walk alone down your own path, at your own pace, with your sheared-off pain, your raw wounds, your denial, anger, and bitter loss. You’ll come to your own peace, hopefully...but it will be on your own, in your time.” Tom is beginning this walk that, as of this past Sunday, I have been on for exactly six months. I am still angry, bitter, pained, and raw...exposed. I did not grieve when my father left in 2008. I was a self-professed workaholic, with two growing boys - one in high school and one in elementary school, married and numb. With Momo leaving, I have made a point of taking my time. I want to think that we are all on the same path but the grief simply doesn’t allow us to see the others that are there with us, whether they are grieving themselves for someone else or being there for us, we simply can’t see them.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and John Kessler stated, “The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but, you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to.” I know that I am not the same person I was before my father left. I am not the same person that I was before Momo left. I agree with Ross and Kessler that we do not want to be the same people we were before the loss of a loved one because that would, in my heart and mind, mean that person was not loved by you and you were not loved by them. On the verge of my fiftieth birthday, I can see the changes in me because of Momo leaving. I find myself grieving. I let my children see me cry. I am honest with my students when it is not a good day and they have seen me cry. There are things that I used to do with Momo that I have tried but simply can’t do right now. Crochet is the biggest. I will, until I leave on my journey, grieve the leaving of my parents. They were my rocks, my constant champions, willing to let me make my mistakes (and yes, that would be an entirely different book) but there when I needed them and will cry when I miss them and don’t have one of them to talk to. I am not sure that I agree with them that I will be whole again, but that is part of this journey of Finding Miss Marjorie. To a degree, in the past six months, I have learned to live with my broken heart. I am rebuilding this life of mine. I am, because of my grief, realizing that the (yes, last one) quote by Buddha that “the trouble is, you think you have time.” Well, we do not have infinite time. It was twenty days from the time they told us that my father had brain cancer and placed him on hospice when he left. Those are twenty days of my life that marked me, changed me, and is time with my father that I am so blessed to have had. It was literally a year to the day that I and my youngest son moved in with Momo that she left without notice. I feel guilty that I didn’t move in with her when I divorced. That would have given me two more years to share our lives. I feel guilty that I was too proud and had to prove to myself that I didn’t need a man and could stand on my own two feet. I feel guilty, even though Momo gave me permission to stay over at Tom’s on Friday before she left, that I wasn’t there for some twelve hours at the tail end of her life. Those are twelve hours that I can never get back. Those are two years that I can never get back. I have started making decisions about when I can retire from teaching and start on my other earthbound journey, whatever that may be. Prior to his father’s death, Tom was slowing me down and getting me to separate home and school. To come home, sit down and breathe.
Going back to the original start, whether we are male or female, we are human, individuals, we are all different. We process grief in our own way. I will not go so far as to say that there is no wrong way to process grief because there are wrong ways. Those wrong ways are the ways that result in more loss and more grief. I have proved to myself that I can live with a completely shattered and broken heart. Each day a sliver of my heart goes back in place. Sometimes it is because I see my youngest son being himself. Sometimes it is because I find something of Momo’s that reminds me of her. Sometimes it is that strong, rough hand that gently takes mine and helps me keep moving.
