Grieving Alone

When the Big X and I broke up, my dad was at a loss as to what to do, how to help me. He (like most fathers, I'm sure) was never comfortable with my love life. So he left me alone mostly. The trouble was, I was not just getting over a boyfriend; I was also just beginning to deal with the fact that we had been told that my mother was dying. My dad shared his grief with my sisters and tried to help them with theirs, but I for the most part was exempt from sharing my pain with him. Consequently, that was how I learned to deal with what was going on with my mother for the three years since then. On my own.

Friends were somewhat helpful, but only somewhat. The couple of short term boyfriends I had were also only somewhat helpful. The biggest problem, what would anger me even, was everyone else's lack of acceptance. Hell, when I was still with the Big X, even he wouldn't accept what I was telling him. The worst was last July, when we were told she was going to finally die. Everyone else around me who was not in the family--their way of "helping" was to try to convince me that it wasn't true. How could the doctors just tell you you're going to die, soon, and there is nothing left to do? It was inconceivable to them--I think because if it wasn't true for my mom, for me, then it could never happen to anyone they loved. If no one else had to hurt like this, then that meant they would never have to, either.

Honestly what I needed most right then, those few nights in July of last summer between the day that the cardiologist told my mother that she was going to die, and we got the same opinion from the oncologist--and the surgeon--and the rounds doctor at the hospital, and anyone else at all . . . what I needed most those few nights between that day and the day my mother died was for just one person who wasn't in my family to accept that all hope was lost and to just hold me.

What I got was friends who meant well frantically asking second opinions of their cousin's brother-in-law who was an oncologist or their uncle's best friend whose wife had cancer ten years ago, as if we hadn't already tried every possible outlet. Or people like Crazy Andy, my boyfriend at the time, who just blindly would not accept that it was even possible for someone my mother's age to just die while under all these doctors' care. Didn't they think it was hard enough for me to get to that point of acceptance, without having to try to talk all of them into accepting the truth as well?

Here we were, at the end of a three-year road, my mother laying in a hospital bed because she could no longer swallow anything, not even water, without aspirating (choking, for those of you fortunate enough not to have had to learn all the lingo). And even if we fed her intravenously (which is what we ended up doing for the remaining days), she could aspirate on her own spit. And even if none of that happened, let us not forget the rapidly growing tumor in her heart that would soon stop her blood from flowing and kill her that way. And no, they couldn't just operate. Everything is not like a Grey's Anatomy episode. There was still the lesions on her liver, on the bones in both arms, the new ones forming on her lungs, on her back. The shadows in the scans of her brain that soon would become tumors as well.

We--and when I say we I mean my mother--had fought this fucker for three goddamn years; we had beat all the odds. She should have been dead in 2005. The doctors had just been winging it for the past 2 years because nobody had ever made it that long. But last July, this fucker won, and I just needed someone who would accept me, accept my pain, and not try to make it better. There just is no making it better sometimes. And I didn't get that, so I guess the beginning, back in January 2005, where my best friend left me and my family couldn't help me, was good training for the end as well. I dealt with it alone.

* * *

I was thinking of all this stuff because tonight I used my mother's death as an excuse to my father for why I didn't want the Grandmonster coming to my birthday dinner next Sunday. I told him that since this will be my first birthday without Mom, that I just want it to be the immediate family, that I think it's going to be hard for me, and I don't want any extra people. It's not an excuse entirely; I do think it will be hard for me, and I do think that with the Grandmonster there it would be that much harder. That is entirely true. However, I also have never wanted the Grandmonster at these things; I just now have a valid reason to use that won't hurt my father's feelings.

So I was thinking on my drive home after I talked to my dad about that, and all these thoughts I've written down tonight ran through my head. And one other one. I haven't talked much at all with my new Man Friend about my mother, but I'm sure he's put it all together by now, or at least the big pieces. And that's kind of the point--I never had to sit down and have this big talk with him where I told him all about the pain that was my life these last three years. He just took the parts I told him and accepted them. I know, of course, that accepting this is all much easier once my mother has died, but still the way he is about it helps a lot. I don't have to feel like I have to explain everything; it just is.

There was once in the three weeks we've spent together that I cried about it. I had been telling him a story that was supposed to be funny but when I got to the point where my mom was dying of cancer, it suddenly wasn't funny. And I got a little bit weepy--not big all-out bawling, just sort of silently leaking a few tears. And he didn't say a word; he held me and touched me and kissed me and just let it be. And in a minute, it was over. I don't have any clue if he even has any idea how much that was the perfect thing for him to do in that moment; probably, he just didn't know what the hell he was supposed to say so he didn't say anything.

But whatever his reasoning for that was, it doesn't matter to me. It was just what I needed.