Dealing with the Death of a Loved One
I have always been a real basket case when it comes to losing someone close to me. I was 14 the first time it happened. My grandpa died after three days in the hospital from a stroke. I saw my mom and dad moping around with long faces and knew from the conversation that he was gone. But it just didn' t seem real to me. It wasn't until I saw him in the coffin at the funeral that it began to sink in. He didn't look so bad, not really. I was hoping he would climb out of that box and tell me stories like he used to. Then there was the long drive to the cemetery 120 miles away. He was going back to the ground he was born on, next to the original family plot. March in Wisconsin is cold and windy. We stood on the snow covered ground with the wind biting at our faces and listened to a minister tell us we would see him again some day. I looked at that cold, dark hole in the ground and at the casket and I knew this was it. My grandpa was not going to be in the house the next time we went to visit. No more stories, no more messing up my hair. He was gone! I felt a numbness, not so much sad, just numb. After a luncheon at the home of one of the cousins who still lived up there, we made the long drive home. We escorted grandma into her house and asked if she would be alright. I went to the living room and looked at grandpas chair. He wasn't there. He wasn't going to be there tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. That's when it hit me like a ton of bricks. I sat down in HIS chair and bawled like a baby. My parents came to see what was wrong. When they saw me sitting in grandpas chair they understood it had taken me that long to comprehend the circumstances of his death.
posted by Morgan Painter at
12:13 PM
2 Comments:
My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in the summer of 2000. She dealt with it like a trooper. She was absolutely fearless about the surgery and came out of the anesthetic asking when she could go home! She grumbled that the doctor didn't want her to drive for at least one week while the wound healed up. She was ready to get back to her life as usual. No moping, no grieving over her lost body part. She was an inspiration to us all. She had hoped to avoid chemotherapy with its complications and was relieved when the docter assured her it had not spread. She was 75 and in good physical condition. She could walk along right next to me. She quickly got back to her life of visiting friends and making trips to second hand stores. She was symptom free for 11 months. But then one day she began to feel nauseous whenever she ate. Tests showed her liver was totally involved with cancer. It was too serious to operate. So now, one year later, she was being ravaged by the cancer and was taking the chemotherapy she had hoped to avoid.
If only she had taken the chemo right after her surgery?
After about six weeks of enduring the needle sticks and discomforts of chemo, the doctor informed us the cancer was shrinking. We went out for supper at a nice restaurant and celebrated!! She was healing!
One week later on my sisters turn to check on mom, I got a call. Mom was in the bathtub too weak to get up. I drove over and helped get her into the car then took her to the hospital. Tests confirmed her liver was failing. Most likely the cancer had done so much damage to the liver it couldn't tolerate the chemo. She was dieing, had maybe two days to live.
Only a few days after being told she was going to beat the cancer, we were preparing for her imminent death!
That was just too much of an emotional roller coaster for me. If only the doctor hadn't given me hope she was beating the cancer it might not have been so difficult to deal with. But this was devastating. Ten days after we were told the cancer was shrinking, she was laying in a hospital bed, turning yellow, and racked with pain. She called me over and talked for a few moments that last night. It broke my heart to see the women who bore me into this world be so ill. Her body was filling with toxins and the smell was horrible. Her lips were chapped and cracking open from the acidic content of her blood. When she looked up at me her eyes were yellow like those of a cat. It was creepy. I pretended not to notice. She spoke words of comfort to me then, more concerned with me than with herself. She closed her eyes then and seemed to be asleep. I sat there next to her and listened as her breaths grew further apart and shallower. Slower, slower, and then stopped. That was when I knew the women who brought me into this world, fed me, changed my stinky diapers and bandaged my cuts was gone. I was still in some state of disbelief or shock or something. I barely shed a tear. I stood there wishing the whole thing was a bad dream, hoping I could wake up and everything would be the way it should. But no, my mothers body that once carried mine and nourished it was still and growing colder by the moment. I drove home that night in a bit of a trance. When I got home I just sat in a chair in the living room in the dark and refused to believe what had just happened. I didn't cry. I just felt stunned, numb. If only the doctor hadn't made me think she was getting better I might have been in a correct frame of mind. But this was too difficult to deal with.
Many months later, I was scanning photos of her and dad into my PC when I paused to admire one of my favorites with the two of them. I felt some tears sneak out of the corner of my eyes but that was all. I have never broken down into a full scale bawling episode like I have when I lost my grandparents, my dad, my aunt. I fear I am still traumatized by the circumstances of her passing. I have been cheated of the opportunity to relieve the pain of losing her. Perhaps one day the flood will come to wash the pain from my eyes, my soul, my heart.
When I look at the pictures of the family members I have loved and lost, I first smile, remembering what it was that made me love them. But then I remember they are gone and a sadness creeps in. With each passing it feels as if there is a little piece of my insides that was taken away. There is an empty spot that has never healed, something is missing.
It is them.
By
Morgan Painter, at 11:31 PM
Readers take note:
I recently learned the reason I felt numb at my mother's passing was because I had developed a state of depression. The emotional high of thinking she was healing followed by the news her liver was failing was too much of an emotional strain. Perhaps the combination of events leading up to her death added to the trauma, but make no mistake, it can happen to anyone. I dealt with the horrors of war in Vietnam and managed to reassemble my life but the suddenness of the change in my mothers situation was more stressful and it was more than I could manage emotionally. Depression occures when something is so stressful the brain doesn't process, produce, or absorb the necessary chemicals and hormones as it should. It is a travesty that society does not equate it in the same perspectice as it does physical ailments. People would readily head for the hospitial if they thought they had appendicitis, but they too often do not seek help with something like depression. Compounding the problem is the fact that many who have depression are the last to understand what is wrong and therefore do not know what to do about their predicament. If you can't seem to focus on necessary tasks, your housework is slipping, you feel like you have no direction, you can't seem to make a list of to-do's and stick to it. If you want to just lie in bed and ignore the whole world around you, you might have depression. GO GET HELP, because it will not likely go away by itself. The brain is not functioning properly because there is an imbalance of critical chemicals or hormones. Usually after a short regimen of moderate medications, you will feel like your old self and get your life back together. Life is too short to waste it moping around in a fog. YOU DESERVE BETTER THAN THAT!!!!
By
Morgan Painter, at 12:28 PM
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