Grief

Grief changes you. It changes your molecular make up. I am not completely sure about the molecules and how all of that works, but I know neural pathways are rerouted and that changes how you act/react to situations. Grief changes you physically, mentally and spiritually. It is not talked about enough. There is no way my brain and body operate the same as they did when my parents were alive. I am not who I used to be, and I shouldn’t be. And if you have experienced grief of any kind, you are not the same as you were pre-grief either. It’s just true.

One of my best friends told me a few weeks ago that she was “grieving me”. She said that I am not who I used to be. That statement ignited some anger in me. I was sad. I was mad—not really because she said it—but because it is true. The truth hurts. I didn’t ask for this change. It just happened, and I am mad about it. Hell no, I am not who I used to be. My mother died a year ago. And before that, we went through 5 years of turmoil. I don’t really know how to describe that season of life, except to say it was exhausting, hard, stressful and traumatic. Every single one of my relationships have been affected by that season of life, including the one with my self. We, as a family, were in a state of fight or flight for 5 years, and it was heartbreaking, hard, scary and just awful. It’s the first time in my life that I truly felt like I was drowning and could not find air. Maybe that is what grief is—air—foggy air. The number of losses in those five years is unbelievable sometimes: my mom’s sister who was like a second mother to me, my dad’s sister who has loved every breath I have taken, my father’s illness and death, my mother’s hip break, her massive stroke and eventual death, the hiring and firing and managing caregivers, the financial burdens and losses, addiction issues of family members, theft of my parents wedding rings and other things that were stolen or lost, our childhood home, two dogs dying, one tragically, security and safety gone, a business that I started and a million other losses that are personal and private and devastating. I have never been to war, but to me, this season of life felt what I imagine war to be like emotionally —thrown into a wildness of fighting and death and destruction and devastation. Loss after loss and a different reality thrust upon you than previously known. And it wasn’t like I could go home after it was all over. There was no home to return to. Everything changed. Home was gone too. I sure as hell better be different after all of that, because if I am not, then I am a robot. How selfish of people, of me to want me to be who I used to be! How dare us to want me to return to a time when none of that happened, as if it did not matter! It is just not possible.

Grief is this battle scar that I wear now, sometimes proudly and sometimes it’s hidden underneath what I used to be. It’s as if I am meeting myself for the first time. I don’t recognize some of my beliefs, my emotions and my reactions. It’s a little scary not recognizing myself sometimes. I know it’s just human nature to grieve change, to grieve loss, but something no one tells you is how you become a completely different person in grief. And it makes me pretty mad that no one else “gets it”. This grief—it is very isolating. I don’t even get it. Don’t you know I wish I didn’t have to change in this way? Don’t you know I would not have picked that “war”? I was drafted into this without my consent. We don’t get to pick our battles in this life. We don’t get to pick which grief we want to partake in or when it will come. We just know that it will happen, and we don’t get to control the changes to our personality because of it. I will never get to be that person again—the one before this grief. That innocence is gone. I am Amy, the orphan, now. I have always had a flare for the dramatic, but it’s true. I am an orphan, and I have not been her before. The ground has shifted under my feet. Security is gone. I am not sure how this will play out, but I am pretty sure the new Amy has an edge about her. She is tougher in some ways, with a fierceness and a fight in her. Yet she is weaker and more vulnerable at the same time. Grief is among her, and sometimes it cries loudly and is clearly visible. And sometimes, the grief wimpers softly underneath the surface of life going on as if nothing happened. But the one constant is grief. It’s just part of me now. I am not the same, and that is ok. It has to be.

As I walk through this season of life alone, after parents, I often think of people I knew in high school or college that lost their parents early in their lives. I think of tragic deaths and loss and how so many people were growing through grieving. I think of parents who have lost children, friends who have lost spouses or mothers when they were younger. I remember the tragic losses of whole families in car wrecks, young mothers losing babies and so much loss for so many people. No one really talks about how different you are, how in the loss of others you lose part of yourself. I wonder if people know. Are they aware of how different they are pre-grief and post?

I don’t know if it’s my age or the death of my parents or loss of jobs or just loss of my identity because of the former, but I Am Different. I feel it in my reactions and my thought processes and deep in my veins. I don’t know if it’s just “Mother Death” or any death, but grief changes you. If I think back to when my mother’s mother died, I saw a shift in my mom. She was different than she had been before. Also, when her first brother died, she changed too. She was always a little sadder than she had been before. She was also calmer, quieter. I’m not exactly sure I recognized it as grief at the time, but something changed. I think maybe it’s the loss of innocence after great loss that becomes so evident. Bad things happen. When Mom had her stroke, I believe it was a response to losing her sister and my daddy. I think her grief had nowhere else to go. She had lost 5 of her siblings, her parents and my daddy. She was grieving heavily. Some sort of barrier comes up in grief. It has to. There is a lot of research that supports a direct correlation of neurological changes as a result of grief. I myself have noticed memory loss, attention deficits, emotional outbursts and extreme exhaustion, I also just can’t deal with people like I used to. Even the way I relate to my closest friends is different. I am different. Great loss is like a flood. It wipes everything away.

Something has to take its place.

I am not saying that there is nothing to look forward to or that hope is gone after great loss. A clean slate is always good in one way or another. I am not sure everyone would say that. Loss is definitely painful and even earth shattering for some. This great flood is hard to come back from. But, aren’t mercies new every morning? Isn’t hope always on the horizon? Loss though, moves in places that have never been opened up before. You aren’t sure what the terrain will be like after the gushing stops, and that’s a little frightening. Who will I be once it all settles? It’s as if rain comes into a desert or a place where there had never been rain before. Think of canyons forming where water used to be. It’s beautiful, but definitely different landscape. It saturates and shifts the ground that once stood. Where there was wetland, now has dry crevices and caverns. Wet becomes dry and hot becomes cold and everything changes. The environment automatically changes in response to the shift. Time and rest must allow for the dust to settle, for the environment to adapt.

As the neural pathways are figuring out their new routes, we must allow ourselves time to renew and grow.

I do not think there was another human that I was as close to as my mother. I am not sure if that is a bad thing or a good thing. I have a million friends, and I am close to each of them. I am so grateful for their love, companionship and steadfastness, but they are not Mama. We talked every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. We saw each other most days, spent most holidays together. We were friends. We agreed on most things and on the things we didn’t we could teach each other a new way of thinking. She was a constant in my life, no matter what. I lost my father too and I am definitely grieving him too, but the loss of Mama probably did the most change to me, the most shifting. I am still processing it all. I am still in grief. Maybe I always will be. It’s sad and devastating, and I am not the same. I do not want to be the same. I don’t really want to see who I am without her, but I must. It’s part of the love. We have many soulmates in our lifetime, and my mommy was one of mine. Were we enmeshed? Was it unhealthy? Too much? I’m not sure, but I am thankful for it, for her, regardless. She taught me so many things. I still hear her voice, especially in the kitchen and in the garden. Those two places have new meaning for me. I find myself in both a lot. I can hear her voice there.

Perfect, my mother was not, and I can tell you all of the things she did wrong, but the good? The good was so good. She could say my name differently than anyone else. There was love and softness and humor in the way she said it. She could look at me, and we both knew what she was thinking. We used to say the same things at the same times. Mom used to say we were telepathic with one another. She smiled so big when she said that. She loved me differently than anyone else, and it was unconditional. She was funny, smart and just cool in ways most people are not. She was openminded, independent and loved my daddy fiercely. She loved dogs and her friends and family; and some of them were really hard to love. She was a lover of people with disabilities. She could see through most of societal bullshit and was just real. And she loved ME—probably more than any other human out there ever has. That love is still a part of me. I get to hold onto that. I miss my dad too, and his love lingers as well; but I think I grieve Mama differently. I’ve heard from others in the “dead mothers club” that losing a mom is just different. Mothers did carry us in the womb, after all. We were physically inside of them. We were part of them. There’s a bond like no other. Research and scientific evidence support this bond and demonstrate it in a million ways. I don’ t need proof. I lived it. I am living it. The bond is special. How amazing that I got to experience that bond and this grief? It is my expression of that love. And yes, my neural pathways are different. I am different.

Grief is really difficult to navigate. It’s weird and sad and mean and soft and bold and big and a million other adjectives all happening while you must live your life as if nothing has happened. It is unchartered territory, and that is scary. The person who usually supported me through other sadnesses and hard times is the one I am grieving. It’s almost hard to believe that it’s real. The whole world has shifted. The support is gone. There is no way around this grief. It’s just part of me now. It hurts and it is hard, and no one gets it exactly like you. No one can be inside of it with you. You are as alone as you will ever be in this grief.

You can’t get stuck in this grief though. It should always be moving. The canyon can’t just sit empty. That’s when grief gets unhealthy. I do not want that. I have seen that in others. They can’t move on. That’s when grief consumes and destroys. You should always be checking inside of grief to make sure you are moving forward. It’s not always easy, but necessary.

Life must go on. You have a purpose here. You can’t let grief take you, too.

I am a believer in Jesus, and he is right beside me in this grief. He is my friend and comforter and all the things He is supposed to be. It is as real a relationship as any other in my life and the most important. But I am still alone in my grief, in the human sense. I am not alone in the spiritual sense. It is not hopeless. It is necessary. That loneliness and loss is mine to carry, mine to surrender or mine to be stuck in. I get to choose. I can wear it, revel in it or just toss it out in my anger or tears. But, it is MINE. It’s all that I have left from those very important relationships, so I get to choose what I will do with it.

I have always considered myself a bit of a drifter. I drift in and out. My entire life, I have left home, ventured off and eventually returned back to base. Base for me is New Albany, Mississippi. It’s home. My parents grew up here. I grew up here. We have a huge family, and so many members of my family are part of this community or have been at one point or another. I first left “The Sip”, as it is affectionally known, at fifteen and continued that boomeranging life, for many years. I have lived in 10 states, traveled extensively and somehow always returned back home to Mississippi. (cue up Afroman —great song about Mississippi ha ha). I live in the house my uncle lived in and remodeled. His craftsmanship surrounds me as does furniture from my childhood. I have my Daddy’s piano, my mother’s and aunt’s furniture, my grandmothers’ jewelry and many other pictures, antiques and things of old. I love being surrounded by their things. I find myself a bit of the curator of the family now. I am the keeper of the things and that helps me with my grief. I like being the home base now. My brother stopped by yesterday with my sister in law. We laughed and talked but also acknowledged our grief. We are parentless, now. We did not say that, but we look at each other differently. We hug differently. My brothers and me—we are the only ones that lost that mother. We are without an anchor, so we all drift now, bumping into one another from time to time. We are not the same nor should we be. If a life really matters, then when it’s gone, the people that are left behind should change. The hope is that the change will be good and fruitful. I think you have to put effort into making that happen.

There are so many people out here in the world who are hurting right now. People are always grieving. People have lost children, parents, spouses and pets. Loss is loss, and it hurts deeply. Grief changes you. Loss changes you. It has to if relationships ever meant anything at all. I wish we could wear badges acknowledging our grief, like soldiers. Maybe we would be kinder, gentler towards one another if we knew what people had lost.

I met a woman one time who had lost her son and her husband tragically. One was murdered and one died of suicide. She told me how different she was since their deaths, but more importantly her one goal now on this earth was to maintain peace. She said she would not let anything take her peace. I sort of get that now.

Calm and peace is what I crave more than anything else, and that’s new for me.

I am one of those people who tries to find the good in everything. I really do. I want to see the good in the losses, the lessons in the failures. It’s there. I know it. God promises all good things to those that love Him. I know there is good. There are so many things to look forward to and in the present, God is here. I am not stuck in a state of sadness and despair. I have so many plans, and God does too, but it is ok to acknowledge the murkiness of the grief. It’s ok to admit the loss, the change, the hole that is left.

I find myself a little less funny than I used to be. I find myself a little more cynical, more quiet and a little more sad. I think I move slower too. I definitely think more slowly. I prefer being alone a lot. I have made some mistakes in my grief. That is for sure. I have used substances to escape. I have acted out and have hurt others. I have support though and people to call me out. I have therapy and exercise and lots of love in my life. But no one can really help, and I don’ t really want them to. This is my grief. It’s my loss. Occasionally, I want someone to listen or to be there, but mostly, it’s just me. Me and Jesus. I hope you have that too. There are a few out there who are going through the same loss at the same time as me. They help more than anyone. It’s always good to find those that have been through the same thing as you. Empathy helps you heal.

Grief awakens an awareness. People and stuff just don’t matter as much as they used to. I think that is a good thing. Everything ends and everything is fleeting, and I am more aware of it than I have ever been. Life is but a vapor. One minute you are here fighting for your future and the next, you do not have a future. It’s gone. And you have to have a new future or no future at all. All you have is right now. If you don’t get that, then you have not experienced great loss. You will though, unless you are a sociopath.

Part of the true human experience is loss. It just is.

Parental loss is supposedly a normal part of the human experience. It’s sad and hard and real but also normal. Child loss or spousal loss, I can’t speak to, but I know that loss has to be earth-shattering and devastating in ways I can’t imagine. I can only speak to parental loss. I read an article the other day that said that a large percentage of Americans are estranged from their parents. There was a time that I had to separate from my parents and find healing from childhood issues. No one parents perfectly, and we all have issues we are working out. Any therapist can tell you, most issues go back to those core relationships with your mom and pop. My parents were not perfect, and even up until the end there were issues. We are human after all. The good thing for me though, was that I was able to live near them and be with them the last 10 years of their life. We had found forgiveness and healing and were able to be in each others lives on a daily basis. It was wonderful, and I was grateful every day for that. I had drifted back to home base, and I was able to be an adult with my parents. I have no regrets. I was able to say everything I wanted to say, and most importantly, I know that they knew Jesus. To me, that means this journey is not over, and I will see them again. Their spirits live on; they are healed and whole and surrounded by so much love. They continue to do work with the saints and their heavenly father who loves them more than we can imagine. And I will get that too, all because of Jesus. So, this human will grieve and their spirits will soar. I will allow grief to do it’s thing and create the new me. I will also allow God to come into those broken places and make me who He wants me to be. It is certainly not easy. For people who are estranged from their parents or for those that do not know Christ, I do not know that pain. i do not know how to heal from that. What I do know is that love and forgiveness are always the answer to healing, and without Jesus I would not have that. It’s just true.

I have learned some things about grief for this human body. First, alcohol and drugs, unhealthy food and spending are probably not the best things for grief. You probably already knew that, but I learned the hard way. The brain chemistry is already messed up. Adding things to it surely doesn’t help. Addiction is an escape and sure wants to prey on the grieving brain. Be careful with that. Thankfully, I only made a fool out of myself once, well maybe twice during this grief season. Too many drugs, too much alcohol mixed with a grieving brain—-Not Good. I am still trying to figure out if my mistakes are salvageable. I guess time will tell. We all make mistakes. Give yourself grace even if others don’t. People are all working out their own issues, and they can hurt you; and they will. When you are grieving, your defenses are down in some ways, and attacks come at you when least expected. In other ways, your guard is up; and you are ready to fight. You have nothing left to lose, so you can fight for yourself and what you have left. It’s survival at its finest. I have had to block a lot of people on social media and in real life. I have had to put up some barriers. I have had to make my world a lot smaller. It helps so much.

The first thing and most important thing to do in loss is to make space for yourself to grieve. It’s ok to resign from clubs, not volunteer and be less social. It’s ok to have space and a lot of it. It’s a must, really. Sleep and rest are necessary. Water is too. Less input is necessary. I had to get out of some group texts and stop talking to certain friends. I have had to reduce social media and social contact. I have had to reduce substance use and increase exercise. I can’t take too much noise or chaos. Less is more. I go to bed early. I try to cook and prepare meals as healthily as I can. I try to spend less. Taking care of myself is on a whole new level. Every single day, I must do something to care for myself physically, mentally and spiritually. Prayer, reading, writing and listening to music in a quiet space are helpful. I have moved my furniture and set up little nooks for spaces of rest and reflection. Naps and sunlight are crucial. Taking care of my animals and plants on a routine basis is healthy for me. I make sure to go to therapy, bible study or a support group of some sort. I do not isolate, but I am alone a lot. I make sure to reach out, but remain calm. I set boundaries in a new way. I try to be honest and sincere. If I need to cry, I cry. I do it alone. I don’t panic. I just allow myself to feel it. I have to. I know it’s healthy because it moves. I don’t stay in it. Occasionally, I will allow myself a “nightgown” day. I get to stay in my PJs and sleep or watch TV or read or write or sit outside. I don’ t HAVE to do anything that I don’ t want to do on “nightgown days”. I pay attention to my moods. If I feel stuck or down for too long or manic or high for too long, I make sure to reach out or find ways to help me return to calm. I try to take care of things in the here and now: clean a room, water flowers, take a walk, rest, stretch. I don’t plan more than 2 or 3 things a day. More than that brings anxiety. During heavy working days, I have to reduce talking to friends or socializing. I used to be like an octopus. I could do a million things in a day and not even think about it. That is not the case now. If I feel anxiety or stress rising up, I must reduce tasks. It’s imperative to my mental and physical health. I am thankful that I know that.

Grief is a sacred time. It’s ok to be in it as long as you need to, but also be cognizant of it’s movement, allowing yourself space to grow. It can’t be a place of pity and self-obsession and sorrow. It must be a space of renewal and eventually rebirth. I have started going to a new church. I have had surgery on an old injury and allowed myself time to recover. I have allowed help, but careful about who those helpers are. I reach out to people when they are on my heart. I try not to overdo it with anything. I go to physical therapy and started a new exercise class. I am trying to learn to cook in a different way and am trying to start a new side gig for work. I am streamlining my goals so that I can stay focused. I don’ t want too much going on. I need life to be simple but full of joy. My therapist and Jesus help with that. I have some trips planned for later in the summer and fall. Right now, I have 5 trips planned. That feels chaotic. I will need to cut that down until it feels calm. I will pray. I will write. I will seek guidance.

I will continue on this journey of grief as long as it takes. Maybe grief will always be a part of me in some way. I talked to my baby brother the other day about some bill we had for our mother that came up, and neither of us got sad. It was more of a business call. That conversation felt like growth in some ways. There was a waive of sadness after the call, but it flew by like a little bird. It did not linger, and that was good. We both moved about our days with gladness and purpose, as Mama would want.

It is ok for grief to be part of you. It is ok for grief to sing its little song whether loudly or softly in the background. It's ok to talk about it or not. It’s ok to be alone, to write, to cry and to feel. I am in year 2 with Mama and year five with Daddy on the grief train. I can’t tell you what the other years will look like. There have been some rocky days this past year. I was scared that I wouldn’t get my regular mind back. I am not scared of that anymore. I don’t want it back. I accept this new mind and body. I want this renewal with God’s help and Mama (and Daddy’s) love tucked away spurring me on. That seems healthy to me. Grief is part of my life now. I will forever be changed with battle scars to prove it. That’s the price of love. I allow this grief. I allow this space. I allow this growth.

I am a different Amy now, and that’s ok. It has to be.