When the grief hit

I've been avoiding this post, at first because it was just too much given that there was a funeral and family and many details. And then, because I was just feeling the grief subside and have just not wanted to welcome it back in -- to my chest, to my thoughts, to my blog.

The funny thing about grief is, though, you never know when or how hard it will hit you. Oh, how it hit me.

I got the call my grandmother died on a Thursday morning. I sat quietly in my desk chair for a moment, trying to push the processing, trying to make that thought settle in sooner than it was. I kept thinking, "I don't know what to do with myself. I just don't know what to do." Did I go back to work, tapping away at my keyboard, programming my part of a website? Should I pack a bag for the unscheduled funeral? Unload the dishwasher? Go for a run? The questions piled up but I just sat there, unsure and unsteady.

It was very quiet in my home. There was the ping of IMs and emails coming through, the sound of cars outside. For a few stretched-out moments -- maybe longer -- there was a hush and it made me anxious. Just as a breathed out, perhaps to dismiss the discomfort and silence, deciding to hammer out a few work tasks before I made any other moves, the tears came.

The tears came and they came and they came. I sobbed. Loudly. Mascara lined my face and palms and was smeared across my neck. I cried for a pain deeper than I could have imagined would come. It was the grief of losing a grandmother I really lost years ago. It was relief that her body and mind were finally at peace. It was sadness for myself, for the angel food cake she'd never make again, for the halt of her handwriting on a notepad decorated with pansies, for ache for her long fingers wrapped carefully around my own.

I thought making peace with her disease long ago meant that I'd be calm and OK when she died. But I was not. I was kind of a wreck.

My dad called then, and I told him the only thoughts I could think: "I don't know what to do with myself."

He responded with what I suppose people intuitively know to say when someone dies: "Come over. We have lots of lunch meat."

So I went. With him, my mother and I cried and made sandwiches and phone calls and arrangements. I set up the memorial donations. We went over the obituary, written days earlier by my mother. I needed to be with them, to busy myself but also to be hugged and told it was OK to let the grief spill all over me.

It was sad and hard and I didn't have it in me to make it poetic or pretty. This time, this one time, I didn't.

I have felt guilty accepting sympathy and expressing so much pain since this marks the passing of my grandmother, a very old woman who lived much longer than she would have wanted to. It feels unfair that people lose babies and partners and parents and I am this upset. The truth is, I just am. I just am.

It took some time to tuck away all the emotion of slowly losing one of the most important people in my life, so I imagine it will take some time to heal.

In the obituary, my mother quoted something we saw inscribed on a gravestone years ago and were so touched by. "Her passing," it said simply and profoundly, "was like the ceasing of beautiful music."

Perhaps that explains both the emptiness and the silence when Grandma Alice died. The music, however faded, was still somewhere in the background of our lives and my mind. That music has come to rest and I miss it so.

Comments

[Laura H]

Hi Jessica! I read all your posts, have for a long time, but I am a chronic lurker. Just shy, I guess. Anyway, I had to comment now... I am so, so sorry about your grandmother. She has been part of your life for so very long, and of course you feel grief. Losing the spirit of somebody doesn't do much to lessen the pain when they physically pass on. It seems like it should, but it doesn't. Allow yourself to feel your grief, and accept that not only are you grieving for her physical body, but now you can finally fully grieve for the spirit that passed on so many years ago. Hugs to you and your family.

[Kristen]

Oh, honey. I've been thinking of you. After my grandma died (similar situation, as I think you know) in January, I had many of the same emotions. This Christmas was surprisingly hard -- it's not like we've been spending Christmas with her for the last few years or anything, and it's not like I really looked forward to giving her presents that she wouldn't know how to open, and wouldn't recognize when she saw them, but she was truly gone, and it hurt.