A try at grief

One year ago today, my complex and very much loved grandmother died. My first try at grief, and I don’t think I handled it well. 

I didn’t have an emotional breakdown, I didn’t get depressed, and I didn’t project my anger and sadness onto anything or anyone else. Instead, I spent a great deal of time feeling numb and in a hurry.  

I was preparing to leave for Sarajevo when I found out she had cancer. The pancreatic kind. Even though she was in late stages, the general consensus was that she had a few months left to live. But while I was in Sarajevo, her condition worsened drastically and no one seemed to know if she’d even make it through the week. Which put me in a state of panic that I wouldn’t get there in time. I was in constant communication with my dad who had flown from Spain to NY the week before. He said she was in a really bad state, but that she seemed to be hanging on, waiting for me. 

All of her grandchildren had been to see her. I was the only one left. 

As soon as I got home from Sarajevo, I booked a trip to the States and a week later I was on a plane again. My poor students were left to fend for themselves, but my co-workers were a great support and told me not to worry about a thing. They’d take care of it. 

My uncle picked me up from the airport in Boston and drove me down to Utica where my grandmother was checked into a hospice. I walked in the door and saw my dad, aunt and grandpa sitting in the living room, awaiting my arrival. My dad started crying as he pulled me into an embrace. I expected to start crying too, but I didn’t. I made the rounds, then I went in to see her. 

There she was, much altered, yellow from jaundice, and struggling for breath. Much of our relationship had been marked by drama, so I guess I had expected, hoped, to have one last dramatic moment with her like the others had had. But she was already too far gone. 

She did know it was me though. 

I’d rehearsed this scene in my mind for days. I took her hand and sang ”You can close your eyes” by James Taylor, the song I’d been singing to her from across the ocean. Then I sat there and waited for the rest of the movie to unfold. But it didn’t. Not my version of it anyway. 

The weeks of worry, the dramatic rush to get there, the big entrance with the tears and hugs and all the rest of it, all building up to what I imagined would be the climax: my holding her hand as she draws her last breath; the subsequent release into the sad but peaceful aftermath of a funeral, and then the melancholy yet strangely settling journey home to Sweden. But that movie never got made. Because she didn’t die the night of my arrival as everyone had thought she would. She didn’t die the next day either. Or the next. In fact, she hung on the entire week until 30 minutes before I had to leave for the train station. So I didn’t get to attend the funeral, I didn’t get to have the big dramatic family reunion, and I didn’t get to live the romanticized piece of cinema I’d conjured up in my mind. 

Instead I spent the week feeling numb and in a hurry. I’m ashamed to say it, but every day I prayed that it would be her last. That she would breath that last sigh of relief and let God take her. So that I could go to the funeral and then go home. Don’t misunderstand me; I wasn’t in a hurry to get home, but I didn’t have the flexibility of time or money to change the return date on my ticket. And I really wanted to experience the closure of attending the funeral. It would have been my first. 

Numbness and hurry. Those were the two emotions I felt. And to this day I still haven’t had a good cry. I shed a few tears when I first received the news and talked to her on Skype. And then again at the moment she died. But the rest of the time, I was a wall. 

And I don’t understand why. Because I loved her very very much. And I miss her. So so much. 

So what have I learned about grief? Well, nothing. Just that I’m not sure I’ve experienced it yet. And that feels like a horrible thing for me to say.