Being a student of grief now for 19 years (anniversary 8pm on September 22), I’ve come to recognise that ‘once a student, always a student’. Grief is never a school you graduate from.
Here are 11 new things I’ve learned about grief losing Mum:
1. Clueless – from a hindsight perspective, it is normal to be absolutely clueless regarding what’s about to happen in the immediate future. None of us expected Mum to descend so quickly, though from the perspective of hindsight, we can now see. It’s actually been a process of forgiving myself for not seeing it coming. Of course, especially in this situation, death is a thief.
2. Guilt – is normal in grief. Not guilt for what I’ve done or not done in terms of Mum. Not that type of guilt. Guilt I mean that I’m still alive and Mum is now dead. Guilt that she is missing out. Guilt because it seems that Mum has been robbed. Of course, the opposite is true. Mum is at peace, and we, the living, bear the pain of our lost relationship with the matriarch of our family. But it’s so hard to rationalise this as a living person.
3. Reassessment – at my age and stage, with a busy professional life as an investigator, consultant, pastor, and counsellor – yes, four kinds of work simultaneously – I know many of you will relate, so this will be helpful – Mum’s loss has made me re-assess how I set priorities. Push has come to shove; family must come first. At times, it hasn’t.
4. Firsts – this is surely not a new thing I’ve learned but it feels brand new in the context of losing someone who has been in my life, alive, from the moment of my conception – and indeed was and is responsible for me being me. All those moments of my routine that I did while Mum was alive, all have their first time – all of them are noted very consciously on my mind – that I’ve done them since she passed away.
5. Most unexpected are the experiences nested within loss and grief. No matter how much we envisage the pictures of our experiences to look, they always appear differently in real life. Like viewing Mum at her funeral. Such a strangely ‘real’ experience when I expected it to be utterly surreal, yet I knew how eternal the moment was. In fact, the whole last week or so has been so real in real time, yet so surreal as I look back.
6. Before versus After – never before have I ever separated events in my life into two clearly separable categories of ‘when Mum was here’ and ‘since Mum passed away’. It is the most bizarre experience where life just seemed a million percent better simply because she was there to pick up the phone or visit. Times ‘before’ and ‘after’ are polarising, and indeed painful. Painfully and inescapably real.
7. Death’s finality – of course, this is no surprise in theory and at a head level of understanding. But the finality of death when it sinks to the level of practise, when it’s an incontrovertible reality, is impressed upon the heart, and a deeper, more painful reality emerges. The finality of loss is matched by the unchangeability of the grief that’s felt. Until the last 7 days, I’ve always had this most important person in my life.
8. Loss ripples outward – I’m sure we felt this when Nathanael passed away, but it feels completely different and polarisingly new now with the matriarch of our family gone. I have that sense that there are a few dozen people really affected by Mum’s loss, and certainly a dozen or more who feel shattered and will do for some time, not least our Dad.
9. Presence – I had the feeling when Nathanael had passed away that he gave me something special to carry with me, yet with Mum gone I feel she is present and able to see us and what we do. Strangely, this does not at this stage offer me comfort at a felt level, yet.
10. Waves – grief comes in waves, and some of them threaten to be like tsunamis. What I mean is these tidal waves of grief defy any answer and I’m simply left with the pain that cannot be denied. It’s raw and tender. This pain insists on being seen.
11. New but not new – so much of what I’ve said isn’t truly new at all for me, but in the context and the enormity of this loss, even though I fooled myself into preparing I was about as ready as I could be, I wasn’t. So many of these themes are the same as I felt when we lost Nathanael, but at the same time it’s completely different, and so much different than previous experiences of loss don’t help with this one.
What’s most surreal right now is, this time exactly one month ago, we celebrated my birthday, Mum was alive, and Mum was here, in our home.
We just miss you, Mum, so unfathomably much!
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