Sitting with Grief

On a Wednesday afternoon on the 13th of July 2022 at around 5 pm, a time I would be on my way home after work I was now walking to our car with my husband and my uncle. My brain no longer exists, it’s somewhere distant and the aching pain in my chest is slowly consuming me like a cancer. The words are like a repetitive POP song that has no soul, keeps spinning as if it’s stuck on a turntable and no one is rushing to take it off. “Unfortunately Miss Roux is experiencing complete organ failure, there is nothing we can do for her, she is quickly deteriorating and I am afraid that she doesn’t have much time.”

“Complete organ failure…”

“There is nothing we can do…”

“She doesn’t have much time…”

“Organ failure”

“Nothing we can do”

“Doesn’t have much time”

“Much time”

“Organ”

Suddenly I am ripped from my thoughts, “Barbara please can I have your mom’s car, it is all I will have of her, she always loved that car” My uncle already staking his claim, his own heartache reflected in my own eyes, yet, we are clearly in two parallel plains of existence.

I’m not mad, how can I be, my mother is dying, and do I really care about her car when I’d rather have had the doctor be willing to take me up on my offer to take both my kidneys and liver?

This also serves as a quick reminder that in the end, families only come together briefly when someone is dying or dead. Case in point when the next day, two uncles and aunties who haven’t made an effort to see my mother, show up to say their goodbyes.

I didn’t go back the Friday, it was both selfish and self-preservation, my mother was gone, I knew it before the doctor told me; I knew it when I walked in the room on Wednesday after the doctor spoke to us and she looked me in the eyes and whispered to me that she was sorry; I knew it when I found a massive amount of clotted blood she threw-up and hid in the shower, duvet and blankets, that I cleaned the Thursday before I saw her, I knew it when I walked into the hospital room that evening and she was more of a vegetable stuck in a feverish dream world nowhere close to this current reality. So why say goodbye, why crumble down when I can’t even have the peace to do it alone? And I was alone.

Almost two years later I have made friends with the true definition of loneliness, there really is nothing like it. It’s a special hell when your parents pass away, even more so when its a single parent, who both became your biggest advocate, supporter, and abuser. My mom was many things, she had a deeply loving, giving heart that she sealed off and held back to protect herself, and she had a deeply dry, sarcastic, and dirty sense of humor that both amused and surprise many. She had never been very adventurous but I could get her to try most things. She was cynical, and hard, she enjoyed the finer things in life and longed for a deep romantic love and a peaceful life, both of which she never tasted in this lifetime. But I was her pride and joy, I was her reason for existing and why she had spent the larger part of her life slaving away at the machine, pushing to give me everything and more. This was also why she was hyper-critical of me, sometimes mean, and in my younger years abusive due to her explosive temper. She just loved me that much, and so much more but now I was alone. Truly deeply alone.

I know I will spend the next years of my life in constant turmoil about the life I could never give her as thanks, and irrationally angry at the loss of her and the betrayal of her abandonment.

The reality was that my mom had become a functioning alcoholic before my grandmother passed away and it slowly became a part of her identity. She fell into a depression and this became part of her ritualistic habits, she would be stressed and worried and she would drink, she would miss her mother and she would drink, she’d feel lonely but never admit it and she would drink. It was a hobby and she enjoyed it well and habitually. However, to the man on the street, there was nothing wrong. And as I got older I learned that this would be the one hobby she wouldn’t give up and as we now know it sent her to an early grave.

I guess, looking back at least my mom got her wish, she always said she never wanted to grow very old and she didn’t want to suffer. I lost her in a week, I believe she suffered to an extent but I couldn’t tell you how painful or difficult it was because my mom never complained, she put on a perfect show of having all her ducks in a row. No one expected this when they learned the cause of death, I believe my uncle is still in denial regarding the matter. I believe he is currently still holding the hospital accountable.

But I sit with this pain, often, only now I am allowing myself the grace to take it out of the dark and admit to myself all the aspects of my loss. Because in the end, we all have our sins and shortcomings. We are nothing short of a continuously broken kaleidoscope, constantly broken and remade into new versions of ourselves. I am deeply alone, deeply lonely, and deeply angry; I both long for her and wish her well wherever she might be. I am no longer a version of the girl before that week in July, I no longer even know her name.

She died in that hospital room along with all of her naivety and dare I say innocence. I am now wearing a cape of colors all the versions of green one can imagine, the color my mother adored. I have her sense of humor, her cynicism, and her ability to be mean. I now openly take on anyone who challenges me for a duel, in fact, if my uncle met the version of me now on the way to the car with his claim on my dying mother’s car I can confirm that I would be able to give him a second reason to cry.

This pain both cripples me and strengthens me, because I am alone. I have a wonderful husband who held my hand at times, I have friends who stuck with me and came through for me, and I have my cats who remind me that life carries on.

I now value life much more deeply than before, I understand how fleeting our time is and I understand now more than ever that in this lifetime. Your only constant is yourself and whatever you believe your life to be. So if you think finding happiness at the bottom of the glass is where you’ll find your salvation, honey, I’m sure that’s where you’ll find it but it might not be the salvation you want.

This is a friendly reminder to all, be selective about who and what you choose to sit with, in my case it’s grief.