Grief Revisited

Each year brings more insights and growth. Just when you think you really understand something, you encounter new perspectives. For example, I have considered myself someone who understands the grief process. I've worked for many years helping others work through their losses. I've had some significant losses myself (brother's death at an early age, father's death, sister-in-law's premature death, and some very dear friends)and I've managed to work these through.

I was very close to my father and his death when I was just 36 was devastating. It took me three years to begin to integrate that loss. I was lucky to have had a wonderfully close and meaningful relationship with my father. I was not as close to my mother and really didn't get to know her until after my father's death. I sometimes think that if he had not died, I might never have gotten to know my mother the way I did in the years since his death. And, then, it took lots of time and required both she and I to open to each other in a new way.

So, at some level, I always imagined that when my mother died, I would be better able to cope. After all, she lived to 92! And yet, her sudden death last summer has deeply affected me. I think about her all the time and just cannot believe that she is no longer on the planet. Now, I do feel her presence and I do believe that she is with me, but that just isn't enough. As I told a friend this evening, I think about her more since she died than I did when she was living. The loss is painfully acute. Maybe this is because I was not close to her for more than half my life.

We lived in separate cities, she in New York and I in Miami. We only saw each other about six times a year, but we spoke at least once a week, we emailed, and we had just reached the point of comfort to profess our feelings about each other. I have no problem expressing love to most of my dear ones, but with her, because she was not one of those who ended phone conversations with an I love you, it was difficult for me to tell her how much she meant to me. She did tell me in an email last year that she loved me very much. That meant the world to me.

I wasn't one bit ready to have her die. Isn't that so often the truth? I have always said that the deaths of those with whom we've had complicated relationships are the hardest. And now, the truth of that is so poignantly with me.