I thought I might die myself after my mother perished in a fire in New Orleans in 2005.
It was a tragic death, as all deaths are — this one particularly so because it was a fire and because it was my mother and because my mother had a tragic life to begin with.
I’d come home to Ohio from New Orleans six weeks after the event, ready to return to daily life as mother and professional.
Only now that I was home without the distraction of memorial services and sorting through a mother's things, I felt I was being buried alive, hurtling into an abyss from which there was no escape. What were these scary feelings? Was this depression? Was I going to disintegrate and disappear? I called my therapist, terrified. “I don’t know what’s happening,” I said. “I feel like I’m spiraling down and that there is no end.”
“It’s just grief,” she said.
“Just” grief.
I opened myself up to learning a lot about grief after that. I read books about this response to loss, including C.S. Lewis’ raw, cathartic “A Grief Observed.” I learned how grief can take on many forms, to include anxiety, depression and regret. I learned how grief can be overwhelming, powerful and scary but not necessarily life-threatening. Most importantly, I learned that grief must be allowed to have its say. Suppression never works.
As I learned about grief, I continued to grieve for my mother. I still do, but without so much fear and hesitance.
Now, 17 years later, I am being haunted by “just grief” again, this time by way of the father of my children, who was diagnosed with early onset dementia in late 2019, and 3.5 short years later, he is gone.
The entry points for grief have been almost too many to name — watching the rapid deterioration of this brilliant college professor, a fun-loving father of three who loved nothing better than taking his kids to a Cleveland baseball game or playing Frisbee golf with them.
“What’s wrong with me?” he’d say, as bit by bit his active life of driving, teaching and enjoying his children was reduced to sitting in a wheelchair, with no speech or affect.
The entry points for grief have included watching my young adult children slowly lose their father too young, even as they gave up major parts of their lives to help care for him.
I have also struggled with the unique grief of having separated from Steve 18 months before he was diagnosed.
It was a separation that had been building for years and had nothing to do with dementia.
But once he was diagnosed, I felt drawn back into his life as if we’d never separated. This opened me up to old feelings of guilt, stress, confusion, second-guessing and sheer denial in the midst of feelings of responsibility and duty to this human being I shared a life with.
There were all these entry points for sorrow and confusion. And yet for the past 3.5 years, all it seems we had time and energy to process was keeping Steve safe and alive.
As of Sept. 24, he’s gone.
And there is time and space now for these many feelings, including disquieting thoughts about myself and the marriage. In the midst of all the tragedy and chaos, I realize I had yet to really grieve the loss of the marriage. How could I? We were separated, then 1.5 years later, we were thrust into the all-consuming world of dementia. The paperwork alone was mind-numbing, as Steve moved to five different facilities in five months.
There is work and process to be done now that the moment of tragedy is behind us, and I know now from my years with Mama, that I can survive it.
On Saturday, we are expecting 150 to 200 people to attend Steve’s celebration of life. I imagine I will experience a roller coaster of emotions. I have promised myself to allow it.
