When I was a senior in high school my grandmother passed away. She had been one of the biggest influences on the person I had become up until that point. She had also been very sick for a very long time. I remember spending Christmas Eve of my 8th grade year visiting her in the ICU. She’d been that sick at least that long. I remember feeling sad, and I remember crying a few times when it hit me that she was really gone. But I don’t remember feeling the way that I feel now. I remember feeling almost relieved. Relieved that she was finally with God and that she wouldn’t be suffering anymore. No more trips to the hospital, no more pain… Just rest and peace.
I remember feeling sorry for my grandfather. My grandparents had been together forever and from what I saw my grandmother had always taken care of him. She’d always done everything inside the house while he’d always taken care of everything outside of it. It’ll be 10 years in January and from my fresh perspective, my grandfather is still very much grieving over the loss of my grandmother. In his eyes he is too old to go out and start over, and it seems honestly that his only want at this point is to join her.
It’s thoughts like those that make me wonder where I would be right now without Magdalene. How I would be getting out of bed every morning if it weren’t for her needing me…
I keep going back and re-reading the stages of grief. I remember being in denial, I remember being angry… and now I am stuck in depression with no end of “acceptance” in sight. Most days I no longer cry… Now it’s just moody or melancholy or being exhausted for absolutely no reason… I’d almost rather still be angry. But that’s just it and why I’m no longer there… There is nobody for me to be angry at. No one to “blame” if you will… My Dad keeps reminding me that we gave her every chance that we could, and he’s right. That a lot of people wouldn’t have stuck with it and given her any chance at all, and he’s right. But something in me kept saying “we are choosing life, and surely that means that God will choose life also”. And he did… Just not in the way that we had hoped… Not in the way that made things easier for us. So who do I possibly have to be angry at? And so I am stuck in depression…
A maddening, functioning depression where all of my patience goes to a toddler who has no idea what I’m going through. An “I just want to break down” but I’m being called to dance, or sing Twinkle Twinkle, or to play the drums or build a giant lego tower depression… An “I’m truly happy for you and your new pregnancy” please let me go and have a nervous breakdown depression… But again, 10 years later I am convinced that my grandfather is still grieving and unable to move on from the loss of my grandmother… Where is the acceptance in that?
Thank you for letting me vent, and the mountain of love that you all have shown us.
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