Dear Vixanne,
i agree and disagree with you. all grief is indeed very different, and losing a parent is not like losing a child, that's true. but, ironically enough, when i lost my parents, i felt very similar feelings of isolation and exclusion to what you have felt, and much of that came from how other people 'expected' me to grieve. everyone seemed to think that it was so much 'worse' for my grandparents to lose their children than it was for me to lose my mother, because your parents are supposed to die before you and your children aren't. maybe that's true, but your parents aren't supposed to die before you're thirty, and even if they are, it doesn't make it any easier. everyone 'expected' me to be over it by now, because i am young, and resiliant, and i have my whole life and future ahead of me. so now it makes people uncomfortable when i talk about my pain, and it makes them feel guilty when they tell me their mother's day plans, because they don't know how to 'handle' my grief that has lasted so much longer and affected me so much more than it 'should'.
true, your grief and mine are very different, just as our experiences and our personalities are very different. but i think that there are also a lot of similarities which you don't see.
i very much mourned the future when i lost my parents; every day i mourn the fact that they are not with me in my life to see the directions i am taking and that they will never see me grow or know my family or my achievements. i do feel that my mother's death is a reflection of me as a woman and a person- through my most formative adult years, i didn't have a MOTHER, i still don't have a mother, i don't have that most essential of female relationships that every other woman in my world has, and that makes me feel freakish and abnormal and faulty. no one knew knew what to say to me when they died- sure, i got the prerequisite 'i'm sorry' and ' how are you?', but no one really knew what to say, yourself included. just because there's a card for it, doesn't mean people feel comfortable discussing it with you. i do have many many memories of my parents, but they are fading every day, and for many of them, there is no one left who shares those memories; they will die forever when they leave my mind, because all of the people in those memories have died. i certainly felt bitterness and jealousy, and i still feel bitterness, every time i see a mother and daughter or a father and daughter laughing and talking together. it makes me FURIOUS that that can't be me, that my parents were taken from me while other people will have theirs for their whole lives. and lastly, yes, hundreds of people mourned my mother and my father, but i mourned them, and still do mourn them, very much alone, every day. in fact, the further i get from their deaths, the more alone i feel in my grief. because i'm supposed to be over it.
because grief is supposed to be simple.
but you and i both know that it is not.
for anyone.
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6 comments:
Hiya,
I'm sorry if anything I said offended you. I really really really didn't mean to and I had you in mind when I was writing. I just said this to MAH, but I'll say it here...and I know that I don't actually know this be true either....I think there is a difference between losing your mom at 18 and losing your mom in your late 60's (which will probably be my mom's situation with my grandmother). I tried to express that in my post. I think there is a really really big difference. I still think that that it would be incredibly painful for my mother, but she will be able to know that my grandma has had a long, full life and that she got to spend so much time with her. You weren't given that, and I think that makes a big difference.
What I was trying to express (and maybe did a bad job of it...you know I kind of just write what's off the top of my head) was that some losses are unexpected and not peaceful losses and that I think those kinds of losses create a lot of confusing feelings in people that go beyond just pure grief. When my grandfather died he was in his 80s and had been diagnosed with liver disease 10 years before after being given bad blood in the hospital. He wasn't supposed to live as long as he did, and we knew it was coming for years. So even though it was really really sad and I still miss my grandpa, his death was peaceful. Now, I don't know that my grandmother would agree with that. I expected my grandfather to die one day. But I don't know that you can ever expect or feel okay with your husband's death.
Now I'm kind of rambling again....I did kind of presume when I said that I wouldn't, so I apologize for that. I was talking about what I imagine I would feel, when I should know that I probably can't imagine it at all.
But I really really really did not mean to make you feel like I was belittling what you experienced and experience in any way, and I of all people would never begin to tell you that you need to put a timeline on your grief. And you're right...people probably still didn't know what to say. I guess I didn't. I was just thinking of all those cards and donations my grandmother received after my grandfather died...probably at least 100. But where were the cards for our baby? Who made donations in our baby's name? People didn't think of it as a real loss. So that's where that was coming from.
you didn't offend me babe, i just felt the need to set the record straight, from my perspective at least.
i didn't send you a card when charlie died, and i am sorry for that. but i always considered it a real loss, all of your real friends and loved ones did, and i consider your grief very real and very justified. some of us just didn't know what to say- and i think that's the biggest commonality of grief: there's nothing anyone can say.
i don't think grief can ever be quantified or compared at all. orphannie, you taught me that. you taught me that it was okay to grieve in my own way and in my own timeline - these lessons are a prt of the commonality of grief and loss. i felt like you could understand, despite the huge differences in circumstances. that commonality, that connection, is comforting. no, i do not know your particular griefs, and you do not know mine. but we understand what it feels like to grieve and hurt and journey through the myriad of emotions that last for years and years, and that is what is most important. i hate to focus on differences and do not choose to make myself feel any more alone than i already do in life. i'd rather celebrate the love and understanding, no matter what form it may take.
speaking of love and understanding, thank you so very much for last night's comfort. i was scared, and the most important thing you said was "you are not alone". that sort of sums it all up at the end of the day, doesn't it?
Being another motherless child I can relate to what you all are saying. I lost my mother and a baby girl as well. They were both terribly hard to deal with, and I still grieve for both. You can check out my mother's day post from May 8th for a little more detail, but I didn't dig deep. It gets too hard sometimes.
I had a friend that lost a child after I had lost mine. I didn't know what to say to her either, because I know how little it all really means, but I knew it would mean a lot to her if I let her know I was there to listen if she needed to talk. She told me later that she appreciated that more than anything. People kept asking how she was. It would just reduce her to tears. I just told her I was there when and if she needed me. Thats what I needed when I lost my daughter. I hated all the pitying looks. I had to make sure people knew, so if they didn't say anything at all, I wasn't sure, but I wanted her to be acknowledged. My daughter was stillborn after being in my womb for 9 months. I never got to hear her cry. I never got to see her move, but to me it doesn't make me grieve any less. The way I look at it now, is my mom in heaven gets to have her grandaughter with her until its my time to go too. My mother died at the age of 34 of cancer, and no one told me she was going to die.
Now you have me rambling. Death isn't an easy subject. There are too many people left that hurt. It usually mean they were very special people and were very loved, no matter the age, and that says a lot about them.
(stepping off soapbox now) I will shut up now.
Thanks for sharing that. Although I am sorry that you have that to share.
Okay....so how was your party? Are you back yet?
And go ahead and register already! I want to get you a nice gift to assuage my guilt for not going to the party.
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