I am a griever. I am, I just realized that I’ve always been. Some people are. You can call them romantics, people tied to nostalgia, to the past…but in some ways they are also grieving. Grieving what no longer is while missing what once was.
I am a griever…and I’m pretty good at it.
Today I had a hard time with my grief. I didn’t see it coming, but it unexpectedly raised its ugly head to remind me of everything I lost, everything I yearn for so longingly but will never have again.
Looking for some solitude (I am homeschooling three kids in the midst of a pandemic, oh, while working as an on-call medical interpreter)… so when my husband steps inside the house, I escape to a long hot bath with a book and a glass of wine. Not every single day, but today I did that. I needed some space.
While I soaked in the tub I came across some old pictures and messages on my phone, including voice recordings of my mother. Obviously I had to listen to them. I remember I used to play them back daily during that first year without her. I was used to talking to her every single day, multiple times, so going 24hrs without hearing her voice seemed…unnatural.
For year number 2 I started spacing those moments, going a week, a month even without hearing her voice. And this past year, with a move to France and back, pandemic, and full-time homeschooling I just hadn’t listened to her yet.
Until tonight.
I went all in. I listened to all of them. Every single one of the 28 recordings I still have, averaging a minute or two each, and I heard her giving me words of encouragement for something I can’t remember anymore, I heard her complain about her tough medical conditions; I heard her wish blessings upon me like nobody else every can again; heard her muttering her love for me and my kids; her wishing me a happy birthday; and heard the very last recording I have of her.
The last one.
Ever.
When she was in the ICU, hiding the phone underneath the covers (phones were forbidden, I still smile at her sneaking one in) sending me a long 4 minute message about what was going on, how things were under control and would be ok and how she was happy we would see each other again. I was on my way to her, probably flying over the ocean or across South America as I made my way from the US to Brazil, desperate to get to her and to be by her side.
I saw her the next day, briefly, and I spoke to her the next three days, all in short visits while she gasped for breath in oxygen masks and with tubes shoved up her nose. I was still able to see her and touch her and speak to her, but a few days after my arrival she was (unexpectedly and without prior warning from the medical team) put on a ventilator.
I never heard her voice again.
For the next 18 days I saw her, she was somewhat conscious for one such visit, otherwise it was just me, my despair, and her increasingly weak body first on a ventilator, then on a tracheostomy hooked up to machines.
This 4 minute long message she sent me while she was still able to talk without gasping for air… this is priceless. It is powerful. But it is painful as hell.
Add to it the fact that her sisters were there with her, and I can hear her youngest sister, an aunt that played such an important role in raising me with her big heart and ideals, talking to her in the background. We lost her too eleven months after my mom’s death. We lost her to a rare, cruel, unforgiving disease (amyloidosis) that consumed her in two months from diagnosis to final decay.
Yet, I can also hear her voice there in the background. The three sisters, together, in that ICU unit. I wasn’t there, as I often was growing up. Never again would the four of us be together. And it hurts.
As I sobbed and shook in that tub, completely caught off guard by emotions I believed were under control, I realized how I will never shake this off. I will always be prey to violent outbursts of grief, even if they do grow far between.
I will never be immune to the feeling of loneliness, especially as an only child, feeling alone in the magnitude of my memories, in the depth of my ache.
And I don’t want to.
Today, I’m going to bed with a broken heart. I’m sad, my face is red and swollen and streaked by my tears. Tonight I carry the weight of my solitude, even in a house overrun by living things, from kids to cats and dogs… yet I feel alone in my grief.
For grief can be so very isolating.
But I feel it. There is one thing I faithfully live by, and that is my promise to feel everything, to wallow in the bad if and when needed, and to glow in the good.
I never deny myself any emotion, for I know that if I did they would consume me, overtake me and keep me from functioning in my rather normal and insignificant life.
So, if you also carry the unforgiving cross of grief, if you are prone to feeling it, but you push it deep inside, consider living it for a change. I’ve read many different (some useful, some not) blogs and articles on grief and the grieving, and the consensus is that you learn to carry on, but you don’t do so unscathed. You can’t.
You are forever changed. Tainted. Different.
It will always hang over you, sometimes as a heavy shadow, in time often just a painful scar…but there, nonetheless.
So allow it to rock you when it is uncontrollable. Cry, feel, share (or don’t) but give it the recognition it so ardently demands. Only then will it diminish, subside a bit, crawl back into the shell that is there, yet controlled.
With that, you might be able to do what I will do tonight: wipe my tears. Brush my teeth. Maybe crawl in bed with a book… and then turn off the lights and sleep so that tomorrow I can start over and do it all again, hopefully with a subdued grief and an emerging hope for a better tomorrow.
