It’s funny, but I never considered myself someone who would be very much affected by grief. I always felt, because I have been through so much trauma and because I have faced death before, I was the kind of person who could handle losing people – I would be strong enough to deal with the process of grief.
I would never have thought that I would, a few years after my grandparents passed away, suddenly feel the pain of their loss more intensely than I ever did before.
The five stages of grief? Sure, I know about them, I took a basic psychology course in high school, so even if I am not a specialist, I have heard of the stages before. You deny, you feel angry, you bargain, you get depressed and finally you accept. I didn’t question whether or not I went straight to acceptance. Death is a part life and we all must face it. Of course, I can accept that.
At the time, I didn’t understand myself or what bargaining is, because now that I understand, I am baffled I didn’t see it earlier. Since my grandmother passed away I have felt so much guilt that I wasn’t there for her in the way I wanted to have been.
It was, to be fair, a very intense year for me when she passed away.
I was in terrible relationship with a man who didn’t want me to see or speak to anyone except him and I was constantly afraid of him – he probably wanted it that way. I don’t want to talk about that now, though, so it must be enough to say that because I was trying to make everyone (except me) happy, I didn’t spend as much time as I used to with my grandmother in the month before she passed. I had had surgery in my shoulder, which in itself had gone fine, but I had ended up with frozen shoulder and was on morphine everyday for more than half a year because of the pain. I was not in a good place.
My grandmother had been sick for years, the Alzheimer’s had eaten away her brain long before she passed away, but those final years might have been the best years of her life. It was as if all the horrible things in life had melted away and all that was left was my grandmothers beautiful and very loving heart. She was a bit of a loony, but I have never felt such deep affection and such innocent love as I have from her during those years. She lived with us when I was growing up, so I was always close to her.
The morning after she passed, I came to see her and say my goodbyes, but all I felt as I saw her lying on the bed like a tiny pure white porcelain doll, was guilt. I felt I had failed her.
Half a year later, I made a lot of changes to my life. My grandfather had gotten more sick, and even if we didn’t imagine at the time it would be fatal, I was worried of failing yet another person I loved. I left my ex, which was something I should have done long, long before that, and packed all that I could into two big, blue Ikea bags and got on a train back home. I had started getting off the morphine, which was a lot harder than I had imagined, and as I was sat there on the train – alive and free – and I promised myself to never again date anyone or move in with anyone. I have never regretted that decision and have kept true to it since, but honestly, I think perhaps that means I have yet to heal from the pain I went through. That’s fine, because we all need to heal in our own time.
When I got home to my mum, we turned on the TV and the first national Covid lockdown was announced. I was happier than anyone, because it meant I didn’t need to see my ex. It meant, however, that when my grandfather got really sick and was admitted to the hospital, it was difficult to be allowed to see him because of the lockdown.
We were told that he had cancer and that he only had a few months to live. Then, not even a week later, he had passed on. That whole week, though, we were allowed to spend most of it at the hospital by his bedside and when he passed away, I was right there next to him with my mother and my grandfathers girlfriend.
I hadn’t felt sad for months though. I didn’t tell anyone, because it didn’t seem right. I knew my relationship had been bad and that I had stopped feeling anything while I was with my ex, but I felt so ashamed that I didn’t feel anything when my grandfather died, that I didn’t tell anyone.
You see, I was never very close with my father’s side of the family. He remarried and his focus was on his new family. My grandfather was more a father to me than anyone else and losing him felt like losing my father and yet I felt nothing. I remember my mother crying in the church, a cousin of mine looking awkwardly at her clearly hurting herself as well, and then me; completely disconnected from everything. I didn’t cry, but I am now.
All this time, I didn’t accept it. How can we not accept something like that? It never occurred to me that I hadn’t accepted it or dealt with it. I was stuck in bargaining. If only I had been there, been more or been a better human being, then maybe I wouldn’t feel so much guilt.
I was at a funeral this week. My godfather’s mother passed away. When I saw my godfather’s dad, my grandmothers baby brother, I saw grief. He has lost not just his wife, but one of his sons and the wife of his other son this last year. Just then, after the church, I recognised my grandmother in him and somehow, it all made sense.
I finally saw myself clearly.
You know, I can’t write when I feel bad, but that is when I need to write the most. I write to understand myself, to work through my feelings and to heal. I write to explore all that we are.
The last time I wrote fiction (or maybe the last time I truly wrote anything) without restraint, without forcing myself through it, was back at the hospital as we sat there waiting for my grandfather to die. It’s not that I don’t want to write, I always want to write, nor is it that I don’t know what to write, it is simply that I couldn’t.
Back then, I was sat on the hospital floor near his bed. I was writing in a little notebook, drinking bad hospital coffee with my grandfathers laboured breathing in the back. His cancer was in his lungs. I was writing only moments before he passed.
Since then, I have struggled with writing. It was healing to me, like it always was, but it was also very painful. It was painful, of course, because I didn’t see or feel how much I was hurting. Now as I sit down to write, I feel sad and heartbroken, but I feel better. I feel like I am finally starting to heal, I am finally feeling the pain and loss that I never allowed myself to feel before.
It was a combination of many things, of course, but I think that day in the hospital when my grandfather passed away it was too much, too soon, for my little heart to be able to carry or deal with. I had started to close myself off to survive and that day is when I shut down completely. Now, it’s time to start opening up again, even if it hurts and even if I am afraid. I am ready, I can handle it now.
