Really, I thought I knew what to expect when it came to grief. When my mom died, I had this acute, pervasive grief. It followed me every minute of the day, and the tears flowed until I thought it impossible to cry anymore. I finally gave up trying to control the tears and just carried on the daily activities of life while weeping.
When my dad passed, it was more this sense of sadness because I felt he was never a very happy man. Never comfortable in his own skin. Top that off with his life ending in a slow decline into dementia where he was overwhelmed with confusion about what was going on around him. He lost his ability to make decisions. He could not remember his immediate family members. Nothing was familiar to him. He had no sense of control for his own life. I felt grief that his memories and the essense of his life was stolen from him by this hideous disease. This time it was a more peaceful grief because I wanted his suffering, both mentally and physically, to end.
When my husband was diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer at age 45, we pretty much knew from the start that we were looking at the end of his life. We had already lost his father to brain cancer twelve years earlier. Very few people survive a significant period of time, and the time they do have if often filled with ups and downs so extreme it is beyond my ability to describe. Anyhow, at the time, I assumed the grief process would pretty much mirror what I went through with my mother. I know many of the days while his illness progressed pretty much reflected what I felt with my mother. I experienced emotional pain that was so severe I couldn't tell where the pain in my heart ended and physical pain began. Somebody along the way told me it is called chronic grief when you are dealing with a terminally ill loved one. The grief starts when the diagnosis is given, not when they die. Along the way we experienced small victories against the cancer and then had our elation would be smashed into tiny shards again when the cancer took more of his mental and physical abilities or caused him pain that was unquenchable with medication.
I was braced for the emotional maelstrom I was facing. His last three months were a nightmare of endless surgeries and hospital admissions. As his physical strength declined, we had no choice but to face the fact there was nothing else the doctors could do to save him...to give him more time. The life of the person I loved most in the world was quickly coming to an end, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It was like being frozen in terror as a freight train came barreling towards me, and I couldn't move myself to get out of the way of the inevitable conclusion. The end came at home on August 17, 2010 at 8:21 pm.
I thought I knew what to expect. I had been through it before. I'd been preparing myself for three and a half years. And then, nothing. I felt nothing. Blankness. People told me I should not feel guilty for feeling relieved. I didn't feel relieved. I felt nothing. It was like somebody had applied Novocaine, maybe anesthesia, to my brain. To my heart. There was nothing. This man, my husband, whom I loved so fiercely was gone, and I had no emotions left to feel. The first real emotion I felt after the fact was horror at my own self for my inability to feel anything. I went to bed and slept through the night. I got up in the morning and went about catching up on all the things that had been left undone while he was most critically ill. I made lists of the things I needed to accomplish and checked them off as they were completed. I made plans for a celebration of life party to be held in his honor. He didn't want a funeral. Instead, he wanted people to have a good time. To remember him as he was when he was well.
All this time, I went through the motions. I accepted condolences and well-wishes for the future. Occassionally, I would get a little glimmer of feeling, like when you catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye. Then, when you look, its gone. It happened so many times that I started to watch for that glimmer. What was that elusive feeling hiding just out of my line of sight? It has been just a bit over six weeks since he passed. Slowly, the emotions are seeping back in. The void his passing has left is starting to make itself apparent. The feeling is an absence of joy. Of laughter. Of having a purpose in my life. I can't put a name to the feelings. It as if somebody took all the cans of paint off the shelf in my basement and mixed them all together. The color is hideous and undefined. It is just a hodge-podge combined together. That's how I feel right now. My emotions are hideous and undefined.
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