So if you hadn’t heard, Mum passed away a week ago. She was 70, very unwell and struggled everyday just to live.
I had forgotten just how exhausting this grieving process can be. A hundred things need to be done and you have the brain capacity of a bee. You start to do something, someone asks you a question and you forget what you are doing, so you start something else. Having a conversation? Yep-for about five minutes and then that is it. If you attempt a conversation back to someone who had engaged with you, beware- you will get facts wrong and you will try to redeem yourself and you will fail. That image of crazy grieving lady you are trying to avoid- you end up doing. I ended up looking like a fish out of water, flapping about, making more mess & not getting any where!
The process of having a funeral is not unlike preparing a wedding or baby shower. But its sad, has no happy ending and you have less time to prepare it in. And it will still cost the same as eloping to a Pacific Island to get married.
But its the unrelenting feeling of not being able to move forward. You would do anything to have that person back, even just for five minutes so you could say good bye the way you feel you should. You would want to tie up all of your loose ends, make amends, say your goodbyes. But you can’t. Death is sudden, even if you are expecting it for a long time. Death is final. Nothing prepares you for it. You can plan for what you want to happen post death, funerals etc- but you cannot predict the all encompassing grief. It overwhelms you.
You forget to eat and drink. You sleep only from pure exhaustion, for just a few hours and then you are wide awake thinking, planning, organising in your head what needs to be done & worrying about how loved ones will cope.. You try to remember everyone, make sure no-one is missed out. You finally get up and get on with your day. But you are knackered. You want to get outside the walls of your house and be normal. But once you are outside, even just for a quick trip to the shops, all you want to do is get back inside where its safe.
Then the family and friends start arriving. You find that you end up comforting everyone else and validating their loss. You re-assure them that you are ok and coping (just). The good ones, they make you food, take care of the kids, fold the washing and talk to you about normal everyday things like pre-school notices, ballet and school disco’s, future holidays and just reminding you that its still normal on the outside.
The bad ones just sit and watch. They wait for you to fall over. They watch your every move just to see how you are coping. They look at you with pity in their eyes, ready to comment about how something should be done. And they rarely make the cups of tea they are gasping for or do the dishes for the cups of tea and hospitality they have just received. This happened on the day of my Dads funeral. I was livid. Funnily enough- those people didn’t attend Mums funeral.
The best advice I can give is to be useful. The grieving ones have the brain the size of a bee. Simple things like cooking, cleaning, doing the lawns & doing washing are non sequential, but still need to be done.
This grieving process will take as longer time or as shorter time as it needs. I cant remember when I felt the process end with my Dad. But I know it will get better.
40 Grains Of Sand 