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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.
I’m also a widow, and I am so very sorry for your loss. 2.5 years out, I’m so grateful for friends who remember his birthday, our wedding anniversary, and other tough grief days. And I’m equally grateful for friends who continue to share memories of him.
I think sending belated sympathy cards is a beautiful idea. I’ve lost both of my parents, and I know exactly how you felt when you say you couldn’t do other people’s “normal.” It seems impossible that the world keeps going when we are in deep grief. Sending love your way today.
Sending you a virtual hug. I delay my bereavement gifts until after shiva or services. People are often deluged with coffee cakes and lasagne right away, and I’d rather wait until they have a little time to get over the first shock.
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.
Yes, a hole, a chasm, a boy lost. I’m 66 now and my boyfriend died when I was almost 19. I felt abandoned and floating and heard the whispered “how long is this going to last???” when I sobbed. That boy is still in my heart and my fingers and his laugh still sounds in my head. But now I lean on the memory of how truly he cherished me for who I was, not what I did. My first husband was an alcoholic and his disregard and leaving after 20 years nearly broke my sense of self. That boy knew better.
My best friend died in a car accident when I was 22, and I almost certainly had undiagnosed PTSD from it (I was also his emergency contact, so was called to the hospital where he was already gone). It totally upended me as a person. I spent years drowning in grief. I tried to work, and party, and continue being in my early-20s, but ultimately I would end up drunk and sobbing, I couldn't sleep, I self-harmed, I developed severe depression and went on medication a few years later. I still think about him all the time, and think about the grief I spent years suffering through (as my brain was still developing) without the help of a therapist or a support group or anything that would have just been even the slightest bit helpful at the time.
My best friend was in a car accident when we were 23. She lived in a vegetative state for 3 years before her dad made the impossible decision to remove life support. She was the most important person in my life starting from when I was 15. We did everything together. Six months before the accident I moved to another city. When the accident happened, she was gone, but she wasn’t dead. I had seen her just three nights before but then gone back to where I was living 5 hours away. It was the perfect storm of feeling loss without anyway to articulate or justify to others in my new city (who had never met her and had never known me in context of my friendship with her) why I was consumed with grief. In hindsight, I was also in denial. I couldn’t say I was grieving because she was still alive! And to admit there was grief would be to seemingly not hold out hope for her recovery. This “limbo” state went on for so long that it eventually became my new normal. When she finally died, I was about to start a new job. I remember telling the hiring manager that I wasn’t sure I wanted the job because my friend had just died and I just wasn’t in the mental space to “get on with it.” Of course this manager had no empathy for the situation and convinced me to take the job in the name of Capitalism and Work Ethic. It felt so wrong internally, but I was 26 and I felt like NOT taking this job would make me “lazy.” I think I had spent 3 years repressing grief for my loss, and when the time came where I could actually tell people “my friend DIED,” I had lived with the loss so long, it felt self-indulgent to grieve at that moment. I stayed at that job less than a year. I’m not sure I ever fully grieved my loss.
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.
My wife and I have a 14 y/o Boston. He’s had a Cushing’s Disease diagnosis for over a year now and the cognitive decline is rapid in the past few months. We’re moving out of state at the end of the month and having to make the difficult decision to let him go. They are such special breeds, its so difficult to say goodbye.
They are a wonderful breed. I think we need to make a decision this week, and I’m wrecked. We’ve adopted a Boston Terrier puppy who will join us next month, but getting through this feels impossible.
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.
So much this. Make a plan for your death, even if (especially if?) you expect to be around for a long time. My mom died unexpectedly in the course of surgery. She was very anxious about it beforehand and she wrote down a list of things that I would need to do. I was so grateful for that. Even though, as you describe, the process of being an executor is a whole separate job on top of your grieving life. My god it sucks. But it’s better with a map than without
I’m sor sorry you have had to go through this. It’s so much work, and you have so little bandwidth due to the grief.
In the spirit of planning for one’s death, may I recommend A Beginner’s Guide to the End? Not so much for you, since you are going through it already, but for everyone else. It’s a very basic intro to all the end of life planning, and shows one how to get started.
There is so much actual work involved after a loss and it's easy to get swept up in all the busy work. I hope you'll be able to figure out a way to memorialize him on your own.
My father died after 5 years of early onset dementia and I had to deal with so much of that "work" and grief while he was still alive. The money, the house, the stuff... we had to handle it all before he was gone. And by the time he was physically gone, he had been mentally gone for quite a while. I grieved him when he died but it was almost like an exhale... We had been holding our breath for so long.
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.
I am in tears reading about how supported you were during your time of loss. You're right; this is how it should be when we lose someone, particularly the understanding from a workplace.
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.
There’s a scene early in Fanny and Alexander where Alexander wakes up in the middle of the night, hearing a strange wailing sound. He slips out of his room and traces it to the room where his father’s body is laid out to rest, and his mother is pacing the room, wailing. It’s the only representation in art that I’ve seen that captures the senseless howling i lapsed into after my father died. Grief can cause a person to temporarily vacate consciousness. I’m sorry for the loss of your dad.
'the grief itself was everything...' I know this feeling, and it lasted for months for me. My children were horrified. It was the last day of Hanukah, the day before Christmas. They all thought after a few weeks that they would never have 'me' back. It is excruciating to worry that showing your own grief will permanently traumatize the kids.
You've reminded me of when my paternal grandmother died -- we got an early morning phone call... my bedroom was within earshot of the phone, and I can still hear the shock in my mother's voice when she answered (it was my aunt/my dad's sister calling), my dad's strangled voice as he called his brother to pass along the news to him, and then a sound I'd never heard, of him sobbing in my mother's arms. That was almost 50 years ago this month. It was the first big loss in my life, and it was shattering.
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.
This is so beautifully put, and something I feel like has been lingering under the surface of how I've been trying to explain this void of empathy. Subscribed to your page, looking forward to learning more
Absolutely true. Thank you for writing this. What I have learned from grieving (and allowing myself to grieve) is that it has made me more of an empathetic person and feel connected to humanity and others. Oh how I wish modern society allowed us to support each others grief and healing...it is what we all need.
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.
Micheline this is heartbreaking. I'm so sorry nobody gave you the space and structure to grieve. My dad died when I was an adolescent too and it is such a hard time to lose a parent.
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.
unrelated -- cate! I didn't know you had a substack. I'm barely on twitter these days and your thoughts on pedagogy and care are some I've been missing. subscribed!
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.
thank you for sharing your story & this woman you follow story with us. reading your writing here was moving, and i appreciate you opening up. your post also shared with me the powerful connection that can happen on social media, it sounds like she positively impacted a lot of peoples lives. it also saddens me that because of the internet, we are all still separated and isolated from each other so she was not able to know with intimacy the kind of support and care followers like you had for her. i can resonate with the anger at Life you wrote about
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
With the big gaping hole in your soul, I think of it as slowly making a path around the hole. It’s still there, but you learn its contours and after a while don’t necessarily fall in every time. ❤️
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.
Okay, the fact that you had to show (multiple!) forms of "proof" to your employer to be treated with (a minimum, let's be honest) of humanity honestly enrages me on your behalf, though?
This! My husband died two months ago and it's been hard having to provide his death certificate, but at least that was usually the only documentation I needed AND it was for obvious financial and legal stuff, not a few days off. I haven't had to provide our marriage license or either of our birth certificates.
I feel this so much! I just lost my cousin and my husband’s work has just been awful about our family needing some time off to travel to the funeral because it’s not “immediate family”. I’m an only child, and this was my daughter’s Godmother, matron of honor in our wedding, my role model and best friend. It’s exhausting and traumatizing to have to continue to justify the relationship in the name of a billable hours quota. I also have a young kid and between the bureaucratic work crap needed to justify just the smallest amount of time off (that I’m sure we will end up making up by working extra hours before during and after the trip) and soooo many questions that I am trying to answer honestly without absolutely splintering and scaring her, there is no space left for my own grief, which means that it keeps sneaking up on me unexpectedly. I have started to wonder if it will just be like this forever- slowly sectioning off parts of myself to just bury with people I don’t have the time or space to grieve until there is nothing left.
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.
My husband died 8 weeks ago, and the delayed sympathy cards and flowers were extremely appreciated, as are the check-ins
I am so sorry for your loss. I hope your memories of him—and your loved ones’ continued presence—help support you in your grief. Now and always.
What a terrible loss. Sending virtual sympathy and flowers
I’m also a widow, and I am so very sorry for your loss. 2.5 years out, I’m so grateful for friends who remember his birthday, our wedding anniversary, and other tough grief days. And I’m equally grateful for friends who continue to share memories of him.
I think sending belated sympathy cards is a beautiful idea. I’ve lost both of my parents, and I know exactly how you felt when you say you couldn’t do other people’s “normal.” It seems impossible that the world keeps going when we are in deep grief. Sending love your way today.
Sending you a virtual hug. I delay my bereavement gifts until after shiva or services. People are often deluged with coffee cakes and lasagne right away, and I’d rather wait until they have a little time to get over the first shock.
I just wrote something very similar to this about my mom’s death before I read yours. Love the idea of the delayed bereavement. ❤️
Sending you peace on this Mother's day.
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.
This is so important, thank you for sharing.
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.
Yes, a hole, a chasm, a boy lost. I’m 66 now and my boyfriend died when I was almost 19. I felt abandoned and floating and heard the whispered “how long is this going to last???” when I sobbed. That boy is still in my heart and my fingers and his laugh still sounds in my head. But now I lean on the memory of how truly he cherished me for who I was, not what I did. My first husband was an alcoholic and his disregard and leaving after 20 years nearly broke my sense of self. That boy knew better.
My best friend died in a car accident when I was 22, and I almost certainly had undiagnosed PTSD from it (I was also his emergency contact, so was called to the hospital where he was already gone). It totally upended me as a person. I spent years drowning in grief. I tried to work, and party, and continue being in my early-20s, but ultimately I would end up drunk and sobbing, I couldn't sleep, I self-harmed, I developed severe depression and went on medication a few years later. I still think about him all the time, and think about the grief I spent years suffering through (as my brain was still developing) without the help of a therapist or a support group or anything that would have just been even the slightest bit helpful at the time.
My best friend was in a car accident when we were 23. She lived in a vegetative state for 3 years before her dad made the impossible decision to remove life support. She was the most important person in my life starting from when I was 15. We did everything together. Six months before the accident I moved to another city. When the accident happened, she was gone, but she wasn’t dead. I had seen her just three nights before but then gone back to where I was living 5 hours away. It was the perfect storm of feeling loss without anyway to articulate or justify to others in my new city (who had never met her and had never known me in context of my friendship with her) why I was consumed with grief. In hindsight, I was also in denial. I couldn’t say I was grieving because she was still alive! And to admit there was grief would be to seemingly not hold out hope for her recovery. This “limbo” state went on for so long that it eventually became my new normal. When she finally died, I was about to start a new job. I remember telling the hiring manager that I wasn’t sure I wanted the job because my friend had just died and I just wasn’t in the mental space to “get on with it.” Of course this manager had no empathy for the situation and convinced me to take the job in the name of Capitalism and Work Ethic. It felt so wrong internally, but I was 26 and I felt like NOT taking this job would make me “lazy.” I think I had spent 3 years repressing grief for my loss, and when the time came where I could actually tell people “my friend DIED,” I had lived with the loss so long, it felt self-indulgent to grieve at that moment. I stayed at that job less than a year. I’m not sure I ever fully grieved my loss.
It is awful to feel yourself breaking and feel alone with it when you know you need help, then to wonder whether you can ever climb back out.
I’m so sorry for your loss. I wish I’d had some kind of formal support too. It’s such a painful thing and I’m sorry you went through it too.
I'm so sorry you had to walk through that valley alone; no one should have to do so. I hope you are able to find a way to process your grief someday.
💜
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 am so sorry ❤️
My wife and I have a 14 y/o Boston. He’s had a Cushing’s Disease diagnosis for over a year now and the cognitive decline is rapid in the past few months. We’re moving out of state at the end of the month and having to make the difficult decision to let him go. They are such special breeds, its so difficult to say goodbye.
They are a wonderful breed. I think we need to make a decision this week, and I’m wrecked. We’ve adopted a Boston Terrier puppy who will join us next month, but getting through this feels impossible.
https://vet.osu.edu/vmc/sites/default/files/import/assets/pdf/hospital/companionAnimals/HonoringtheBond/HowDoIKnowWhen.pdf
This has been helpful for us. It’s truly one of the most difficult decisions ever. Wishing you the best.
Thanks so much. This is very helpful. And same to you.
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.
So much this. Make a plan for your death, even if (especially if?) you expect to be around for a long time. My mom died unexpectedly in the course of surgery. She was very anxious about it beforehand and she wrote down a list of things that I would need to do. I was so grateful for that. Even though, as you describe, the process of being an executor is a whole separate job on top of your grieving life. My god it sucks. But it’s better with a map than without
oh my gosh, i’m so sorry to hear about your mom, but what a loving gift to have a plan.
I’m sor sorry you have had to go through this. It’s so much work, and you have so little bandwidth due to the grief.
In the spirit of planning for one’s death, may I recommend A Beginner’s Guide to the End? Not so much for you, since you are going through it already, but for everyone else. It’s a very basic intro to all the end of life planning, and shows one how to get started.
There is so much actual work involved after a loss and it's easy to get swept up in all the busy work. I hope you'll be able to figure out a way to memorialize him on your own.
My father died after 5 years of early onset dementia and I had to deal with so much of that "work" and grief while he was still alive. The money, the house, the stuff... we had to handle it all before he was gone. And by the time he was physically gone, he had been mentally gone for quite a while. I grieved him when he died but it was almost like an exhale... We had been holding our breath for so long.
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.
I am in tears reading about how supported you were during your time of loss. You're right; this is how it should be when we lose someone, particularly the understanding from a workplace.
This is the type of support everyone should be getting. I'm so glad that you were treated with such compassion during that difficult period.
Thu, this warmed my heart ❤️
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.
There’s a scene early in Fanny and Alexander where Alexander wakes up in the middle of the night, hearing a strange wailing sound. He slips out of his room and traces it to the room where his father’s body is laid out to rest, and his mother is pacing the room, wailing. It’s the only representation in art that I’ve seen that captures the senseless howling i lapsed into after my father died. Grief can cause a person to temporarily vacate consciousness. I’m sorry for the loss of your dad.
'the grief itself was everything...' I know this feeling, and it lasted for months for me. My children were horrified. It was the last day of Hanukah, the day before Christmas. They all thought after a few weeks that they would never have 'me' back. It is excruciating to worry that showing your own grief will permanently traumatize the kids.
You've reminded me of when my paternal grandmother died -- we got an early morning phone call... my bedroom was within earshot of the phone, and I can still hear the shock in my mother's voice when she answered (it was my aunt/my dad's sister calling), my dad's strangled voice as he called his brother to pass along the news to him, and then a sound I'd never heard, of him sobbing in my mother's arms. That was almost 50 years ago this month. It was the first big loss in my life, and it was shattering.
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.
This is so beautifully put, and something I feel like has been lingering under the surface of how I've been trying to explain this void of empathy. Subscribed to your page, looking forward to learning more
Absolutely true. Thank you for writing this. What I have learned from grieving (and allowing myself to grieve) is that it has made me more of an empathetic person and feel connected to humanity and others. Oh how I wish modern society allowed us to support each others grief and healing...it is what we all need.
It won’t destroy us (me)? Of course I believe that but it is also unbelievable.
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.
Micheline this is heartbreaking. I'm so sorry nobody gave you the space and structure to grieve. My dad died when I was an adolescent too and it is such a hard time to lose a parent.
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.
unrelated -- cate! I didn't know you had a substack. I'm barely on twitter these days and your thoughts on pedagogy and care are some I've been missing. subscribed!
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.
thank you for sharing your story & this woman you follow story with us. reading your writing here was moving, and i appreciate you opening up. your post also shared with me the powerful connection that can happen on social media, it sounds like she positively impacted a lot of peoples lives. it also saddens me that because of the internet, we are all still separated and isolated from each other so she was not able to know with intimacy the kind of support and care followers like you had for her. i can resonate with the anger at Life you wrote about
I am so sorry. Feel all you can and take it slow.
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
With the big gaping hole in your soul, I think of it as slowly making a path around the hole. It’s still there, but you learn its contours and after a while don’t necessarily fall in every time. ❤️
I love the phrase holding you in your loss. What a beautiful sentiment
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.
Okay, the fact that you had to show (multiple!) forms of "proof" to your employer to be treated with (a minimum, let's be honest) of humanity honestly enrages me on your behalf, though?
1000% it was the clearest example of the culture of no care for us as humans
This! My husband died two months ago and it's been hard having to provide his death certificate, but at least that was usually the only documentation I needed AND it was for obvious financial and legal stuff, not a few days off. I haven't had to provide our marriage license or either of our birth certificates.
I feel this so much! I just lost my cousin and my husband’s work has just been awful about our family needing some time off to travel to the funeral because it’s not “immediate family”. I’m an only child, and this was my daughter’s Godmother, matron of honor in our wedding, my role model and best friend. It’s exhausting and traumatizing to have to continue to justify the relationship in the name of a billable hours quota. I also have a young kid and between the bureaucratic work crap needed to justify just the smallest amount of time off (that I’m sure we will end up making up by working extra hours before during and after the trip) and soooo many questions that I am trying to answer honestly without absolutely splintering and scaring her, there is no space left for my own grief, which means that it keeps sneaking up on me unexpectedly. I have started to wonder if it will just be like this forever- slowly sectioning off parts of myself to just bury with people I don’t have the time or space to grieve until there is nothing left.
Uggh I can only say, I hope not? Maybe conversations and communities like this one will start to change things ❤️
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.
That is a horrifying experience. I am so sorry that you were not given more time, and more understanding.