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sw's avatar

My mom died the night of her 48th birthday in 1999. I was in college—all the way across the country. Her death was expected; it was still traumatic.

Everyone did their best for the first week or two after she died. And those weeks were awful and painful. But it was the following weeks/months that were my true grief abyss. Everyone else’s lives returned to normal while every breath for me was still gut-wrenchingly new and difficult. I had to return first to classes and then to summer work as though everything was okay, when everything in me screamed repeatedly throughout the day that it was not.

Some relationships broke during that period. I simply could not pretend to live in their “normal” world well enough to keep them going. Some weakened but didn’t break—and eventually healed, at least to some degree.

And even all these years later (24! How?), days like today (Mother’s Day) can still feel horrible and isolating.

I think we generally are not good at sitting in grief with people for the length of time that grief requires. We do the requisite acts between the death and funeral, but then we move on, eager to move beyond the stark reminder that we are all nothing but a “quintessence of dust.”

Having recognized this, I now purposefully practice belated sympathy cards; I send them 2-4 weeks after the death/funeral. I check in then to remind them that they are not, in fact, alone, as they navigate a world that no longer makes sense, even if most everyone around them doesn’t recognize the seismic shifts that have occurred.

I used to think that bringing up a somewhat recent wound could be unnecessarily painful, but I now recognize that not bringing it up, not acknowledging it, not identifying the stark sadness is so much more painful for the person trying to heal from it.

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Marina  K.'s avatar

When I was in college my step-dad was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer sometime during fall semester finals my junior year. He was given a few weeks to live. I somehow had the foresight to go around and get all of the papers signed in order to withdraw from the spring semester. I knew my relationship with my grades and the pressure I put on myself to do well, and (having lost a grandmother and uncle in the 2 years prior) I knew my grief was going to be greater than I'd ever felt before. It was the kindest thing I've ever done for myself. After he was gone, I still had to work most of the semester, but without the papers and deadlines and exams, my evenings and weekends were my own and I really took the time I needed to heal. I don't think I've ever given myself that kind of space before or since.

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