Consider becoming a subscribing member. Your support makes this work possible and sustainable. Plus, you’d get access to this week’s really great threads — like Tuesday’s on what are you watching (guaranteed to get you out of your viewing rut) and last Friday’s wide-reaching and surprisingly moving discussion of “
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.
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.
My union fought for and won bereavement leave and although I knew I had it, I didn't realize I was saving it for a "Big Death" until my supervisor mentioned I could use it to support others while they grieved. With my leave, I was able to take time to support my mother after a family death which opened me up to processing my own grief. It made all the difference.
My boyfriend died when we were 25 (well he died on his birthday so he was 26). He had been sick for a while but it still shocked me when I learned he would die, and then did. All my friends were in the throes of 20s single life and partying in NYC and I felt so alone. No one knew how to deal with me and vice versa and I both felt abandoned and abandoned everyone. I was diagnosed with PTSD a year later; I didn’t know you could get PTSD from grieving but now I do. I’ve been married, divorced, remarried, and have a young kid and still feel like I’m grieving that boy and that time in my life. I don’t feel like I ever was able to grieve “properly.” It’s such a hole in my life.
I’m in that place right now. My 8yo Boston Terrier is dying from lymphoma, and I want the world to stop so I can grieve. He’s starting to decline, and I know it won’t be long before I need to say goodbye. My kids are sad, so I’m really trying to be there for them (they’re teens). But I’m also in grad school & running a PR firm, so trying to carve out the space I need feels hard. When all is quiet late at night, I lay with Buster (my dog), cry, and tell him I love him. I understand your grief, and I’m grateful you wrote this. It resonates.
i’m so sorry for your loss. i’ve had my dog since i was 22 (35 now) and i don’t know who i am without her.
i lost my stepdad, my father figure, unexpectedly in august. he died without a will, so i was asked to be his executor by his elderly parents (my mom is no longer married to him, but he loved my brother and me like his own). i didn’t really realize what was being asked of me. it was so much paperwork, phone calls, cleaning out his home (which, wow, what a physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting thing to do, and alone), settling bills, going to probate court, shuttling back and forth between his house and mine, etc etc. the busyness of settling his estate (aka trying not to pay two mortgages so getting the house sold as quickly as possible) really prevented me from properly grieving, even though i was in a constant state of grief. i don’t know if that makes sense. like i was constantly missing him while discovering who he was cleaning out his home, but i was also sending my realtor updates on stuff, etc, so it was like half-felt. i couldn’t attend his memorial because the first time there was a hurricane (my granny refused to reschedule and then her home was flooded...so then it had to be rescheduled) and then she rescheduled it for the day before thanksgiving, which i was spending with my mom a state away. i don’t know if you’ve read the book popisho by leone ross, but sometimes it feels like he’s still walking around because i haven’t been able to say goodbye properly. anyway, if you haven’t made arrangements or plans for your death, please for the love of anyone in your life, have a plan, have beneficiaries, have whatever to spare them the pain so they can grieve.
My father died unexpectedly during surgery. I had spent the weeks leading up to surgery with him, but I flew back to DC the morning before surgery in FL to return to work, and my brother traded places with me. It was my first morning back in a busy classroom with 6th graders. I was on a 15-minute break when my phone rang, and I couldn't understand anything through my brother's grief, my mom's wailing in the background. I was lucky enough to be at work with a dear friend, who immediately grabbed my things and ushered me out of the building. She drove me in my car back to my place so I could look up plane tickets back home to FL, where I had just left. For two weeks, I was home with my mom and brother. We made funeral arrangements. We laughed at how the world had no idea Dad died, and it was Valentine's Day, so everywhere we went, we were bombarded with love and balloons and red red roses. My friends flew in, and I showed them my Dad's gardens, his life's work. What I didn't do during that entire two weeks was think about work. I had very good and kind colleagues who took care of my classes for me. My students wrote me the most beautiful cards. One told me, "take all the time you need. We'll be here when you get back." My boss texted me to say pretty much the same thing. I had an ally in my HR department who made sure that my friend and colleague who flew to FL to attend the funeral got bereavement leave days even though my father was technically not her family. This should be the norm for everyone, but I know it's not. When I returned to work, there was a stack of papers on my desk: all the worksheets and quizzes, all the work my students did while I was gone. I took one look at it, and knew I would be forgiven anything, so with one big sweep of my arm, I swept it directly into the trash. I didn't want to pretend something life-shattering had not just happened to me, so I didn't. That I could return to work as my grieving, shattered self was such a relief.
My father died in the night while my husband was in Europe for work. He got his mother to come over in the very early morning hours so I could get to my mother. My mother was in a total state of shock that day. I've since heard her say that "we" didn't cry that first day, but that's because I read where she was and didn't let her see it. One of my worst memories is this stretch, I don't know how long it actually lasted but it felt like quite a long time, when she was upstairs sending and answering emails, and to say I cried doesn't get it. I paced back and forth completely wracked by sobs, almost like a silent keening. It was a state of being totally consumed by emotion that I've never felt at any other time -- my constant mental narration shut down, I wasn't having specific memories or thoughts about my grief, the grief itself was everything, mind and body. I kept pacing but hunched over, with my arms wrapped around my stomach, and every little while I'd double over and stop walking.
And then my mom finished emailing and I stopped.
The next morning I had to tell my kid what had happened, and I tried to be calm and explain things to him, which was difficult since he was too young to really understand death, so it turned into an extended back and forth where I tried to explain it, and I started crying and my grief terrified him. I think to this day, four years later, he is nervous talking about my father -- who he adored -- because he was so scared by how destroyed I was. So I had to keep a lid on it around him.
Overall I did find space to grieve, but there were those key early moments where I had to try to keep a lid on it for someone else -- for legitimate reasons -- and trying to keep it in was so, so hard.
I work as a developmental trauma & grief coach and I fully agree with you: our resistance to grief is the main thing that is keeping us stuck and unfulfilled in our lives, and also the main thing that is keeping us separate from each other, directly causing the mass injustices that are threatening every aspect of our collective. People mistakenly think (for very valid, developmental reasons) that if they were to fully, finally feel their grief that it would completely overwhelm and destroy them. What’s been hidden from us is that grief, when supported and resourced, actually helps us come alive: helps us come into connection with our full humanity, and with each other.
My father died when I was 14. At the time, there were no child bereavement support groups. I took three days off school, and went back the Monday after his death. Kids did not know what to say to me. Teachers said nothing. No one suggested I talk to a guidance counselor. My brother was already in college and my mother was distracted with her job and all the paperwork that accompanies a death. I was literally fending for myself, and it took YEARS to deal with the grief. It finally broke when I broke up with a serious boyfriend around age 30. I sank into one of the darkest times of my life. My friends could not figure out why the breakup hit me so hard. It was because I was truly mourning my papa for the first time.
My best friend moved to another state four and a half years ago. Before that we had lived around the corner from each other for fifteen years, and I was embedded in the daily rhythms of her family life. I have never experienced a hollowing out akin to that loss, made all the more bewildering because she had not died. I could still see her (albeit after a five hour drive) and we Zoomed and we sent each other care packages and flowers and cards. It felt somehow disrespectful to apply the language of grief to my situation when others truly could never see their beloveds again. But grief it was - and is - and it still can catch me and take my breath away with its depth. That first year was awful - the longing and ache and disorientation. And then it began to get better, in that we'd survived a year and we knew we could do it again. Grieving the phases of life - that one part is over and a new part has begun - is so hard to express.
I'm sending you warmth as you navigate these first few weeks without Peggy, and learn the shape of what this grief is and means. Much love.
Today is a strange day for a 70-year old woman who has no children or grandchildren or greatgrandchildren. All of my family is dead, my last sister (my best friend) died 3 years ago. Also, I have big social anxiety, no friends since retirement, and venture out of the house only once every week or two to run the errands I can't solve by Amazon. So, that's the stage setting for this:
Early in April, a woman I supported and followed on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok took her own life. Her 180K followers were shocked but really not surprised. This woman was talented, beautiful, humorous, and a sweetheart of a cat rescuer. She was also an advocate for mental health services, specifically suicide. Most of my social media reading was her posts. I would have loved to have been her grandmother.
For a week, I cried and spent much of the day and a lot of night hours reading posts from other followers, including the other cat rescuers who worked with her or knew her. I couldn't write down my grief, so I read others'. It's more than a month later and I still can't report my own feelings about her family's loss nor commiserate with other followers' loss. She didn't know that she was to inherit a lot of my estate. I don't know if that would have been good news to her. My anger is beginning to surface (not towards her, but at Life), and I can only read a very few of the mourners' posts before I have to leave the page.
I have my own 3 cats, my panther Henri and tuxedo twins LaVerne and Shirley. They are the last of the couple dozen or more cats that I adopted to be my children. Henri is almost 14, in fair health but definitely slowing down. The girls are 7. At 70, I won't adopt any more kittens because I can't promise to be around for their 15-20 year life span. I don't know who is going to take care of me when I need it.
This is my grief and it is deep. I don't know what more to say about it.
Unfortunately I’m very familiar with grief. My go-to saying is: It doesn’t get easier, it just gets different.
You somehow learn to live with a big gaping hole in your soul. I think the thing that saved me (and took many years to figure out) is learning I have to fill that whole with things that are ultimately good for me and life-affirming.
Holding you in your loss. Thank you for this thoughtful piece. With love, Em
My dad died suddenly this past November, sitting down to "rest his eyes" (nap) and never getting up. He was the primary caregiver for my mom, who has lewy body dementia, and so much of the last six months have been logistical, finding and adjusting mom's care, dealing with the house and finances, that there's barely space for grief, all the things to grieve about this situation. My job gives four days for bereavement (for which I had to produce a death certificate, and my own birth certificate showing he was my dad, plus my marriage certificate confirming my name change). I have small kids so it feels like my therapist's office is the only place with space for my grief.
That said, my best friend came with me to my parents house, and we sat in the garage near my dad's workbench, and smoked with his pipes. Taking the time to be in his space with someone who cared about my grief was immeasurably helpful.
I’m sending you so much love. When my beloved dog Henry died—in April 2020—I had an abundance of time to grieve. I didn’t have to show up to work the next day, put on a smile around friends, or even go out in the world. Staying home—under the covers, crying days on end, remembering and mourning my sweet boy—was the responsible thing to do at the time. And because it was my dog that died, I didn’t have to field as many questions or prove to people that I was okay in ways I felt like I had to with previous losses. It gave me permission to grieve in a way I’d never really had before and (I hope) will inform how I grieve in the future.
I was an adjunct instructor at San Francisco State University when my dad died. It was not unexpected -- he had been in hospice care for almost two years, and I was able to fly home to NM to be with him when he died. But I had no time off from work -- I had literally one class day of bereavement leave, and the department head was unwilling to let anyone cover for me (or cover for me himself), so that I could have a few more days off (my boyfriend, who has the same qualifications that I do, was willing and able). My dad died on Monday -- my single day of bereavement leave -- and I flew back to California on Tuesday. If you can't tell, I am still seething about that, six years later. When I left that job at the end of semester -- in favor of a full-time job with benefits -- the department head attempted to badmouth me to my old department (see above re: still seething). I do not think that I have ever really had the space to grieve my father, but it has affected how I teach / supervise folks -- I make a point of allowing my students the space they might need in the event of any kind of emergency, and I generally try to make clear to them (in my sloppy, old-person way) that, actually, school and work are not as important as their people and animals are.
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.
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.
My union fought for and won bereavement leave and although I knew I had it, I didn't realize I was saving it for a "Big Death" until my supervisor mentioned I could use it to support others while they grieved. With my leave, I was able to take time to support my mother after a family death which opened me up to processing my own grief. It made all the difference.
My boyfriend died when we were 25 (well he died on his birthday so he was 26). He had been sick for a while but it still shocked me when I learned he would die, and then did. All my friends were in the throes of 20s single life and partying in NYC and I felt so alone. No one knew how to deal with me and vice versa and I both felt abandoned and abandoned everyone. I was diagnosed with PTSD a year later; I didn’t know you could get PTSD from grieving but now I do. I’ve been married, divorced, remarried, and have a young kid and still feel like I’m grieving that boy and that time in my life. I don’t feel like I ever was able to grieve “properly.” It’s such a hole in my life.
I’m in that place right now. My 8yo Boston Terrier is dying from lymphoma, and I want the world to stop so I can grieve. He’s starting to decline, and I know it won’t be long before I need to say goodbye. My kids are sad, so I’m really trying to be there for them (they’re teens). But I’m also in grad school & running a PR firm, so trying to carve out the space I need feels hard. When all is quiet late at night, I lay with Buster (my dog), cry, and tell him I love him. I understand your grief, and I’m grateful you wrote this. It resonates.
i’m so sorry for your loss. i’ve had my dog since i was 22 (35 now) and i don’t know who i am without her.
i lost my stepdad, my father figure, unexpectedly in august. he died without a will, so i was asked to be his executor by his elderly parents (my mom is no longer married to him, but he loved my brother and me like his own). i didn’t really realize what was being asked of me. it was so much paperwork, phone calls, cleaning out his home (which, wow, what a physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting thing to do, and alone), settling bills, going to probate court, shuttling back and forth between his house and mine, etc etc. the busyness of settling his estate (aka trying not to pay two mortgages so getting the house sold as quickly as possible) really prevented me from properly grieving, even though i was in a constant state of grief. i don’t know if that makes sense. like i was constantly missing him while discovering who he was cleaning out his home, but i was also sending my realtor updates on stuff, etc, so it was like half-felt. i couldn’t attend his memorial because the first time there was a hurricane (my granny refused to reschedule and then her home was flooded...so then it had to be rescheduled) and then she rescheduled it for the day before thanksgiving, which i was spending with my mom a state away. i don’t know if you’ve read the book popisho by leone ross, but sometimes it feels like he’s still walking around because i haven’t been able to say goodbye properly. anyway, if you haven’t made arrangements or plans for your death, please for the love of anyone in your life, have a plan, have beneficiaries, have whatever to spare them the pain so they can grieve.
My father died unexpectedly during surgery. I had spent the weeks leading up to surgery with him, but I flew back to DC the morning before surgery in FL to return to work, and my brother traded places with me. It was my first morning back in a busy classroom with 6th graders. I was on a 15-minute break when my phone rang, and I couldn't understand anything through my brother's grief, my mom's wailing in the background. I was lucky enough to be at work with a dear friend, who immediately grabbed my things and ushered me out of the building. She drove me in my car back to my place so I could look up plane tickets back home to FL, where I had just left. For two weeks, I was home with my mom and brother. We made funeral arrangements. We laughed at how the world had no idea Dad died, and it was Valentine's Day, so everywhere we went, we were bombarded with love and balloons and red red roses. My friends flew in, and I showed them my Dad's gardens, his life's work. What I didn't do during that entire two weeks was think about work. I had very good and kind colleagues who took care of my classes for me. My students wrote me the most beautiful cards. One told me, "take all the time you need. We'll be here when you get back." My boss texted me to say pretty much the same thing. I had an ally in my HR department who made sure that my friend and colleague who flew to FL to attend the funeral got bereavement leave days even though my father was technically not her family. This should be the norm for everyone, but I know it's not. When I returned to work, there was a stack of papers on my desk: all the worksheets and quizzes, all the work my students did while I was gone. I took one look at it, and knew I would be forgiven anything, so with one big sweep of my arm, I swept it directly into the trash. I didn't want to pretend something life-shattering had not just happened to me, so I didn't. That I could return to work as my grieving, shattered self was such a relief.
My father died in the night while my husband was in Europe for work. He got his mother to come over in the very early morning hours so I could get to my mother. My mother was in a total state of shock that day. I've since heard her say that "we" didn't cry that first day, but that's because I read where she was and didn't let her see it. One of my worst memories is this stretch, I don't know how long it actually lasted but it felt like quite a long time, when she was upstairs sending and answering emails, and to say I cried doesn't get it. I paced back and forth completely wracked by sobs, almost like a silent keening. It was a state of being totally consumed by emotion that I've never felt at any other time -- my constant mental narration shut down, I wasn't having specific memories or thoughts about my grief, the grief itself was everything, mind and body. I kept pacing but hunched over, with my arms wrapped around my stomach, and every little while I'd double over and stop walking.
And then my mom finished emailing and I stopped.
The next morning I had to tell my kid what had happened, and I tried to be calm and explain things to him, which was difficult since he was too young to really understand death, so it turned into an extended back and forth where I tried to explain it, and I started crying and my grief terrified him. I think to this day, four years later, he is nervous talking about my father -- who he adored -- because he was so scared by how destroyed I was. So I had to keep a lid on it around him.
Overall I did find space to grieve, but there were those key early moments where I had to try to keep a lid on it for someone else -- for legitimate reasons -- and trying to keep it in was so, so hard.
I work as a developmental trauma & grief coach and I fully agree with you: our resistance to grief is the main thing that is keeping us stuck and unfulfilled in our lives, and also the main thing that is keeping us separate from each other, directly causing the mass injustices that are threatening every aspect of our collective. People mistakenly think (for very valid, developmental reasons) that if they were to fully, finally feel their grief that it would completely overwhelm and destroy them. What’s been hidden from us is that grief, when supported and resourced, actually helps us come alive: helps us come into connection with our full humanity, and with each other.
My father died when I was 14. At the time, there were no child bereavement support groups. I took three days off school, and went back the Monday after his death. Kids did not know what to say to me. Teachers said nothing. No one suggested I talk to a guidance counselor. My brother was already in college and my mother was distracted with her job and all the paperwork that accompanies a death. I was literally fending for myself, and it took YEARS to deal with the grief. It finally broke when I broke up with a serious boyfriend around age 30. I sank into one of the darkest times of my life. My friends could not figure out why the breakup hit me so hard. It was because I was truly mourning my papa for the first time.
My best friend moved to another state four and a half years ago. Before that we had lived around the corner from each other for fifteen years, and I was embedded in the daily rhythms of her family life. I have never experienced a hollowing out akin to that loss, made all the more bewildering because she had not died. I could still see her (albeit after a five hour drive) and we Zoomed and we sent each other care packages and flowers and cards. It felt somehow disrespectful to apply the language of grief to my situation when others truly could never see their beloveds again. But grief it was - and is - and it still can catch me and take my breath away with its depth. That first year was awful - the longing and ache and disorientation. And then it began to get better, in that we'd survived a year and we knew we could do it again. Grieving the phases of life - that one part is over and a new part has begun - is so hard to express.
I'm sending you warmth as you navigate these first few weeks without Peggy, and learn the shape of what this grief is and means. Much love.
Today is a strange day for a 70-year old woman who has no children or grandchildren or greatgrandchildren. All of my family is dead, my last sister (my best friend) died 3 years ago. Also, I have big social anxiety, no friends since retirement, and venture out of the house only once every week or two to run the errands I can't solve by Amazon. So, that's the stage setting for this:
Early in April, a woman I supported and followed on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok took her own life. Her 180K followers were shocked but really not surprised. This woman was talented, beautiful, humorous, and a sweetheart of a cat rescuer. She was also an advocate for mental health services, specifically suicide. Most of my social media reading was her posts. I would have loved to have been her grandmother.
For a week, I cried and spent much of the day and a lot of night hours reading posts from other followers, including the other cat rescuers who worked with her or knew her. I couldn't write down my grief, so I read others'. It's more than a month later and I still can't report my own feelings about her family's loss nor commiserate with other followers' loss. She didn't know that she was to inherit a lot of my estate. I don't know if that would have been good news to her. My anger is beginning to surface (not towards her, but at Life), and I can only read a very few of the mourners' posts before I have to leave the page.
I have my own 3 cats, my panther Henri and tuxedo twins LaVerne and Shirley. They are the last of the couple dozen or more cats that I adopted to be my children. Henri is almost 14, in fair health but definitely slowing down. The girls are 7. At 70, I won't adopt any more kittens because I can't promise to be around for their 15-20 year life span. I don't know who is going to take care of me when I need it.
This is my grief and it is deep. I don't know what more to say about it.
Unfortunately I’m very familiar with grief. My go-to saying is: It doesn’t get easier, it just gets different.
You somehow learn to live with a big gaping hole in your soul. I think the thing that saved me (and took many years to figure out) is learning I have to fill that whole with things that are ultimately good for me and life-affirming.
Holding you in your loss. Thank you for this thoughtful piece. With love, Em
My dad died suddenly this past November, sitting down to "rest his eyes" (nap) and never getting up. He was the primary caregiver for my mom, who has lewy body dementia, and so much of the last six months have been logistical, finding and adjusting mom's care, dealing with the house and finances, that there's barely space for grief, all the things to grieve about this situation. My job gives four days for bereavement (for which I had to produce a death certificate, and my own birth certificate showing he was my dad, plus my marriage certificate confirming my name change). I have small kids so it feels like my therapist's office is the only place with space for my grief.
That said, my best friend came with me to my parents house, and we sat in the garage near my dad's workbench, and smoked with his pipes. Taking the time to be in his space with someone who cared about my grief was immeasurably helpful.
I’m sending you so much love. When my beloved dog Henry died—in April 2020—I had an abundance of time to grieve. I didn’t have to show up to work the next day, put on a smile around friends, or even go out in the world. Staying home—under the covers, crying days on end, remembering and mourning my sweet boy—was the responsible thing to do at the time. And because it was my dog that died, I didn’t have to field as many questions or prove to people that I was okay in ways I felt like I had to with previous losses. It gave me permission to grieve in a way I’d never really had before and (I hope) will inform how I grieve in the future.
I was an adjunct instructor at San Francisco State University when my dad died. It was not unexpected -- he had been in hospice care for almost two years, and I was able to fly home to NM to be with him when he died. But I had no time off from work -- I had literally one class day of bereavement leave, and the department head was unwilling to let anyone cover for me (or cover for me himself), so that I could have a few more days off (my boyfriend, who has the same qualifications that I do, was willing and able). My dad died on Monday -- my single day of bereavement leave -- and I flew back to California on Tuesday. If you can't tell, I am still seething about that, six years later. When I left that job at the end of semester -- in favor of a full-time job with benefits -- the department head attempted to badmouth me to my old department (see above re: still seething). I do not think that I have ever really had the space to grieve my father, but it has affected how I teach / supervise folks -- I make a point of allowing my students the space they might need in the event of any kind of emergency, and I generally try to make clear to them (in my sloppy, old-person way) that, actually, school and work are not as important as their people and animals are.