Grief Counseling

My trainer was late today, so I had a chance to talk with his boss. I told him my mother died yesterday. He expressed his condolences, and he told me his mother had died when he was 12.

He said, "It doesn't matter what age your mother dies. It's a rough thing."

He said, "You gotta mourn. What ya gotta do is, go somewhere, get quiet, have a big cry, get it out. Getting it out is the most important thing. Once you get it out, you're OK."

He said, "You'll find out that you'll hear her talking to you for the rest of your life. Things she said that, at the time, you thought went in one ear and out the other, will just pop into your head. You'll hear her say, 'The grass may look greener on the other side, but it still has weeds in it!' Silly stuff like that. You'll hear her voice. She'll be with you."

He said, "You only have one mother. Everybody does. But it's true..."

I was touched. He didn't know who I was nor what I'd done, and he spoke to me as if I were a real person, man-to-man, but with feeling, with compassion. It was truly comforting.

...It's nearly 24 hours later now, since I heard from my Dad. It is a strange experience, this, neither like nor unlike what I'd expected. It is full of paradoxes: I'd planned to go to PA next week in part because I knew my mother was failing, but also somewhat anticipating that it'd be a good week for a funeral. So in that way, in a world in which there can be no planning, everything is going as planned.

Also, even my sister and my father, who were with her when she died, had no sense that it was coming at that moment, until it happened. True, Mom had had a weekend in which she'd been coughing, and might have had pneumonia. Not having been placed back on hospice, my mother had to refuse to be sent back to the hospital on Sunday night; thankfully, the SNF personnel complied. Yet in the time since Sunday, Mom rested more comfortably. And over the course of the day she died, she slept almost continuously, waking mostly when the SNF personnel were ready to serve her, first lunch, then dinner.

Was being awakened a bad thing? Most likely would not have happened on hospice. But in this case, my mother woke in order to be served dinner. (Lunch had been her first meal that she had not fed herself; Dad fed her chicken noodle soup, in which mother was not much interested.) While awakened, she sorted through some mail, which included a note from my daughter and pictures of their family, especially the newest one, Elizabeth. Mom made a special place for Elizabeth's picture on her side table. There was light conversation. Mom was awake and aware.

Then, she began coughing and looked to be a bit stressed. My sister and father found their places on either side of her bed, Dad at the left, Sue at the right; they held hands. They formed what I call a "prayer circle." Then Mom died. Just that simply, and in a way, that swiftly. She left.

By now, I'm sure she's begun her singing lessons, for she wanted nothing more than to be a Singing Angel.

...For my sister and my father, at her side when suddenly she was "lifted up," it was a stunning experience-- anticipated, yet not expected. I might say more about that, sometime.

But for me, here, across the country, it has been, well, a little surreal.

I have often said that when one of our loved ones dies, the world as we knew it is suddenly gone with them, and we are living in a new world that looks an awful lot like the world as we knew it to be, but is actually totally different. I've often said, as we mourn, as we work through the grief that we feel, we discover just how different this "new" world is.

Well, I was driving when I heard my father's voice tell me that my mother had died. Thankfully, I was soon stopped, at a light. But when the light turned green, and my car started forward, I could already feel the world was different. Was there a different sun in the sky, a different light in the air? Was it that the car seemed to drive differently? I went through the motions of doing what I had to do to get home, mosly numb, and aware that I was numb. That's part of the unreality of acute grief: I was aware that I was not feeling everything I was feeling! I was just trying to keep it together until I was safely home...

This AM, I was still sleep-walking to workout. I had no heart for living, no heart for engaging in this life. Now that it is afternoon, I'm "better." For me that means I have begun to feel my body again. I've begun to adjust to living in this world without my mother...

...One of the other things the head trainer said to me had to do with values. He said something to the effect that I'd learn just to what extent my mother's values influenced the choices I'd made in living in this world.

This a funny thing, too. Although I'd realized that my parents' religiosity and the fact that my mother's father was a preacher had had their influence on my life and my choices, I'd never really considered that I became a minister because of my mother and her values.

But now, in the year of her dying and death, I am facing a deep challenge to my credentials as a pastor-- the organizational sanctions that allow me to claim that to be my profession. This goes toward my present "identity crisis:" I've often said, that when we experience a loss we are faced with the challenge of re-discovering ourselves-- who we are and who we are to be, in this "new," post-loss world. Well, with job loss throwing me into professional transition, and mother loss throwing me into personal transition, I can now, for the first time, ask myself: Who are you, in this world without your mother? And: Who are you to be, in this "new" world?

In a radical sense, am I to be a minister any more? Am I to be a pastor or a chaplain? Am I to have religious ties, to denominations and congregations and the like? As important as they were, how important are all of those credentials to me--now?

Of course, I cannot yet say. But since this year seems to be one of The Great Stripping Away, a year of Being Laid Bare, a year of Great Change, I cannot help but wonder and marvel at the meaning of the coincidence of my present changes and challenges.

...Meanwhile, I am grateful for the responses of many, who are uniformly comforting and compassionate. I feel I must face my own life's challenges as all of us must, myself. But unlike many, maybe, I do not feel that I have to face my own life's challenges alone.

I am grateful for all of you who walk this winding path with me.