Writing the Grief, letting go

I’ve never been good at letting go. Moving apartments causes me existential grief. Switching jobs makes me all introspective and mopey (just ask anyone I left behind at Wiley). Throwing out old papers makes me wistful for the old days, even if those old days were basically total bullshit. Change is not something I’m really good at.

So now that my grandmother is in the hospital with a severe stroke, I’m kind of a mess. She’s stable right now – ironically, she had a much smaller stroke a few years ago, and has dementia, which has degraded her brain, and her new stroke bled into the space left by her dementia and first stroke. I didn’t even know this was a possibility, but here we are. Otherwise, this would’ve been a lot more severe. Still, my grandmother will be 100 if she makes it to her birthday this year, and even she has acknowledged that she’s ready to die. It’s close to the end. I’d be a fool to believe anything else.

I’m good enough to manage life and I will most likely be good to go to work tomorrow, but I can’t help but envision the funeral. I wrote one eulogy nine months ago, for my mother, and I’m not ready to write another one. I really am not.

This has been a really trying year for my family. My sister’s boyfriend’s mother (they’ve been dating for ten years, he’s practically my brother in law) died, and then my mother died, my dad went to the hospital with a nasty pulmonary embolism, and now my grandma is in the hospital. If you widen the list to my extended family, my uncle had a harrowing quadruple bypass and my uncle’s (by marriage) brother passed away during the summer. I was really hoping we would have a break of a few years from this sort of thing, but with all the elderly folks in my family, it’s a mistake to believe that we’ll get any kind of break.

And to be honest, I’m not ready to say goodbye to my grandmother yet. Intellectually, I understand the DNI/DNR order, and what it means. And I know that it’s a hell of a lot better than getting intubated and put on a respirator. But I’m not ready to see her in a casket. I’m not ready to bow three times over her corpse in the Ng Fook funeral parlor – the same place where we had the funeral for my grandfather, my grandmother’s husband.

My cousin is a neurologist. If it wasn’t for her quick thinking and her string pulling to get our grandmother transferred to a better hospital with a stroke unit and 24/7 neurologists, we might’ve lost her today. She was useful in ways that I could never be. My degree in English and theatre has never felt so useless. But I take some kind of solace in the fact that when (not if) the worst happens, I’ll be able to find the words somehow. And I’m probably the one that people depend on for that. I’m the only writer in the family. Do I want to do this? No, of course not. But sometimes the work finds you. Normally, in the case of gigs and shows, that’s a great thing. Not so much here. But that doesn’t mean you don’t take the job. So maybe I am ready – more ready than I thought I was.

Anyway, I should go to bed. Long day tomorrow. I’ve got to visit her after work, and probably won’t be home til late. Thanks for reading.

Writing the Grief, social justice.

I think all human suffering is the same; some wounds are broader and deeper, but it’s all the same, in the end. Which is why I’m so concerned with social justice. How much worse would it be if my mother was killed by a drone strike? By a terrorist’s bomb? By a crazy police officer? Human suffering, boiled down, is basically the same. Which is why I care about it all… I wish I could find more actionable solutions, but here we are.

Writing the Grief, buried and unburied

So I’m alternating between trying to give myself the space to grieve, and trying to give myself permission to be human again. It’s a balancing act. A large part of me wants to just get on with my life, get back to my routine, and keep writing. I’d like to stop writing these posts. But I believe that I am too quick to bury and bottle my emotions. It’s too easy for me to just keep going, and hold this as my secret pain, while telling the world that I’m basically okay when I’m really not (which is what I’ve been doing).

At the same time, I want to give myself permission to be human. Permission to laugh and enjoy things. To drink my favorite fancy sodas, play video games, make music, make love to my wife, and hang out with my dog. I don’t want grief to overwhelm that. I don’t want to go back to the cycle of quiet bottled pain, resentment, release, anger, brief periods of emotional openness, then a recollection of pain. There’s nothing good about that.

And to top it off, I’m basically giving myself a hard time because I haven’t found the balance yet. I’m questioning my moods, my every move, whatever I say and do. The only thing that feels right and necessary and correct, actually, is writing these blogs. As much as I’d like to forget the hurt. This is helping me process.

I really feel sorry for anyone who had to go through this when they were any younger than I am now. (And I know a few friends who have, and they’ve been really wonderful to me these last few days) They didn’t have a chance to really know their parents. They were probably ill-equipped to deal with it emotionally as kids (or they grew up really quickly, too quickly). And their parents had to miss a lot. That has got to be really hard. I’m getting formally married in a few months, and it’s really going to hurt to not have my mother there. Carolyn says that my mother now has the best seat in the house. I’d like to believe that; I don’t know if I can, but I’d like to.

Writing the Grief, the last few days.

So I’ve been away from this blog, away from Facebook, and away from my e-mail for a few days, which, if you know me, is an extended period of time. During this time, I’ve delivered my eulogy twice, seen my family members weep over my dead mother’s body multiple times, seen my father cry more in the last few days than I had in the last thirty years, and said goodbye to the woman who birthed and raised me while simultaneously celebrating her life.

It’s not an emotional stew. It’s an emotional avalanche. It’s everything, all at once. There was a Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns finds out that everything is trying to kill him at once, but because the disease can’t “fit through the door” so to speak, he just couldn’t die. That’s kind of how I am right now, but with emotions instead of diseases. I’m not… numb per se. But I’ve got a million things going on right now and I’m not sure what order to feel them in. Overwhelming is an understatement.

My mother is being cremated and interred in a small, idyllic cemetery near my childhood home. Today was the last time I was going to see her body. That feeling is still sinking in. As much as we all like to say that they aren’t in that box, they are, in a way, in that box. The morticians did an amazing job; my mom looked the way she did five years ago, before the disease really ravaged what was left of her body. While a dead person is still a dead person, it was astonishing. That made it both easier and harder. Her gaunt, skeleton-like appearance when she first died was indicative of all of her suffering, and in a way, all of ours. Her restored appearance, post-embalming, erased that almost completely. But it also made it less real – the death, the loss. Today, in the last few minutes we would have with her, it really slammed me.

Both viewings yesterday and today were lively affairs, believe it or not. My family is not one that succumbs to morbidity and despair easily. These last few days we saw friends and neighbors and family members that we hadn’t seen in years, sometimes decades. There was a lot to talk about. There was a lot to catch up on. It was easy to get lost in the joy of that. To get swept up in the love and support. And there was a LOT of it. It was weird for me. I’m used to being the supporter, not the supported. It’s hard for me to accept any of that. But I did my best, and it really did elevate my spirits.

At the end of each day, my father spoke about his life with my mother. He spoke about how they met, what their lives together meant. He broke down throughout the eulogy, but true to his character, he struggled onward, and conquered his tears each time. I was proud of him for the moving and meaningful things he said about my mother, about her character, about their love, without a script, without a safety net, with all that emotion, with everyone watching. Then my Aunt Betty, my mother’s older sister, spoke about their lives together as protesters, as sisters, as family. They told the story of my mother’s sweet sixteen, and how they rehabilitated an old stable behind their house, how they cleaned and repainted it, and how much the boys loved my mom. She also mentioned how my mother held the banners the highest and laughed the loudest. My father always said I had a lot of my mom in me, and I think that’s just more proof.

Then I gave my speech, which I’ll probably post later. I went off script near the end, regarding two things – my last memory of my mother and what this has taught me (This is actually way rougher than I delivered it during the eulogy because I am currently soul-deep tired). My last memory of my mother was the evening of Wednesday, May 29th. She was having trouble breathing because of congestion. She was death rattling, I realized later. My sister and father were pumping her chest, helping her breathe and clear the congestion. I couldn’t do much really besides hold her hand and say, “We’re all here, mom. We love you.” The care that my sister and father gave my mother was astonishing and loving and beautiful. They are my heroes. I am not afraid to say that. They are my heroes.

The other thing is this – I saw all the friends and family around me, and I knew that I still had far more than I lost. Even though I was heart broken, I knew there was so much in my life to look forward to, so many people in my life who still loved me. That is an amazing feeling – that there is still so much and so many people in my life to treasure.

Then we all paid our last respects, and that’s when all the joy and all the life fled the room. Maybe I’m selfish. Maybe I don’t want to face the reality of death (a definite, and likely, possibility). But as soon as we started focusing on the death itself, we all started hurting again – as if all the joy we found (or at least I found, I can’t speak for everyone else) died with all the wonderful talk. Suddenly it was just us, alone, against the enormity of death. And I fucking hate that.

Carolyn said that these two things aren’t mutually exclusive – that celebrating my mom’s life and mourning her passing are meant to go together. I know she’s right. I just hate seeing the people I love in pain. I hate being in pain. (Who really likes it?)

I had trouble tearing myself away from the casket today. I couldn’t bring myself to touch her (kissing her cold forehead on Friday afternoon was the most awful experience of my life, but I couldn’t stop doing it) so I squeezed the edge of the casket in my hands as hard as I could. And in my head, I promised her I would live every day of my life in her honor. I would take the days of my life and use them well, in the ways that she never could because she was so, so sick.

I’ve been in a rut with my job for a long time. I think it’s time I started looking elsewhere, trying to figure things out. I need to do something, anything more. I have too much to give, too much love in my heart, too much care for the world, to burn a third of my life churning butter for my corporate masters. Life is just too precious.

I have to say that my mother’s sickness and death is the worst thing that has ever happened to me, full stop. But at the same time, I can feel vast vistas of existence, of possibility, opening up before me. Before she died, the horizon only held death and pain, and the possibility of more suffering – hers and ours. Now… who knows? My mom’s been sick since I was 13. I’m 30 now. I have no idea what my life can or could be. But I’m going to find out, one way or another. Before, it seemed like any effort I made would be doomed to failure. Why? Because my mother was going to die. Now? Who knows?

I want to find out. For the first time in my life.

Writing the Grief, June 1, 7:48 PM

I started to lose it the longer I spend at my parents’ house. I was in the backyard and the sight of my mother’s laundry line almost drove me nuts. I started to freak out and lose it. I ran inside and needed to be alone, and went into my sister’s old bedroom. It was like that moment in a horror movie when the victim runs from the monster and slams the door shut and thinks he’s safe. But it turns out he’s in a room FULL of monsters. And then it’s just all over.

My sister’s old bedroom is full of my mother’s things. A workout bike she never used. Tons of her old clothes. Old meds and medical devices. I ended up weeping with my mother’s plastic and metal leg brace in my hands. It felt like all I had left. In a way it was. This is going to be a long, hard road.

Writing the Grief

Stuff I’ve written on Facebook and elsewhere since my mother’s death:

June 1, ~10 AM

 

The thing that’s bothering me most today is the fact that my mom won’t be able to see me get married. We were going to Skype her in, use live webcasting, something. Now she won’t be there to see it. I don’t believe in ghosts, heaven, souls, etc., but I know those who do would say now she has the best seat in the house, with no disease, no fear, no worry. Sometimes I like to believe that.

June  ~12 PM

Right after my mother died, the only comfort I found was in poetry. It was the only thing that made sense. I’ve been struggling to figure out what I want my life to be about for the last few years. Now, I think I know. Thanks mom. I miss you already.

 

June 1 ~7PM

It’s not the same house without my mom. I had taken to calling it “my father’s house” a while ago, partially out of anger at my mother, and partially because my dad was the parent I was able to interact with the most. Now it truly is “my father’s house” alone and that is really really fucking sad. The gut ripping despair and agony I can deal with. It’s this ongoing, low grade, background-radiation sort of sadness that’s hard to deal with. When I start to relax, I remember that mom’s dead, and then relaxing becomes impossible, something I can’t have and don’t deserve.