Chapter 32. Grief

We heard Anderson Cooper speak this week at the Colorado Speakers Series.  He spoke about grief, his changing life, the deaths of his mother, father, and brother. He spoke of the grief that surrounded him during reporting the most heinous war crimes.  But that grief wasn’t his.  He used the collective grief of war-torn countries as a protective shield.  And then, much to his surprise, grief became his companion while he went through his mother’s belongings after her death. 

I had known the kind of grief that overwhelms the soul when my brother, Steve died.  It was a grief so vicious and unrelenting that I thought I’d never smile again.  It was a solitary grief and other than GB, there was no one to whom I could talk.  The condolences flowed to his parents, his wife, his children.  Of course, that’s where they belonged.  But a sibling is only considered in passing.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t harbor any ill thoughts about it.  It was simply a very lonely time.

One night we were invited to some friends’ home for a Sabbath dinner.  As we sat around the table, I began thinking of all the family dinners that would no longer include my brother.  I began to feel an upwelling of uncontrollable emotion that was internally explosive.  I got up from the table, left their home and walked around the block.  I returned to the table, apologized, said nothing and after dinner we left.  We never saw those people again.  I wondered if they thought I was simply rude or that 5 weeks was long enough to get myself in an acceptable social posture.  Whatever it was, I knew that the grief was going to be with me for a very long time.  That was in 1995.

And for many years, I didn’t ignore grief.  I was able to address it, absorb a loss, and move on.  

I managed absorption until my husband became ill.  His diagnoses ran from Alzheimer’s to Parkinson’s.  The ultimate diagnoses, hydrocephalus, was one that was an outlier and the chances that the insertion of a shunt in his brain would help were minimal.  So, for three years I watched as he deteriorated.  His walking became a slow shuffle.  His incontinence was uncontrollable with medications and an Axionics implant. His cognition was being impacted.  We went from doctor to doctor, trips were cancelled, events limited, friendships waned.  

I created a small support group with two other women whose spouses were going through similar things.  We talked about grief. We shared our fears of the future.  Our frustrations.  We groped for answers.  

And I began talking about grief and loss with my friends.  Last week, I had lunch with my dear friend, Susan.  She had just returned from an out of state trip to see a few of her friends she hadn’t seen in many years. Of her group, I think two had died.  One had dementia.  Susan’s grief was palpable as she talked about her old friends and I thought that I, too, should visit my oldest friends before it becomes too late. 

Grief and loss is something we talk about when we reach a certain age.  There are a million different triggers.  Maybe it happens when a partner becomes sick or dies.  Maybe the loss of friends.  The loss of career.  There are many kinds of grief and they hit each of us at different times in our lives. 

But there is a slightly different hue to the grief of aging. We’ve withstood the loss of parents, siblings, friends, careers, yes, pets, and the trauma of insults to our bodies, minds, and souls. 

For me, I’m piling on my past grief with the realization that it’s time to sell the home with ever so reassuring memories and move.  That move is drowning in grief.  And it’s something people of a different age simply cannot understand, and they shouldn’t.  It’s the grief that’s best left to the elderly.  We’re prepared to take it, mull it over, and then move on to the next chapter.