The After The Funeral blues

I am a big fan of the Carpenters. One of my favorite songs from their repertoire is Rainy Days on Mondays and several of the lines seem to fit how I’m feeling these days:

Talkin’ to myself and feelin’ old
Sometimes I’d like to quit
Nothing ever seems to fit
Hangin’ around
Nothing to do but frown

What I feel has come and gone before
No need to talk it out
We know what it’s all about

I spent so much time trying to cajole and encourage my mother to feel better and get better and seek treatments to get healthy that I didn’t realize that I had heaped up a lot of denial. When she was first diagnosed with multiple myeloma and given a life expectancy of five years, I assured myself that she would prove them wrong and to a certain extent she did. Her myeloma progressed very very slowly, and after our baby girl was born and named for her, I was certain that would be the incentive she would need to keep on the road to relatively good health and long life. And even though I knew that the institution of medicine is hardly foolproof, I trusted them to take care of mom at her monthly oncology appointments. The diagnosis of stage IIIc ovarian cancer completely blind sighted all of us. How could you possibly be seeing an oncologist monthly  for one type cancer and have him totally miss the new more deadly cancer inside of your body? I still can’t wrap my mind around that.

So there’s that. There were the almost daily visits, sometimes twice a day for over 12 weeks, to visit and encourage mom in the hospital, in the rehab center, in the nursing home, in the hospital again and then back at the nursing home. Those visits took a great deal of time and effort every day but they became a way of life.

And immediately after mom died, there was the busy work of preparing for the funeral and the luncheon. And the funny thing is, I have done this before. I knew that as soon as the last person left the luncheon, it would just us. Everyone goes back to their daily lives and we would have to figure out what the new normal is.

I can’t say that I miss the daily visits. Those were getting harder and harder to endure the closer we came to the end. But what I miss now are the way things use to be, before the illness. When the phone rings now in the morning, my first thought is, “Oh, that’s mom.” And when something funny or interesting happens during the day, my first thought is, “I’m going to call mom, she’ll like this.” And of course I can’t. There will be no grandparents day this year for us, no plans to take mom to the family reunion, no trips to the park, none of it. And that’s what I’m missing.

Yesterday I did get two phone calls in the morning. One of them was about my participation in the youth group as a parent adviser and I said no thanks. And when the caller asked how I was doing I said that I knew there would be a let down after the funeral, and then when she asked if I was feeling let down, the tears came and I couldn’t stop them. Just weird stuff like that.

On Tuesday I took Sam to take his test to get his temporary driver’s license (second attempt) and while he was testing I was reading a book about how we handle death. One part of the book really stood out to me. It said that people will look at the death of an older person as “she had along life,” “she isn’t suffering any more,” “she’s in a better place,” etc. And it’s all true. I can accept all of it. I’ve probably even said some of it to other people! But it was still my mother and in my mind’s eye she’s not an 81 year old cachectic cancer patient. She’s a 30-something mom taking me for walks, and teaching me to tie my shoes, driving me to my first dancing classes and telling me fascinating stories along the way. Or she’s the 40-something mom, president of the band boosters, supporting my sister and me in all of our activities while holding down a teaching job. I see the musician, the pianist and organist that everyone depends on and admires for her great skill and technique. I hear the lovely soprano voice and the clear diction. I see the grandma driving kids to soccer and rocking babies. And I miss that and I want it back.

A lady on the 4Reallearningforums shared this with me:

I have to share- while at Mass one Mother’s Day, many years ago, I saw an older gentleman (about early 80’s) who was standing in the vestibule, visibly shaken and crying. I went to another lady, as I had a cranky toddler, and asked her to see if he was ok. She did, and I watched her talk to him, smile and hug him, and she came back. I asked if he was ok, and she said, yes, he said he was just missing his mom.

Sympathy cards are still trickling in. I got a letter from church about how they’re there if I need anything. But honestly, I don’t think there’s any help for what I really need. This is the part you just have to get through. This is grief. God, I’m so tired of grieving.

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