Someone who I care very deeply for lost a parent to cancer this past weekend… That awful, heinous, demonic thief we call cancer. It felt too soon, I thought… They weren’t ready, I thought… But despite the years of suffering, her death still seemed to sneak up on them like a burglar in the night.
This got me to thinking about my own father’s traumatic death two years ago, and some of the things I caught myself pondering on at the time, as a grief-stricken human who happened to also be a psychologist.
1. Nothing can prepare us, even for what we expect.
Despite my dad’s death being sudden and tragic, I’d actually anticipated it, more generally, for some time. But I was so stunned that, even having anticipated his passing from all angles, when it happened, it was as though the concept had never ever occurred to me. Expecting something is not an antidote to experiencing it… Anticipation is not a vaccine against incurring the full weight of the blow. This is partly why I’m always particularly sad for the loved ones of people who succumb to terminal illness… Sure, there is that instant relief that the patient is no longer suffering. But I believe that relief is short-lived, and soon gives way to the scalding truth that loss is loss, and the person has still gone.
2. I realize I had been blasé with friends who had experienced the same loss.
The pain of parental loss is profoundly searing. Winding. There isn’t actually a”pain word” that does it justice. Your faculties take over and you cry without even realize you’re crying. You wake up crying. You go to bed crying. It’s the only time in my entire life that I’ve felt psychic pain physically. One of my first inclinations, in the early days, was to call up close friends (a brother and sister) who had lost their mother the year before, and apologize to them - so sincerely - for having been so glib in her loss. I hadn’t thought myself glib at the time, but I realized, in my own pain, just how ravaged, gutted and lost a person is in the immediate aftermath of a parent’s passing. I had loved their mum. At some point, she had played a pivotal role in my own development, and she had left an indelible mark upon my soul. When she died, I cried. I lit a candle. I called and sent messages. But I didn’t know. I had no idea what they were going through. Until I did know, when I experienced a similar loss a year later. And it made me sad, remorseful and ashamed of my previous ignorance
3. About 3 weeks in, you think you’re better. You feel guilty about that. And then the blinding 2nd round begins.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the author of “On Death And Dying”, is the mastermind behind the stages of loss that have become household concepts, the world over (denial, bargaining, anger, depression, acceptance). Boy! Did she really know what she was talking about! But what she didn’t necessarily express in her work is how these phases are cyclical and not linear; how you return - relentlessly - to each discrete phase. Relentlessly, like storm waves breaking on the shore. It took me one full year to grow psychic skin back, after losing my father. It took me one full year to feel even remotely like myself again. But I distinctly remember a moment, three weeks after his passing, where I felt suddenly BETTER. I exhaled and felt ok. Relief washed over me and I almost congratulated myself for having fared so well. Then came the guilt of recovery - how could I be “over it” so soon..? Was I a cold person? Had I loved him at all? And then, without missing a beat, the blinding pain of “Grief Round 2” set in, and I realized, almost with a measure of relief, that I was nowhere at all in my process of bereavement.
4. Everything helps a little, but nothing helps a lot.
There were times, in my early days of grief, where I truly doubted my ability to endure and survive. But I fought to “stay in the grief game”.
I cried, a lot.
I remember reading somewhere that the cure for anything is walking, and so, for a time, I paced myself half to death around our neighborhood.. This was useful - arbitrary playlist music smashing my eardrums, rhythmic pounding of feet on tar. It became a meditation that allowed me to process what I’d endured. Discovering his death, identifying his body, dealing with the police, dealing with the funeral parlor, remembering our last exchanges, his last night in our home. All of those images and sensations flooded my meditatively as I stepped it out.
I read very specific books… Hand-selected with intent. With prose that flooded my soul and seeped out my eyes.
Despite my cynical agnosticism, I even consulted 2 mediums. I reasoned that, at best, they may actually be sensitively attuned to a realm in which my dad still existed. In this instance, they may have communications. A close runner up would be if they just had the gift of attunement and sensitivity to people (living breathing ones) and could just, in some way, help me process and unpack my pain.
I obviously consulted my long-standing and very brilliant psychotherapist.
My husband busied my free time with endless outings. Restaurants. Hotels. Restaurants in hotels. Restaurants in parking lots. It was exhausting and helpful.
And then I stumbled upon a quotation that crystallized everything I’m trying to get at here:
“Everything helps a little, but nothing helps a lot”.
And so it is with grief… Everything helps. Everything is necessary. You have to “keep swimming”, “keep moving”… But nothing is a panacea. There is no miracle. There is no savior. You do all of that saving yourself, with small, consistent rescuing actions.
5. You cling to normality, like an anxious infant to its mother.
I remember waking one morning after my father’s accident, at an evil hour, from a fitful non-sleep, and rocking in the dark in my torturous pain. And then receiving a “cry-for-help” message from a patient, a first-time mum battling baby blues and overwhelm. I was so grateful and relieved to be able to attend to her. I was grateful for the reminder that, when this storm has passed, I would still be a functional, functioning person.
My father died on a Sunday. By the Tuesday, I was already working. Not to escape the pain. You simply cannot. It’s fundamentally impossible. But it was really useful to lock in pockets of sanity and normality, where I was able to pour myself into the other person. Grief is a journey that begins at the moment of impact, and ends years later… It’s sometimes really useful to carry it with you, through the throes of everyday life, and attend to it gradually and incrementally. (There are obviously ethical considerations to such an approach, specifically as a therapist, and times not to adopt such an approach. But I concur with many of my peers and mentors that it is often in times of our own greatest turmoil that we ironically do our best therapeutic work).
6. You need people at the funeral.
You feel so honoured by them being there, and so snubbed by them not.
I sheepishly admit that I used to be in the camp of people who thought funerals are a little inane and unnecessary… Especially the funerals of people on the periphery of your world. I know this is absolutely bizarre, given that I hail from a country with a funeral culture; a fundamental respect for the dead and their families.
But I didn’t really get it… (Perhaps I learnt this FROM my own father, who probably had a “let the dead bury their own dead” mentality).
But then he died. And some people attended his funeral. And some people didn’t. Some people saw his passing, and his bereft family, as significant enough to pause their lives for.
And I was stunned by how comforted, upheld and supported I felt by every sympathetic face in the sea of mourners. Each agreed with me that my dad mattered. That my loss mattered. That is was worth the “pause” in life.
And so, from then on out, I will always go. I will always attend. If the person gone mattered to me, or if the pain of their loved one does.
But until you know, you just don’t know.
