I said that grief, to me, is nothing like the clichés people repeat and believe. People say that grief is so intense, one could barely function during the first weeks or months. That scared me off, but it did not turn out te be like that for me.
"It will be so raw and hard during the first months, until you learn to live with that pain".
No, it's not raw to me. My days are not scattered with sadness and grief. I am not depressed, sinister, I don't appreciate people coming up to me to tell me that grief should equal being in a dark state of mind. I am not- and that is just not like me. I do resent my life, but I am not a dark, isolating, emotionally unstable person. It would be unnatural for me to sit in sadness. And I don't even have social support!
I have no family, I have no network of people who provide emotional support. Even in this enduring loneliness, I stand my ground. I noticed that people tend to find that shocking. It
seems quite shocking to people that someone who has never had any
support from anyone, even not after actively requesting professional
assistance for these difficult medical cases, can stand her own ground.
It is just me, alone. I do hate that. I wish I had a man to be there during some of these very lonely times. Often I feel terrible waking up at night, having no man to put my arms around and pull him close to me. I wish I had a family. No one has to tell me how to be happy as a single just because they are unhappy in a relationship. In the days when I did not know where to go, when my mother had just become bedbound in the hospital, I wish I did have a man close to me. The first weeks of 2023 were actually the most gruesome days to be completely alone. I did reach out to people, including other visitors, to no avail. It was each to their own.
Most of all, I really resent, I hate people for having let down my mother. I hate her so-called friends, who let her down so hard, for the fact that I was the only one who last saw my mother's body in her coffin. I cried so hard out of pure compassion for her.
It has been the most devastating that she and I were all alone in this. Someone who was always genuine, warm, positive, optimistic, full of energy. My mother would not let anyone down. She would make a promise and keep it. She would do nothing behind someone's back. Being genuine seems to be rare. She did not deserve to be let down. I can show lots of people that don't even deserve to have friends. She did. She was kind-spirited. But those friends did not want to be confronted with what cancer amounts to.
They started avoiding my mother when she was disease-free for the fear of having to bring up the topic of cancer. Screw that. My mother never talked about cancer, she never complained, she was never even the least bit of tired. Probably her friends found it even the more confronting that someone who has had cancer three times, maintained such a level of energy and positivity. She cycled 18 miles, three times a week, without the aid of an E-bike. We did not have a car. She was physically extemely inexhaustible. It might seem odd, but that scared people off too.
Grief is in small I miss her- and it shows in these ways
Missing someone is a phenomenon in itself. No cliché does justice to what missing her feels like.
I want to talk to her everyday. When I return home, I can't ever share something with her anymore. I cannot buy her something that she would have loved and share it with her. I enjoyed sharing. I was not born to make her happy, I enjoyed to see her happy myself. Our family life was what I appreciated much. The complexity of missing her is that I can all of a sudden miss arguing over a minor topic, as well as having to take care of her. I feel like she should walk beside me. I feel it's absurd that she was ripped away from the life she loved, this way.
I often relive the first weeks of January 2023, when I had to take care of her intensively in the hospital. Taking care of her was never a burden. If I had to, I would want to care for her all over again. Sometimes I want to go back to the hospital, wishing I could still visit her in her hospital room. We made the best out of the worst situation.
I very often am reminded of the months following her first lung cancer treatment, years ago. That was when I graduated from Law School. I was working on my thesis the night she was checked into the hospital for her lobectomy. For me, special feelings are attached to that time. I initially felt resentment over the diagnosis. It felt so wrong. I was bitten with bitterness. But her lobectomy went so well and my mother was in such a good condition, that she was discharged from the hospital within one day (!). I embrace that year in which she was diagnosed with lung cancer, as I loved guarding her, taking care of her and seeing her recover within such a short time-frame. I would do that all over if I had to. I have repeatedly told her that I would have done anything for her.
I loved trying to do my best to help her recover. It worked out so well. I think it's so wrong that she was physically in such a good condition, her immune system had been so strong over the years, only to end up like this.
Humans try to make sense. But there is no point in seeing loved ones dying from cancer, other than that it is mostly due to factors out of our reach, like (epi)genetic errors. In trying to make sense, feelings of justice are lost. Hence is why I tried to let go of adjusting any meaning to what happened. It should all be detached from my sense of justice. It is just what it is.
It is crazy how it works. That I am still here when I have literally no one but myself. It is haunting me that my mother's former friends have let her down so hard in the way that I was the only one attending my mother's service. People really liked her, it wasn't that she was the one who shut other people off. On the contrary. She had a very open and pleasant personality, that was what was noted in the hospital and palliative unit immediately.
Very specific topics are hurtful to me.
It is knowing that the people I will meet in the nearby future, will never know what she was like.
It is springtime, something she was really looking forward to.
It is in realizing that our family line and legacy dies with me. She had a great personality. If I would want to pass anything on, it is her positive, resilient character and I am not even idealizing her traits. She was like that and a rather positive personality seems to be so rare.
(I have no children, I have no boyfriend or husband and I would not even think of procreation without the presence of a man I like so wholeheartedly that I would want him to be the father of my offspring).
