I was expecting it to be complex. I’d talked about it at some length, both to my family and close friends. But that was before. And though I know you can’t be prepared as such, if I’m honest, I thought I would understand myself better. Except I don’t.
I’m talking about grief following my mother’s death.
I always thought that I was ‘good’ at death, ‘good’ at working through emotions. I expected something more dynamic I guess. Instead I’m experiencing deadening, a lack of emotion, a blankness that I find difficult to recognise.
After the first frantic whirl of Morna’s dying, the arrangements and organisation, the ‘holding-myself-together’, I waited for the loosening of my emotions. It didn’t come.
I thought I’d slowly, but surely, come to terms with her death; it wasn’t as if it was out of the blue. I had a notion that my memory would focus on certain things throughout my life-long relationship with her that would either make me howl with tears, cry with laughter, or make me angry.
I believed that I would feel her presence, be aware of her in my thoughts and dreams, that she would come to me somehow. But none of that happened. Instead I find I’m not allowed look at her death. My mind has put up a dividing screen, the kind they have on TV shows. When I attempt to look, the screen appears…one that’s clever enough to increase in size if I try to peer over it or around it.
I’m a person who usually needs grounding. I could very easily disappear into space if I wasn’t careful, hence my very earthy occupation of farming – nothing more grounding than stock and mud! Though recently even this has changed and I feel as if I’m descending down, down; down deep into the earth. I can’t tell you how strange this feels. I need air? I need lightness? Me, who in normal circumstances is ready to float away like thistledown?
They say that when your mother dies she gives you her mantle. She gives you everything, both positive and negative. It’s up to you to process this. I guess there’s truth in the old adage ‘she’s turned into her mother’.
My mother had a slight psychosis which was latterly overlaid by her dementia. During the last twenty odd years, through her own conflict her body became contorted and bent. Now I feel her twisted shoulder, the strange bone ache; I experience her confusion of her mind. I watch as I flounder for a word, confuse a date, become muddled. I watch myself watching myself and I feel the fear that maybe I am becoming her.
My family, I’m pretty sure, don’t see it, in fact a puzzled Robert said to me after reading this “But you coped so well, brilliantly. You’ve prepared yourself. Come to terms with it over several years. I really can’t see it. You’re waiting for something that isn’t going to happen. She’s dead and that’s it.”
And perhaps in a way he’s right. I am waiting for my more typical expressions of grief. Maybe they will never happen. Maybe these unfamiliar emotions will be the only ones I experience. But I hope, somewhere along this unknown path I meet with her and, if only for an instant, I’m able to touch our closeness again – mother and daughter.
7 comments
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May 5, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Jane
Paula, Your posts sometimes bring me close to tears. Your mother will come and you will share that moment again. It might be 6 months, it might be 6 years, but it will come. I grieved deeply for my father after his death in 1979 but didn’t actually cry for years. It wasn’t until a few years ago that my “screen” came down. Emotions are such a screwy, unpredictable thing. People may think that it is “over” but the emotions you feel for your mother will probably always be with you… except that over time they may soften and be easier to understand. Thinking of you. Take care. Jane x
May 5, 2009 at 4:58 pm
elizabethm
Paula
This made my throat thicken. I remeber so vividly the posts about your mother and her vital beauty in a photograph you posted. I think that Robert is probably right that you prepared yourself well. But you cannot prepare yourself for absence, loss, aferwards, only for the moment of loss.
I suspect there is nothing to do other than work your land, care for your stock, love your family and let time pass. I am thinking of you, not that that helps much!
Exx
May 6, 2009 at 1:11 am
Nan
Oh, dear Paula. My own mother died in 1973 when I was only 25, and there isn’t a day I don’t miss her. The sadness is right there just waiting for me. I’m so, so sorry for your grief. Everything you feel is normal. There is no ‘right’ feeling. I’ve always thought C.S. Lewis said it best: With my mother’s death, all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of joy, but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.
May 6, 2009 at 11:45 am
Sian
Others have eloquently described their thoughts and experiences already. All I can add is that I’ve found that my grief process is different each time, and it seems to bear no relation to my closeness to that individual, or the relationship. Our minds are curious things and who really knows their depths. The grieving process can take years and sometimes sneaks up on us when we least expect it many years in the future – well that’s my experience anyway having lost both my parents many years ago. just recently I’ve been going through some stuff around my Dad while working in the garden as he was an expert vegetable gardener, yet he passed on 16 years ago. I think somehow we expect to grieve in a “linear” fashion, grief easing as time passes – but that has rarely been my experience. Do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself, but suspend “expectations” of the process and I suspect Morna will come to you in many unexpected ways.
May 7, 2009 at 11:17 am
paula
I’m finding it difficult to write my replies to you individually this time.
Each of your comments is rich with compassion, experience and understanding and, as Sian said, eloquent. Different, but similar in the generosity of sharing your private and personal experiences and thoughts.
They are also unique and thought provoking. And I thank you for taking the time to write something from the heart. I feel honoured too. But more than that I feel the warmth of connectedness through an infinite stranded web towards people I’ve not yet met in the flesh.
I think it was Heidi that once said that blogging is probably doing more for the compassion and understanding of mankind and the world than anything else!
Thank you.
May 15, 2009 at 9:25 pm
heidi
Wow everyone. I read all the posts and got choked up, and just could not write … Paula, thanks for letting us into your life, it is moving and powerful. From the tiniest trivial thing to the big stuff. All the people who posted here on this have said it all, and eloquently.
My birth Father died back in 72, I was 7. I did not cry when I was told, as I had not lived with him. He was a mythical creature, who I only remember from one meeting. Even now I have to go back, and think hard about how he sounded , how he looked…My parents split up shortly after I was popped out onto this Earth. It wasn’t until I was a moody teenager that it hit me like a wall of water, grief came crashing in.
Since those days I have missed him, missed what might have been. I see him in the mirror, as we look quite similar, and not having been close to my paternal side of the family, had to do some tracking down of relatives to finally answer some questions about my ancestry.
Ukrainian and Croat/Dalmatia..explains the whole talking with the hands thing, and why Iam so damn..well …loud and boisterous. It’s a southern European thing I am told..:)
Anyway, I do my best to honor him by being the best daughter, wife, artist and friend I can be, and live life as if it was my last day everyday.
You have shown me that when the time comes life goes on, it flows forward like a river, and will not stop. That we grieve in our own time, and way. To live on in fullness, doing honor to those who came before by simply living our own lives well. With intent, and love.
May 20, 2009 at 8:29 pm
paula
Heidi – thank you. Thank you so much.