Grief, Loss and Grey's Anatomy

Grief is such a tricky emotion.  It shows up in a variety of ways. 

My mother is gone.  I am now an orphan.  I tell myself that I knew this was coming.  It was only a matter of time.  A lot of my friends had lost parents over the past few years and I knew that it was inevitable that my time would come.  My father died after a fifteen month battle with cancer in January of 2005.  A friend, who was a mother figure in my life, also died two months later.

I wasn’t prepared for the suddenness of my mother’s death.  It was only a few short months of illness and one month with a diagnosis of cancer.  I wasn’t with her when she died so it was easy to go into a state of denial.  I could pretend that she had never moved from Wisconsin to Connecticut, that the cancer never happened, and that she was still running the show in Iron River, Wisconsin.  She was still telling her church group what needed to be done, making meatballs, meat pasties and pancakes for the Rebekah’s and playing the slots at the casino on elder’s day.  Her life was going on and so was mine.

I did what I always do when life deals me a blow.  I get busy.  I dove into activities.  I was transitioning into a new job with more responsibilities and more money and needed to prepare my clients for new therapists.  Christmas shopping was done with religious fervor.  I was able to channel my emotion into anger at my ex-husband for being present for the holiday, but found I didn’t even have the energy to sustain that for very long.

On my way home from my son’s home on Christmas Day evening I sensed that something very important was missing.  I wanted to call my mother and tell her about the day and wish her a “Merry Christmas.”  I couldn’t.  The sky changed color.  A greyness settled in and I started to feel a shift in my world.

My body reacted with a severe head cold.  I have always felt that no matter how old we get and no matter what kind of a caregiver our mother is or was, when we are sick we want our mothers.  While curled up on the couch, covered with cats and books, I felt as if I would never be mothered again.  There was no one to bring me root beer and ice cream as my Diane used to do and no one to moan and groan and complain to as I did to my mother.  I just stared out the window and felt like an orphan.

I feel like I am going through the motions.  Monday mornings are the worst.  I wake up with a sense that I forgot to do something over the weekend and then realize I didn’t talk to my mother.  There were no laughs over her need to take over every group to which she belonged, no complaining about the weather, no more wondering if my brother will ever fall in love and get married, no more making plans for all the things we would be doing with my sister once she moved to Connecticut. 

There were times in my life that I didn’t talk to my mother for weeks.  For a period in the 80s my father and I were at odds.  My mother was trying to run interference but it was very stressful for us all.  It was best if I just kept my distance.  Time healed those wounds.  Then in the early 90s my parents took off in their home on wheels.  I would laugh and say I felt that the tables had been turned.  The old public service announcement for parents – “It is 10:00.  Do you know where your children are?” had taken on new meaning.  “Your parents are retired.  Do you know where they are?” 

This grief thing is difficult.  It has opened the door to grief over other losses.  Lost loves, lost chances, lost dreams.  It gets overwhelming.  It is as if all the losses had been standing outside the door and as soon as I opened it a crack they all wanted to come charging in. 

I still have the opportunities to stay very busy but find myself wanting to hide out.  I want to curl up on the couch with books and cats and afghans and sleep.  I do not have cable so I rent videos and in the past two weeks I have had marathons of Grey’s Anatomy DVDs.  I am a little more than halfway through the second season.  I am addicted.  I find that it helps bring out the tears that I try to keep back.  I have cried over Christina and Dr. Burke, Meredith and McDreamy, fallen in love with George and prayed for a new heart for Izzie’s friend, Denny.  Unfortunately, I have read and heard enough to know how that turns out.  People die from poles thrust through their abdomens in train accidents and I cry.  Burke crawls in Christina’s hospital bed and I am a blubbering mess.  I have listened to the office grapevine and I know what happens to George’s father, but in my delayed world he is still alive.  I don’t have to go there yet.  Maybe that is a good thing.  Maybe by the time I get there I will be able to deal with the emotions I know it will bring up.  For right now I know that 5 episodes of Grey’s Anatomy in a row may be overload but it is my therapy of the moment.

After my father died my mother was concerned about what would happen to her six weeks later.  She knew that after the funeral the cards would slow down, people would stop asking her how she was and the emptiness would settle in.  People would forget to check on her as their lives went on.  “Then”, she said, “the grief would really hit.  When life is supposed to be back to normal, but without the one person in your life that had been there for fifty years, it can’t be normal.”   I now know what she meant.  When I have had a mother for fifty years and now I don’t, how does life become normal?