Grief

I heard something recently that really spoke to me.  It was by Susan David and she said “Grief is love looking for its home.”  That made sense to me. When our loved one dies, that person is no longer physically here for us to give our love to.  It can be very unsettling, especially if we allow ourselves to feel it.

I personally have a love/hate relationship with grief.  Mine is actually more of a hate/love.  I hate the feeling when I’m in the middle of it, or when I feel it coming on.  Sometimes, I self-medicate (can you say AVOID) by binge-watching something on TV.  But when I do allow myself to feel it, the icy grip of grief usually melts into a puddle of love.

This week I was purposefully watching less television to give myself more time to read and do some crafting.  But grief has a mind of its own sometimes.  And because I allowed myself that extra time and space, grief snuck in.

One evening, I just wanted my parents.  I felt their loss to a degree I haven’t felt in quite a while.  I’m not sure what exactly brought it on. It might have been due to a health scare of a loved one.  All I know is I felt the ache of my love not finding its home.  I could feel the pressure behind my eyes.  The tears were right there, pushing, straining to get out.  

I started thinking about my mom and dad, and how different my grief experience was for each of them.  My dad’s death felt so much more “raw” and I admit feeling some guilt in the past, that I did not experience it the same way for my mother. I cried buckets of tears at my dad’s service, but with my mom, I cried very little.  Then I remind myself because of her dementia, the essence of my mom’s personality, who she was and how she related to us, slipped away little by little over a period of years.  

I just have this visual of holding a photograph of my dad.  It gets ripped up rather quickly into a few large pieces.  The pain is intense and quick.  Which is so odd, because we knew his death was coming.  He had a few bouts of cancer and it had spread to his bones. I had seen him one afternoon and he was fine.  His eyes were clear and he was talking and acting like his normal self.  About a week later, I got a phone call. When I arrived to their house, he was like a shell of himself, his eyes were more vacant, he barely spoke.  Several of us took turns moving in with my parents to provide around the clock care for my dad.  Three weeks later, surrounded by most of his family, he was gone. 

And then I’m holding a picture of my mom, and it’s like a little scrap gets torn away, one small piece at a time.  Bit by tiny bit.  We watch her slip away from us.  Thankfully, she still knew us, but the connection of parent and child, the interaction and ability to really communicate was so frayed, barely hanging on.  We anticipate enduring this hell for years.  And then suddenly she is gone.  They called it sudden cardiac arrest.  So very sudden.  How can the impact of her loss not feel as extreme?  

Never before had I examined it this way.

So, I sit and hold all of these thoughts…and the dam breaks.  The tears come.  I let them.  I feel them roll down my face.  

The tears are healing.  My parents are with me always.  I see a daisy or a Mounds bar and think of my mom.  I see a Rueben sandwich or smell Old Spice and think of my dad.  I see anything Notre Dame and think of them both.  I see them in my siblings, in my nieces and nephews and in my own children.  

And this is what I know.  Their love lives on.  And anywhere there is love, there is home.