I’ve been home from NC for a couple of days and I can feel a screaming hissy fit of grief just waiting in the wings for its time to come. Grief is hard. Grief is malleable. This grief is different from the grief I felt with my father. I got to say good-bye to Dad over Memorial Day weekend 2019 and though he didn’t die until Aug 19, 2019, I mourned my loss that whole time.
Mom’s death was different. Yes, there were signs that she’d been slowing down since the beginning of the year—too tired to talk for long and arthritis preventing her from typing. But she had fifteen days from the time she told my sister she was in pain to the time of her death. In that fifteen days, she spent seven of them in the hospital, six of them at home, and then a final two days (really more like one-and-a-half) in the hospital. Hospice got mentioned, but before the morning came, Mom was gone.
As much as I miss my Mom, I am thankful she spent much less time in pain than my father did and she passed away peacefully in her sleep.
Now, we are left with Mom’s estate and all the responsibilities therein. All I can say is that I’m so grateful that my parents sat all the kids (no spouses) down at a reunion about ten years ago and told us what their end of life plans were. What they wanted, who the executor was, what they didn’t want, which funeral home they’d already bought a plan with for a cremation and ashes scattered. They had everything set up and laid out. Neither of them was sick or even hurting at the time, but both were in their mid-60s and had the lay of the land. And I am so thankful. There was no fighting amongst the siblings. All of us knew what was what because of this past conversation. It made one thing (in an ocean of things) easier.
But I’ve got to tell you, going through Mom’s house and trying to decide what to take and what to auction off was an emotional roller-coaster. How could saying “No” to something feel like a betrayal while at the same time, saying “Yes” to something else felt like stealing from my mother? And yet, both were true.
We made the family decision that family pictures not chosen by any of the family members were going to be destroyed. We did not want our personal memories turned into stock photos and idle curiosities for the future. That meant we had to take all the photos out of the frames in anticipation of the estate auctioneers who would be coming by the next week. What we were left with was the perfect metaphor for the holes in our lives now that both parents were gone. Yes, someday those holes will become windows to our memories but for now…they hurt.
There is so much left to do and most of it falls on my sister’s shoulders. She’s the executor and she lives in the area. The estate lawyer is good and kind (and was very surprised at my parents’ foresight and forethought, taking care of their own funeral plans), but it is all still very complicated. Even though my sister and I spent a concentrated 2.5 weeks back in November 2019 decluttering the house and then she spent much of 2020 continuing to help improve/paint/redecorate the house.
The most poignant for me was the guest room the Husband and I stayed in, She created that for me and my brother and our spouses. It was beautiful. I’m still so sad I wasn’t able to stay there while she was still alive.
I’m going to end this now because I’ve lost the thread of my thoughts just looking at that picture. That happens so often these days. Grief overwhelms and I lose myself to it.
