A grief rookie and her supportive, but clueless, husband
Grief is such a personal, inward process. It took me about six months after my mom died before I was able to articulate to my husband the depth and intensity of my pain and sadness. One morning, we were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and preparing for the day ahead, which included an important playoff game for our older son’s football team. The year before, my mom had come to the game, and had even dyed her hair blue and orange, the team colors. It was her bald head, actually, that she’d decorated, with blue and orange hair spray, as she was in the midst of chemo treatments. She’d even gotten a shout-out from the coach as he gathered the team and parents in a post-victory huddle: “And the best Broncos fan award goes to… Jano’s grandma Rosie.” The group erupted in cheers as she was well known to many of them. She wasn’t a football fan, nor was she thrilled that her first-born grandson was playing pop warner football. She deemed it too violent and would have much preferred he stuck with his other sports including soccer and basketball. But nonetheless, she was in the stands for many of the home games, cheering him on, rooting for the team, ever the supportive cheerleader and grandmother.
Through my tears, I sputtered, “I wish Rosie could be here. It’s not fair.” Supportive husband, in his attempt to comfort me, replied, “I’ve heard things like this can be a trigger.” A TRIGGER??? My head almost spun off. It was then that I realized just how personal the grieving process was. He truly had no idea what was going on in my heart, my mind and my body, and it was not for lack of trying to be helpful. It took several days and a few conversations with a veteran (a good friend who’d lost both parents) and then it was a matter of finding the right moment to try to explain the magnitude of my grief to him.
The proverbial “walk in the woods” presented itself when we were up in Tahoe. As I started explaining the various roles my mother had filled for me – cheerleader, sounding board, confidante, role model – it became clear just how big a void had been created by her death. I missed hearing her voice, feeling her warm hugs, seeing her face at my front door for spontaneous visits. In a subsequent conversation with a therapist, she noted that my mom had “tracked” me, that she knew me, knew what was going on in my life and in the lives of my kids on almost a daily basis, that she understood me at the deepest level. What a gift that was. To be seen and heard and understood so unconditionally. And when that is taken away, there is a huge void and it’s like you have to hit a reset button. On everything.
Back to the “trigger,” I managed to explain it wasn’t that a particular thing was a trigger, but that my sadness and pain and all the other complex feelings, including the dull ache and tightness in my chest, were my new reality, and had basically been a constant since my mom’s death. It wasn’t that I hadn’t also been able to experience periodic moments of joy, or fairly consistently been able to interact with family and friends as though everything was “normal.” It was just like my grief was a lens through which everything else occurred.
I found this illustration on Instagram @bymariaandrew and loved the way it depicts how grief changes over time.