the limitations of grief
January 1, 2021
December was incredibly complimentary to grief. I wasn’t the only one who rarely knew what day it was. Work was mercifully slow, but the few appointments I had each week provided the loose structure I needed in my life. In addition to my generous friends who showed up with food, cookies appeared in perfect relay for me to subsist on. Even the pandemic provided the excuse I needed not to gather and kept my visits one on one and mostly on walks, which I needed.
Grief hasn’t felt difficult because, unlike last time, I immediately adjusted my life to fit my current capacity, which is extremely limited. The hard thing about grief is that it doesn’t match the picture of how I think it should be. I didn’t feel sad all the time, I didn’t want to talk about my mom or cry. It felt more like brain damage than depression. I even looked up the symptoms of a concussion to compare them. Headache. Fatigue or drowsiness. Confusion or feeling in a fog. Delayed response to questions. Dazed appearance. Forgetfulness, such as repeating the same question. Concentration or memory complaints. Irritability and other personality changes. Sleep disturbances. Sensitivity to light and noise.
I settled down in the limbo I was in and waited for it to pass. After two weeks the worst of it passed, the part where I slept all day, slept with the lights on, was befuddled by my evening routine and couldn’t quite take my pills and wash my fast and brush my teeth. After four weeks I started feeling the spark of life again. I wanted to get dressed and do something out of the house. I wanted to stretch myself a bit more, but I didn’t want to hit the edges.
Edges were small things, normal tings. Grief makes you raw and life’s little inconveniences become hard to bear. Concentrating on a work task that suddenly becomes too complex and needs to be put down. A line at the post office. Canceled plans or an unreturned phone call. An item I had an appointment to buy of Facebook marketplace that was marked as sold when I went to message the seller that I was on my way. A takeout order without enough napkins. A friend’s drama that seems like nonsense in the big picture which I can’t get far enough away from. That somehow I once again forgot to do something simple that used to be part of my routine and took no thought at all and now, even with my best concentrated effort couldn’t be done. I felt better last week and woke up ready to have a good day, then discovered I wasn’t sure how to spell my name. Or my street name, which was humbling, but I pivoted to make it a no writing day and carried on.
I’m not exactly sad, not most of the time, but I’m not myself. I’m careful about who I choose to be around in case I do get emotional and need to let it flow. I’m insecure that I’m not good company because I’m loopy and too honest. I feel guilty for not being with it enough to support my friends, to know what to say, to remember what’s going on in everyone’s lives, what burdens my loved ones are bearing. Grief has made me useless and I’m frustrated and at it’s mercy. Here is where the love comes in, the receiving, because even though I feel I have nothing to give people make time for me anyway. They meet me on walks, laugh at the moments of dark humor, forgive my occasionally inelegant blunders.
Letting myself be seen and held in this vulnerable space is deeply healing because it is confirmation in action I don’t need to ‘do’ to be worthy, I don’t need to give to receive. Times like this test that theory. I am not just having a bad day, it’s a bad time. I’m not choosing to take a day off, I’m off. My need for support overwhelms the fear that it won’t be there if I ask for it, so I ask for it. And it’s there. And why is that so scary, when so many have graciously offered? Because for so many years when I desperately needed it from the people who I thought were supposed to be the ones to give it to me it wasn’t available and I was further spurned for the asking.
Our childhoods can be terminal. I see in my mother’s journal entries how her early experiences with her parents shaped her sense of self and world view, how they created the lens through which she would see the world the rest of her life, how the very mold she wanted to break was poured again when she had me. Now in her death letting myself be loved and supported, letting myself receive is a revolutionary act, another step on the path of healing ancestral trauma passed between the mothers and daughters of my family for generations.