Thinking about grief these days and how I have changed through my life. The loss of my grandfather when I was eight was extremely sad for me. I was too young to truly understand but old enough to know that he had died and I was there when he was buried. I saw his open coffin and said goodbye to him but inside I still wanted him to be alive. I grieved him for awhile; perhaps until the next summer when I discovered that if I still did the things that we had done together he still felt close to me because it was the summer when we spent a lot of time together. My grief at his loss was replaced by an awareness of the spirit of my grandfather.
I was twenty one when my grandmother died and married about eight months at the time. I had gone to see her every night at the hospital after her stroke and the night that she died I had been sitting with her and talking to her and her fingers moved and touched mine. I still wonder if I moved mine but I think it was her actually even yet. I was nervous to touch her but then I held her hand for a very long time. She died at 4:00 a.m. that night and it was an eerie thing that I had woken up right at 4:00 because I thought I could hear someone calling my name. She said Elizabeth with a Birmingham (Brum) accent and I had awoken from a deep sleep. The grief was great but the happening was greater as I just felt as if she was with me now all the time. I learned to live my life with the thought of her being near me but gradually it was only when I was alone that I felt her close.
I was 53 when my father and oldest brother died and perhaps it was not knowing that my oldest brother was ill until just before he died even though my mother wrote to me often she just never told me until the end was near. My father was 94 and had had a bout of influenza and was not recovering so I did realize that he might not live much longer. We had driven back in early December so that I could visit with my eldest brother and then just on a hunch we went back once again the weekend before my father died in late December. Then my brother died in early January. It was crushing for me at that time to lose them both and yet I was never as close to them as I had been to my two grandparents. Looking back I learned a lot about grief; it is a strange process. The more you grieve at the time of the happening the sooner that you can reach that plateau where they are just there in your mind as you want to remember them. The priest that gave his Eulogy did such a wonderful job; for reasons I do not share with my blog I was overwhelmed to hear someone say so many wonderful things about my Dad. It was a wonderful experience although the grief took a firm hold for a while until I was able to move on from it.
I was 57 when my mother died. I had been to see her in the hospital two weeks earlier and she was so frail (she was almost 85 and a half years old). We chatted for hours although she fell asleep a number of times and was surprised to still see me there when she awoke. As a child I was always rather frightened of her and we never really became close until after my children were born. By then we lived 8 hours away and I did not see her all that often. However, I had a chance to see how she had changed from the mother I knew as a child (she was very well organized and hard working as one might expect with seven children!). With her first grandchild (my older sister's daughter) she was thrilled to be a grandmother but as each new grandchild arrived she became more grandmotherish and my daughters quite adored her. I saw her through their eyes and became closer to her as well. It was sad to have her pass but she was so frail that I wondered how she would ever manage to do the things that she likes to do. My uncle almost immediately took over and called me; wrote to me and asked me to come and so he filled that grief time with memories of how much I had enjoyed having him as an uncle. He passed just a year later and I grieved him too but I was learning to grieve now and I had his wonderful letters and the time that we had spent talking that just seemed to carry me through all of that.
Now I am 75 when my second oldest brother has just passed. He was unwell and the last time I talked to him he was struggling to keep the conversation going. It was too much for him really so I talked about our mutual interest in DNA for a few minutes and then we said goodbye. Hard to believe it was just a few weeks earlier but I was not surprised when my sister called to let me know that he was not doing well and then he passed that evening. I grieve him but he is in a better place; he is with our parents whom he loved deeply.
But as I have aged beyond 60 I have changed. It is really our duty to do the best that we can with our lives; live the fullest life that we can and to carry the memories of our siblings, parents and grandparents with us. I am so glad that I have written the stories of my parents and grandparents where I knew them (two of my grandparents died before I was born).
I am about to embark on another course that is offered to Patient Partners. I shall do this in memory of Doug as he certainly suffered a lot of medical difficulties since he had his first heart attack at 39 years of age. Although we grieve in old age we understand the ability of the body to survive or not survive as time passes.
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