Walking Home

Do we “get over” our greif? Or are we always “under it”?

My brothers suicide in 1996 brought a pile of grief to our home, to our extended family, our friends, to our world as we knew it. It was my first great loss. But this wouldn’t be my last time.

In 1998 I had a baby girl. She was such a blessing to me. She was “healing” for my parents too. Loving her was healing. Loving her brought hope for the future to us. It gave my parents a place to put their hearts. She was their everything. This is a big role for a baby girl. She had the most love a baby could get, and they took every chance they could to spend time with her.

She was the gift the world gave us and we didn’t know it at the time, but there would be more pain and more tears and she would help us to navigate this time in life.

A knock at my door early on the morning of May 28 1998. My husband went to answer it. It was my parents dear friend N, who had come to tell us that my dad had passed in the night. I didn’t take the time to feel. I had this strong need to pack up my baby and get to my moms.

A wave of blessing for this baby girl. She was nearly 4 months old. She was wearing a dark green sleeper with a large embroidered tigger on the front. Her hair was a right mess and she was hungry. I packed her up in her car seat and we headed to grandmas.

My dad passed in his sleep. We will assume from heart failure. He is still in his bed when I arrive and my mom tells me I can go and see him if I want. I do want to.

I take the walk up the stairs that I walked a million times to my own room as a child. He looks like he is sleeping. I can feel the peace. The body is empty and the soul is moved on. I sit for a time, I don’t know how long. I reach for his hand and it’s cold, he is not there. I already miss him.

Baby T. I am heavy with the great blanket of sadness and I just want to be her mom and forget about this day that I am in.

There are other people at the house, but I don’t remember who. I remember my mom, my baby girl and my dad. There is a knock at the door, I answer it. It is my Grandma. Her face is in my memories of that day, the day I am trying so hard not to be in. Her face carried a sadness that I can not even begin to describe. Her face carried grief and she had been here before too. Her face also carried love.

I do not want to be in this day. All the grief that I was thought I was getting “over” is pouring over me like a wet cement and I am under it again. My favorite person in the world has died and I do not want to be in this day. Yesterday was a good day, lets go back to that day.

But we can’t. Yesterday is in the past and we have to move forward. “Just keep swimming” comes to mind as I write this.

I have heavy anger in these few days. My brother should be here, I am angry at him that he isn’t. The wet cement blanket is suffocating for me.

I don’t want to feel it any of it. So I do as I do best to avoid feeling , I organize, make arrangements and take care of my momma. But who was taking care of me? I’m just running from this wet cement blanket and no one can see me.

They rely on me because I am me.

Baby T, she helps me move forward from this day I don’t want to be in, she helps me to stay busy. She needs cared for and she makes the days go by quickly because there is always play time, bottles, laundry, baths and walks to do.

When I think about these days, I can not find the sadness. I learn again that keeping busy is easier than feeling.

We do what we do to survive when we are in chaos. I think if I could give my younger self any advice on this day, it would be to sit down and let yourself process. Let yourself feel it. Be the one who just sits and cries. You don’t have to be moving and running from it. Let yourself feel it.

Grieving the loss of my dad was not easier than my brother. I think for me it was more difficult because I knew the great sadness that would follow the death and the large mountain you need to climb over.

Grieving is loving. So you don’t get over it, but you do get out from under it in your own way, in your own time❤️

The true tragedy of losing someone you love unfolds over time.

There is the loss itself. The trauma and immediate grief. The cloud of sadness that hangs on you like a suffocating wet blanket. The loss that fills your heart and bones and leaves invisible scars there.

My brother died and it fractured a bond. The link to my past was broken because he was the keeper of my childhood.

Even if you are not close, your sibling knows you better than anyone else. There is a rhythm to the sibling interaction that you don’t experience with anyone else.

The constant.

My brother knew me unlike anyone I would meet as an adult.

Then in time, the loss you experienced changes you. And you are no longer the person that your loved one once knew.

And now you no longer know them and they no longer know you.

This is the grief that persists invisibly.

As you move through your own path the invisible greif taps you on the shoulder and whispers in your ear.

When you have a baby…… he will never know her and she will never know him. There will be no shopping trips, no sleep overs, no play dates. There will be no cousins. She will not know his love and I will have to try to love her for the both of us.

When your parent dies….. and he is the one who would be wearing the same shoes and the same suffocating wet blanket.

When you have cancer….. and you need that one person who knows you.

When your children have dance recitals and graduations and big moments….. and they don’t get to experience his support and he doesn’t get to be proud of them.

When others talk about their own siblings….. and you wish for it every time.

I don’t know your invisible grief, but I know you have it. Everyone does. ❤️

Hello friends, I have been writing this one for awhile. Struggling to get the words right.

I listened to a podcast recently, one of the messages was that we are not responsible for how others feel or how they feel about things.

Say what? I think have always felt responsibility for how others feel.

To realize this is even an option for me has been a liberating experience. It has made me look within and search for why I have this heavy bucket of feelings that belong to people I care about.

My days as far as I can remember have always been about someone else. Making sure in my mind that I have done all the things I need to do to keep others ships sailing greatly. I did not know this was a trauma response.

After my brother died, I felt responsible for everyone’s feelings. And if I could work at controlling the environment of feelings for everyone around me, then everyone would be ok.

I am a believer that everything happens in the right time and space. So I know that this new knowledge that brings me a new outlook has the right timing. It has made me reflect, but also wonder what my life and my mental state after my brothers suicide would have been like had I really understood that I was not responsible for anyone else’s feelings.

Women are deeply socialized to take blame and feel deeply responsible for how others feel. If someone you love is out of sorts, do you assume it’s because of something you did? I shouldn’t have done this – I should have known ……

Looking back, I have realized I started taking responsibility for peoples feelings when I was a young girl.

In my eyes, my dad was an amazing person, he was my favourite person to spend time with, I adored him. He was quick tempered, so I learned to be adaptable and also offer distractions at a very young age. He was not always kind to my mom. I learned early how to be the sponge between the two when things would get heated up.

The body language, the tone, the mood. I also learned how to anticipate situations and try to stop them from happening. I learned to feel responsible for it. Or I learned how to respond to it, and try to turn it into something else. When I write this I am holding my breath, so I know I have hit the right spot. Where the hurt and fear is stuck.

I think back to one evening when my dad came home drunk. Memories flash very fast and I am certain there was much more to the story than the little girl can remember.

I think I was maybe 8 years old.

He was cut up in the face and hands, I think he got in a fight with one of his coworkers…. Likely to the part of the night when everyone gets really wise. I remember being very scared because he was hurt. He was spouting off his regular shit words in his inebriated state. It was a heated moment in time. My mom grabbed keys from the table and yanked my brother by the upper arm and they left me with my dad.

I remember being scared cause I didn’t know where my mom went, making coffee for dad to get him more sober, and trying to clean up his cuts with a dish cloth.

Life went on after that moment and all the other ones like it. The momma always came back and just scrubbed floors and continued life as normal.

I think of my self as a compassionate empathetic human. I also feel responsible for how others feel about me, about what I do and even for how they feel about other people that are important to me.

To know that each person chooses their own thoughts and that I am not responsible for how they feel gives me new eyes and I am seeing all my interactions differently.

We can give ourselves permission to lay down what doesn’t belong to us ❤️

The spot. A claim of ownership of space. So you know it will always be there like a constant. A familiar space.

Growing up we each had our place. Dad and mom at the ends of the table, me at the back and my brother at the front. This was our normal before life got busy with evening activities and we stopped eating together.

I was living on my own when my brother died. But the table at my parents always reminded of his spot.

When I had my own children, I did not allow anyone to claim a spot at the table, the couch or a special chair. Where you sat was your space until you got up, then it was free game. I never explained it, it was what it was.

The girls probably had a favorite spot, but they were used to this structure and never questioned it.

It is our normal.

On a first time play date a little one asks where his spot is at the table and I tell him he can sit wherever he wants. He thinks this is the coolest. I am taken back in time for a moment, remembering my family table growing up.

Why?

The spot holds a new meaning when someone from your family passes away.

Words pierce my ears – hey that’s my spot get out. The words turn to – that’s his spot, get out. It’s like a big empty space just showing you over and over that someone is missing.

The girls were not very old when we have friends over for supper. Their friend is sitting at the table and gets up. In time one of my girls takes that space. He comes back to the room and is visibly upset and says – she took my spot. To which I answer, we don’t have spots in our house.

Oh hi there crazy lady…….

Possibly. But you can’t understand when you haven’t worn the shoes.

Life comes inevitably with losing someone from your table at some point. You will feel the loss if they had their own spot at the table or not. For me it seemed a little less heavy to just miss someone and not focus on their spot each time I entered a room, whether it was empty or if someone else was in it.

To live a life protecting yourself from future pain and sadness is a common reaction of big loss. If I do this, then when it happens again it won’t feel so gross.

What I have learned is that whatever gets your feet to move forward is what you do.

Because these are your shoes now…. even if you don’t want them to be.

When I was growing up, we always put our tree up on December 1 and took it down on December 26.

When you are in chaos and sadness you rely on constants.

Even though I didn’t live at home anymore, I was looking forward to putting up the tree with my dad just as I had done every year. It was his thing and it was fun to do together.

On December 1st, I went to my parents home excited and happy to PUT UP THE TREE!!!!

When I arrived, there was no tree, no boxes of decorations or lights. The mood was heavy and the color I see in my memory is black.

At the time I feel a sickening guilt for being excited. We are on the healing path to a new normal but the roadblock has been put up. My dad asks me how I am and how my day was and what’s new.

I don’t want to have small talk. I am selfish and I need this mother f’n tree up so we can see something beautiful.

I state in my parenting tone I am here to put up the tree with you. Where is it? I’ll get it out.

He says No.

My mom says nothing.

I plead a bit. Truth be told, he was always a sucker for my “puppy dog eyes” and I could usually accomplish getting my way by using this tactic. This time, it did not work.

He says – we aren’t having a tree this year, I don’t feel like it.

At 23 I certainly do not understand why he is saying this. I think if you are sad, let’s put up the tree and get happy.

All the memories of past Christmases and decorating the tree with Kevin was a suitcase he didn’t want to unpack. Or he wasn’t ready to unpack it with me.

I don’t speak of it again. I worry. I internalize it.

It is my mom who figures out a way to have a tree and make the transition to a Christmas without Kevin a bit easier for my dad. Closer to Christmas she calls and asks me to come over.

A beautifully decorated tree is in their living room. it is a new tree, it has green lights and new decorations. She says that she decided to buy a new tree. That’s all. Dad seems proud of it, so I go with the flow.

Years later my mom tells me that they just couldn’t put the old tree up. It had so many great memories tied to it. She said they decorated a new tree together and it felt a little better.

Small changes can make things a little easier.

For me, every year when the boxes of decorations come out I have a sad time. Maybe it’s a hour, maybe it’s a day. I don’t choose it, but My body remembers my parents sadness from that first Christmas after my brother died. I take the time need to move through it so I can enjoy the decorating and be in happier space.

I still have that tree my parents bought in 1996. It’s more than just a tree to me and it makes me smile while I make it look beautiful.

Everyone’s tree has a story. What’s yours?