Grief - The Price We Pay for Love

Grief

"Grief is the price we pay for love." 

While this statement is credited to the late Queen Elizabeth the II, it is actually a shortened version of what Dr. Colin Murray Parkes stated in Bereavement: Studies in Grief in Adult Life. Dr. Parkes stated, "he pain of grief is just as much part of life as the joy of love: it is perhaps the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment. To ignore this fact, or to pretend that it is not so, is to put on emotional blinkers which leave us unprepared for the losses that will inevitably occur in our own lives and unprepared to help others cope with losses in theirs."  Before Queen Elizabeth II and Dr. Parkes, this sentiment is the simple epitaph on Jane Austen's tombstone. (“Five Famous (and Several Not-So-Famous) Grief Quotes”)

"Their grief is in proportion to their affection

they know their loss to be irreparable."

 Before reading further, I think that it is important to understand the timing of this post.  It is one week before Christmas, a time where families gather out of joy, not sorrow.  Yesterday, I received a text from a former student that he had lost his mother that morning.  I was floored because I simply thought she was one of those badass women that was going to make it to the end of time.  Today, I read a post on FB from a childhood classmate to keep his family in prayers as they had lost their father that morning.  I have been told that timing is everything, it puts a unique spin on events, songs, people.  While there have been various reasons through out my life, I have always struggled with joy and happiness during Christmas.  I lost a lot of what I had worked on having when my mom left because she was the elf in the family.  On December 23, 2020, the world lost an amazing soul in Andrew Smith, my best friend's son and eight days before my wedding to my husband, anything I had left was gone.

What I have learned is that during this time, while we should be talking about them all the time, it is more important than ever to talk about them now.  To laugh, to cry, to remember them.  Their light, their joy, and most importantly they have met the promise of a better world and life.  Most importantly, it is because we have loved them, been loved by them, and that this cannot be undone...we grieve...and it hurts.

When my father left on his journey (euphemism...), it was on September 29th or 2008 at approximately 4:00 am.  He had his journey planned out.  He was going to go to Europe and visit some castles.  Why?  He was an ironworker and that is what he did.  He was then going to Iraq or Afghanistan to protect a soldier.  Why?  He was in the Air Force and had finally understood this daughter's passion for supporting our military and specifically, for work with our global war on terrorism veterans.  Then, he was going to visit Jerusalem and head on up, because God had accepted his application to be a guardian angel.

While my mother, sister, and I were by his side and had twenty-two days to prepare ourselves, it was still hard.  It was a different hard for me because I was the oldest and my father had already told my mother and sister, "Don't worry about anything.  Christa will take care of everything."  😕

I did take care of everything that needed to be immediately done. Called hospice to report his death.  Contacted the funeral home to report his death.  Arranged for his hospital bed to be returned to the local VFW.  Notified Pastor Robin of their church and proceeded to write you eulogy.

Approximately 8 years and two weeks after giving my father's eulogy and escorting him to Jefferson Barracks Cemetery in St. Louis, I was doing the same for my mother.  MoMo (as we have called her for a while and was given the name by my sister) had very surprisingly left on her journey.  Below is what I wrote:

“Tailspin”

“Shit, Mom!!!  Really ?!?!?!  WTF! “Now!”

“God, why now!?!”  “Really ?!?!?!”  “WT….!”  

“Where am I going to live?” “Will the trustee take my house?”  “This so totally throws a wrench in this well planned out path of my life!”

“God, What if I am not ready to live my life without my mommy in it?  Did you ever think of that?”  

Mary, my sister, called in the middle of all of it….I hung up on her after I told her that I had called 911 because Mom was unresponsive and I think she is dead. I thought, “She is going to be pissed that I hung up on her.”

My phone had gone off with a familiar tone that was assigned to one of my “mean girls.”  It was “Regina” and I don’t think I even read her message and just responded with “I can’t help right now.  I think my mom just died.”

On the way to the hospital I called Michele, holding back tears, told her that mom had passed and that I needed a sub for tomorrow for school.  I even apologized to her because I knew that this wasn’t the best time for her considering that her husband had just died about a month prior but she said she would take care of what I needed done.

All these random thoughts just raced into and just as quickly out of my brain. This is not how it is supposed to happen.  This was a really bad dream, just like the one I had had earlier in the week.  I was going to wake up and everything was going to be as it was when I went to sleep.  Momo would be in her bed reading with Gracie, the cat that totally hates my existence.  Jman, my seventeen year old, would still smell bad and emerge from his room to graze occasionally.  Isis, the dog that is not named after a terrorist group but the Egyptian Goddess of the Poor and Downtrodden, would want a treat when I walked in the door.  Lily, the siamese tabby with crossed blue eyes, will have sprayed the hall cabinet doors beside the litter boxes.  Destiny, the Maine Coon with more body than legs, would be plotting her next move to bully one of the other quadrupeds in the house. It was all going to be fine when I could open my eyes, catch my breath, and sit up in bed.  Sit up in my bed, upstairs in my little brick house, that I was just shy of the one year anniversary of moving back in with my mom since 1992.  

That is not what happened, the sitting up in my bed part and it all being some horrible joke of a dream.  My mother, MoMo, was gone.  I sat with Brian and Pastor Aimee in a small consult room in the ER of the local hospital while MoMo was in Room 15.  I knew the room simply because they had written the number 15 on a red and white label that someone put on my sweatshirt.  I was waiting for my sister and her husband to get there.  Jman was at home with Gina, one of my best friends that is like a daughter to me,  I started thinking of who I needed to call.  Carole, her sister.  The Massachusetts side of the family.  Melissa, Sally, Sarah, … Pastor Aimee was emailing the congregation. … While it seemed like I had been there for hours, it was about 30 minutes, when the ER doctor came in and started his spiel of “We did everything we could do but….”  I just looked at him and bluntly said, “You can save me the standard statement.  I know how it goes.  I just need to know one thing.”  He stood there professionally stunned and looking at me. “She had a pacemaker.  I need to know where the breakdown was between her heart and the pacemaker.”  He seemed relieved to a degree because I wasn’t accusing anyone of doing wrong but just needed the facts.  I needed that one fact for my brain and my heart to wrap itself around the fact that MoMo … my mommy was gone.  He politely responded, “The pacemaker is clipping along just fine without any problems.  Her heart simply stopped responding to the pacemaker.”  I politely said, “Thank you.”  Then there were the offers to see her and I declined until my sister had arrived.  I called Dr. B.  Dr. B had been our family physician up until his retirement about a year prior.  Dr. B had been there through my two rounds of cancer, my father’s death, my disaster of a marriage and even bigger disaster of a divorce and now, he needed to hear from me that Mom was gone.  

That day, October 23, 2016, became a day that has marked me greater than any other day.  The days that followed are slowly clearing in my memory where I can remember some of the stuff that went on.  I have always been a pay it forward/random acts of kindness person but now it had been reversed on me.  When you give to the level I give (or perceive that I do), it is hard to receive.  The people that have supported me, loved me, shown me so many random acts of kindness for whatever reason, have given me the hope that there are still good, kind people in this world and that what I am going to eventually be okay.

Finding Miss Marjorie Blog Entry December 23, 2016

“Tailspin of Mammoth Proportion”

Two months ago, my world went into a total tailspin.  Not just the kind of tailspin that a person takes and then gets up, dusts themselves off, and moves forward.  It took a tailspin of the NASCAR variety that makes the national news...you know the kind that just keeps replaying the impact during the story 5 or 6 times and you as the viewer do not even hear what the news anchor is saying while repeating to yourself, "Is this really happening?"

Two months ago, my seventy three year old mother passed away.  It was not expected by any means.  MoMo, as we had lovingly come to call her and a name that my students will tell you will be followed by some form of a story from me, had not been feeling well for a couple of days but we both chalked it up to being October and cold/flu season.  Saturday evening, MoMo complained that her feet were like ice and that she was so cold. She went to bed at 8:30 that night but that was not uncommon.  What was uncommon was that she actually went to bed because she would normally lay in bed and read for a couple hours.  The next morning, she did not go to church with me but when I returned home, MoMo was very proud that she had taken a shower and felt a little bit better.  I spend my afternoon working in the yard.  I had noticed, a number of times, that there was a faint yellow butterfly just flitting around the yard but never coming close to me.  I went into the house about four and MoMo was settling into her chair.  I could tell that whatever was going on with her, she was weak.  I sat down to watch one of the shows that she had on the DVR with her.  For the next hour, she would comment about how cold she was while I just sat there sweating.  It wasn't an out of character warm day in October for Missouri nor what it is an out of character cold day.  About five, I noticed that she was sleeping, paused the program, and went into the kitchen to make dinner.  My boyfriend came over to help me change a belt on the used John Deere riding lawn mower that she just purchased for me and that I just glowed over.  The butterfly was still just flitting around.  We had gone in about five till six and spoken with her.  She said something and I just told her, "Old woman, you don't feel well.  Just take a nap."  MoMo laughed at me.  She totally laughed at me.  We went back out and at one point, the little yellow butterfly came over to us and circled around us and then flew off to the next destination.  At 6:25 pm, the tailspin began with the simple pull of a chain that turned on a light in our living room.  My seventeen year old son realized before I did that MoMo had not just taken a nap, but had taken an eternal nap.  Fully reclined with her iPad on her stomach, there was no sign of a struggle, MoMo's lips had no color to them and were the ashen gray.  I tried to "wake" her and ran to a wall that had not had a phone hanging on it for some 30 years to call 911.  

While her death certificate reads the time her death was called in Room 15 of the local emergency room of 7:05 pm,  I can tell you that the time she left this world was probably closer to 6:00 pm.  

I am a firm believer in signs.  That yellow butterfly was a sign.  It spent the afternoon just hanging around the back yard until her soul was ready for the journey she was to take. The yellow butterfly is a symbol of hope and guidance.  My boyfriend is a childhood friend, one that grew up two houses down from me.  We reconnected in May and had been pretty much inseparable since late June.  MoMo had often commented on how happy she was that he and I were together and that she knew how loved and protected I was with him.  On this day, that little yellow butterfly was what early Christians believed to be a symbol of the soul and even more so that in the countries of Scotland and Ireland means that the departed soul is at peace.  I do believe that MoMo is at peace.  I do believe that she knew she could go and that my sister and I are in good hands.  

The following day, October 24 was my parent's fifty-first wedding anniversary.  Since my father's passing in 2008, they were together in the same place.  That made it all the sweeter for her.  

Thank you for taking the time to read this post.  My hope is that through my inspired journey and the journeys shared here that you smile, feel included, have a spark of motivation, are validated, and/or gain insight to your own journey.

Until next time ... what inspires you. 💜