Grief is a bitch

Life update.  I decided to extend my bereavement from 3 days through the end of the week in order for me to take the necessary time I need to heal.  This year has been a year of death.  Actually, since I moved back to California, I feel there’s been a death cloud following me.  So many people, just gone.  I didn’t process the first one which started the cycle of not being able to process the next, and the next, and the next. 

It’s a roller coaster of emotion that I still can’t figure out how to express.  In so many cases, I’m supposed to be the rock.  Like at grandmas funeral, I was the one to speak on behalf of everyone as they didn’t feel they would make it through.  For some of my friends who have passed, I’ve made sure to comfort the person who reached out to share the awful news; making sure they also have a place to turn to as it’s difficult to be the messenger.  I wanted to make sure that they too had a place to turn to talk and reminisce.

In my dads case, I was his only child and he wasn’t married.  So when I heard the officer in the background through the phone tell my dads friend, “I’m sorry about your friend”, I knew right then, he was gone and there wasn’t time for me to fall apart.  I needed to shelf my feelings and plan a funeral.  Everything in my head was moving at lightning speed.  I had to have his apartment cleaned out in two weeks, his storage cleared in three, I had to get to DTLA to the morgue to collect his belongings, drive out to San Bernardino to coordinate his cremation, then to Riverside to figure out his burial services, then to Long Beach to get his death certificate, all the while, I was making calls to alert people what had happened.  

Everything was a blur.  There was no time to think, I had to just keep moving.  It’s incredible to think when a child is born they get a birth certificate and I suppose you get them a social security card.  To shut down someone’s existence, especially when they didn’t have a will is incredibly difficult.  It’s like looking for something but not being able to thoroughly describe it.  You hope you’re starting in the right place and you have no idea if you’ve left any detail out.  

The whole process was nuts.  I personally didn’t have time to talk to anyone about how I was feeling, let alone try to construct words that explain how I feel so people would know how to help me.  I was so overwhelmed and confused and angry but I didn’t have time to process.  There was so much pressure to meet deadlines and even more pressure to tell people what I needed.  I got to listen to stories about him and while that was great and I learned a lot, deep down, I too was needing to talk.  While all of this was happening, I had just landed a new job and so as soon as his funeral ended, the paperwork was processed, accounts were closed and units were cleaned out, I was off to a new adventure.  Literally, in air off to San Francisco and then New York to meet my boss.  I had to redirect my attention and try to do it enthusiastically all while being emotionally overloaded.  

As the years have gone on, more and more people passed and the initial set of grief that I never addressed continued to be compacted by more and more layers of unaddressed grief.  But now, the death of Uncle D.  It feels so different.  There was a decision to not have a funeral, I wasn’t responsible for cleaning out his stuff or closing out his accounts.  My mom was camping with my step dad and my aunt, while now alone, seemed to be keeping busy.  

This was the first time I was able to sit alone with my thoughts. Instead of shoving down another set of feelings I wasn’t going to address, this time they was staring right back at me.  I’m still struggling to pinpoint the right words or dig up more feelings that make any bit of sense but I’m taking each one as they come and am giving them the deserving attention needed.  The hope is that while this philosophy may be an unorthodox approach, I figure it’s more than I’ve done in 8 years.  It can’t hurt. It brings me peace knowing that Uncle D would not only approve but would expect me to spend whatever amount of time necessary focusing on bettering myself.  What better way to honor him.