I left my house to get to work before 7 this morning. My daughter arrived home from work after I went to bed. She lets me know she’s home with a kiss or a hello from the doorway. I do the same, only this morning, I wanted to see her sleeping face and breathe her in for a moment before I left for the day. We pass one another in slumber.
I reached down and kissed her. With her eyes still closed she reached her arms up to me without lifting them from the blankets. She mumbled “I love you, Mom” and I lost her back to sleep. I back quietly and quickly out of the room and tears of grief come to my eyes. My body remembers a similar goodbye 11 years ago when I lost my mother. She too reached her arms up but had no strength left for her thin, frail body to raise her arms. ‘I have to hug you” she said. I leaned down and kissed her forehead, knowing I would lose her soon. She waited for me to arrive, a 24-hour, across-the-world trip. One of many I had made in the previous four years. Leaving my then young children at home, sometimes not knowing if she would be alive when I arrived.
Her battle with cancer lasted four valiant, knowable years. I spent hundreds of hours in the hospital with her. Sitting, chatting, and letting the family know what was going on. My MD father didn’t stay long in the hospital. As a doctor, he had inhabited hospitals all his life. It was too hard for him to be there. This was his grief. I understood, although we never spoke about it. Not through the two bone marrow transplants and the several remissions.
And the skies opened up and howled
After she lifted her arms, my mother closed her eyes and soon slipped into a coma. Those were the last words I ever heard her say. There were noises later, but nothing human sounding as she left this world. It was July and there was a magnificent thunderstorm. My father told her she could go and her pulse got stronger. She wasn’t a big fan of being told what to do. And the skies opened up and howled. My daughter is fearless just like my mother. And hugging her is similar to hugging my mother. It helped me tremendously in my grief when I was missing my mother so profoundly that first year. I think having children helps in the healing process.
She is the next generation – the correct order of things – as I have been losing people all of my life. Grief is as familiar to me as a hug. And I feel lucky to have known the people I have lost. It is my hope to always keep them alive in my heart and memories. My grandmother left paintings and sculptures and an odd sort of whistle she used to use to call my baby sister to her in the mornings.
When we get stuck in our grieving process, that is when it’s time to take stock (Tweet it!)
No one can say how long one can grieve. Some people never move on and back into life after someone they love dies. It’s a sad situation to become immobile between the past and the present. In some ways, I believe this speaks unkindly of the person who passed through our lives and is now gone. It sounds trite, but how sad our loved ones would feel if they could see that we could never move on in our lives without them.
My mother left a life well lived and no regrets except that she would not get to see her grandchildren grow up or have the old age my father had promised. She was a positive upbeat person and never once said “Why me?” when the diagnosis of Leukaemia was delivered.
The more love you give, the more you have
Every meal was the best meal for her. Every tennis game, a joy. Each season, the most wonderful. Each visit with a friend, the most joyous. My mother grew up in poverty with an absent, alcoholic father. Her single mother, my grandmother, taught her the secrets of life. One of the most important being “the more love you give, the more you have”.
Someone asked me once, “How you get over loss and grief and get back to normal?” I laughed. This isn’t the right question.
When you lose someone you love, there is no going back. There is just a new normal – living without them
And you talk about them. Share stories with the people who knew and loved them. Some of those other people will find this exercise too painful. But I believe it is important to the healing process. The pain and grief speaks to the impact these special people had on our lives.
Some helpful things I learned during the process of grieving:
1. Express your grief out loud. Don’t feel you have to hide your feelings. They need to be felt.
2. Don’t try to put on a brave face. You are finding a new normal and that can be painful. So why pretend to be happy?
3. Explain that you have had a loss. Don’t feel obligated to attend other people’s happy occasions if you can’t be happy for them.
4. Keep them (the people you have lost) with you in your heart.
5. Carry on their legacy by taking up their cause – and live each day to the fullest.
Sometimes when I’m sad and filled with grief – and wishing I could share something with my mother, I smile and realize I know exactly what she would have said and how she would have reacted. And I feel blessed for having had her in my life for as long as I did.
Over to you: How do you handle your grief on a daily basis? What small things get you through?
Coaching with Tamara Mendelson
Are you struggling through an unexpected life change? I’m now taking applications for 2018 Coaching and I’d love to hear from you! Sign up below to receive my coaching application form straight to your inbox.
[magicactionbox id=1256]
