A special welcome to anyone who is new to The Grieving Room. We meet every Monday evening. Whether your loss is recent or many years ago, whether you have lost a person or a pet, or even if the person you are "mourning" is still alive ("pre-grief" can be a very lonely and confusing time) you can come to this diary and process your grieving in whatever way works for you. Share whatever you need to share. We can't solve each other's problems, but we can be a sounding board and a place of connection.
As some of you may know, the past couple of years or so have been very difficult for me and my family. Actually, it goes back a bit further than that - several family members and friends left us in the past several years. As far back as June of 2007, news began to trickle in of far-flung family and friends shuffling off this mortal coil. A favorite Uncle, an old friend of the family, even pets... the losses were sad but far enough apart (both in time and distance) that we were able to deal with it.
Follow me over the orange squiggle and I'll tell you about it....
Then, in January of 2009, we received word that my husband's best friend (since they were kids in elementary school) had fallen ill while in Hawai'i. He was being hospitalized in Honolulu. Nobody could figure out why. After a couple of weeks, they decided that he was okay to be moved back home to Las Vegas (he and his family did live up here for several years... I often wonder if it would have made a difference if they had stayed up here). But he had to be hospitalized again and was in and out of the hospital with nobody really knowing what was making him sick.
In mid-February, my husband decided to fly down there to be with him. That was, of course, as it should be. While Hubby's friend and I were good friends (we loved the same man, after all) my husband was his Brother from another Mother, as they say. They grew up together, best buddies in the psycho 70's. They shared music and mayhem, somehow surviving it all. When I re-entered the picture (Hubby and I had met in 7th grade), they were room mates. He and I were... frenemies on the political front: I, the Democrat and he the Republican (fiscally, anyway) and we debated often. But outside of that, we got on quite well. He was a fun - and funny - guy. We shared a love of music and very often went to concerts together, the three of us. We shared similar taste in comedy, from Carlin to Mel Brooks to the Zucker brothers. Many a night the three of us would smoke a bowl and watch a funny movie. MANY a night.
When he met his wife, we were so happy for him. It was great to see him finally find "the one" and settle down (I was even blessed to perform their wedding ceremony). He loved her child from a previous marriage like she was his own and when their daughter came along, we never saw him happier. When they decided to move back to Vegas to be closer to the Main Office of the company both worked for (that's how they met), we were very sad. Then, he got sick. It turned out to be lymphoma. If they had caught it in time, maybe it could have been treated but...
So, my husband went to him. The night he arrived, his wife took Hubby directly to the hospital and they had a nice visit. Thank the gods, because it turned out to be the last time they spoke. He fell into a coma the next day and never awoke.
After Hubby came home we tried to return to normal (if you know us, that's a relative term). Things seemed to be doing better when, the first week in April, our horse, Baska, had to be put down. She, like Shadow before her, had developed colic. By the time she displayed signs it was too late and we held her head and petted her as the vet put her to sleep. That was gut-wrenching for Hubby especially as he and she had a great relationship; she'd follow him like a dog.
We got a bit of a break in the summer as we took our planned trip to the UK and Ireland. For three weeks we rode the train around Britain, enjoying the sights. It was a much needed respite and recharging.
The first week of August things changed yet again as our daughter moved into a place with her BFF. As those who have been there know, that is a difficult transition. My rhythm had beat in time to hers for her entire life and now it was no longer a drum duet. I had to learn to play solo again, which I hadn't done for years. Hard, but do-able. Phone calls to Mom helped. She'd been there, done that with me and helped me to find my own rhythm again.
On Halloween, I did the usual Samhain observances. But a familiar face on the altar made it more personal. I thought to call Mom and make sure that she had remembered but got distracted. Isn't that always the way? We get distracted by things and somehow miss an important opportunity.
I had slept in the guest room Sunday night, November 1st because Hubby's restless legs were acting up. Early Monday morning I was awakened by a thump that seemed to come from under the bed. I thought nothing of it and turned back over. A couple of hours later, I was awakened again, this time by banging on the front door. I stumbled out and there was my MIL saying something about somebody was trying to call me. I can't hear the phone in the guest room. So I checked my messages and found one from my Stepbrother. This was odd, since we talk maybe once every 5 years. I tried to call back but got his voice mail. I tried to find my Aunt's phone number but came up empty. Starting to panic, I tried to call my California cousin as his sister lives in Vegas, too. Voice mail. Finally, it occurred to me to check the hospital. Mom had been having breathing problems but had discovered that was due to a duodenal hernia. She'd started taking meds for it and was much better. But she also had an enlarged heart. She was taking meds for that, too but only very small doses as she didn't like the side effects. She was due to go into the cardiologist that week for a defibrillator implant. She missed by 2 days.
I looked online to find the phone number of the hospital closest to their house. I punched the number in and asked the operator if Mom had been admitted. I was put on hold (naturally) and then a nurse came on the line. I gave her Mom's name and asked if my Step-dad, Aunts or Step-brother was there.
"You just missed them"
Dammitt!
"Is this Jackie's daughter?" she asked and identified herself (I couldn't tell you her name if my life depended on it now but god/dess bless her), and proceeded to explain what had happened. "Your father came home and found her unresponsive on the bathroom floor." Oh crap. Well, unresponsive can mean fainted. "He called 911 and they arrived. They intubated her" - and here she described that process as I felt the earth start to open under me."...and transported her to the emergency room. They tried for half an hour to revive her" and here, my gut clenched, "But she didn't make it. I'm sorry."
All I could say was "I see. Thank you."
My MIL was perched across from me, watching me. I don't know if she saw my stomach turn over. I guess she saw me go white, though because she asked, "What?"
I muttered something about "nothing they could do" and turned back to my computer. Trying to keep myself from throwing up, I calmly sent a message to my friends over at the SK board (we've "known" each other for 6 years and have shared deaths and births and every other kind of event. Aren't online friends an amazing thing?): Tet, I lost my Mom this morning. We'll have to fly down to Vegas tomorrow. I'll check in again later..... One of them had lost her Dad the previous week.
My MIL decided that she had to stay with me until my husband got home. I guess I called him - I don't remember. I really would rather have been alone but I sensed that she need to be distracted, too (unlike some MILs they had been close friends). So I brought up the pictures from our UK trip and proceeded to show and tell at her. My brain was on auto-pilot but my body felt like I had been dipped in ice cold mud. We did that until Hubby came in the door with his brother. By that time I think I had gone into some kind of weird zone; I felt spaced-out and heavy. Somehow I managed to get a flight booked and the doctor called (for my "flying pills"). I don't really remember much else until I got on the plane. An old friend picked me up at the airport (it was after 7:00 PM and my Step-dad goes to bed around then - seriously) and took me to the house.
That entire week in Vegas I felt like I was underwater. My dear cousin came up from California to be with me and was so helpful - just him being there eased my mind. My Aunts (Mom's sisters), were devastated. Mom was the oldest and pretty much the Matriarch of the whole tribe. Without her, they were rudderless. So I tried to step into that role as best I could. They had decided that there would be no memorial. That bothered me. They said Mom wouldn't want a big fuss made over her. But this isn't about the person who died. It's about those who are left. Nothing could sway them, though. By the time I arrived on Tuesday, she had already been cremated. I never got to see her. How I got through that week, I'll never know.
I went down to Vegas on Tuesday and returned home that Friday, still feeling like I was submerged. Two days later, as Hubby and I returned from a short shopping trip, we were hit head-on. The woman who hit us was confused, had been driving around, lost, for 4 hours, She turned into the wrong lane at the other end of the short connecting street between the "big" highway and ours. When we saw her lights, we thought she had to see us - but she didn't move an inch off her course. We had nowhere to go with a creek and guardrail on our right. So we collided. Luckily, we'd just been stopped at the light and were traveling slowly and she was, too. I shudder to think what would have happened if it had been, say, a speeding teenager in a truck. Long story short, my sternum was broken (though it didn't show up on X-rays: it took a bone scan 5 months later) and my convalescence took longer than expected. I spent my days in pain, both physically and emotionally because, hey - broken sternum! I dare you to cry with that. Nope. I had to push away all dealing with Mom's death.
This I did for 6 months. One April evening Hubby looked up from his computer and asked if I wanted to go to a concert that August. I wasn't sure but let him go ahead and get the tickets anyway. By the time the concert rolled around, I was physically okay to go but my mental and emotional state was in the same stasis it had been in since November. The venue being somewhat distant we made a day of it, bringing a lunch and arriving early and listening to the sound check as we picnicked in our car in the parking lot.
The band we saw that night - I'm sure you know if you know anything about me by now - was Rush. The last time we'd seen them was 1984 so we were long overdue. I've been a fan since 1980 but between that last show and this, life had kept me distracted. So there we were after 25+ years, seeing them again (from much further away, too). I had no expectations when I sat down in my chair. Nothing was in my mind but seeing a good show. But something happened that night. The music, the atmosphere, the sight of those 3 guys whom I'd loved watching so much in earlier times.... But mostly it was the music. It was like a warm wind blew through my cobwebbed soul and swept the pain ahead of it. Oh yes, I was still grieving but now I could move forward with it instead of wrapping myself in it.
I have since spoken with many other Rush fans and found that, for many of us, Rush had been there during a time of crisis or change. Their music had lent us strength, inspiration, solace. There is no other band to which I have heard this credited to such a degree. As I learned more about the years of the band's music and history I had missed, I formed a theory. Anything that is created in a crucible of joy, integrity, honesty and friendship must retain those traits in its DNA, so to speak. This music came from such a place, hence its healing abilities.
The music led me to the writings of Rush's drummer, Neil Peart. I bought his book, Ghost Rider: Travels On The Healing Road and read about his devastating loss in the summer of 1997 (seems to have been a bad year for many people). He lost his 19-year-old daughter in an auto accident and then, a year later, her mother. Technically she died of cancer but he feels that it was a broken heart that made her not want to live. His world crashed down on him and he dealt with that by riding his motorcycle 55,000 miles from Ontario to the North Pole to Belize. At the end of that road he had found love again. I found his journey - and the fact that he wrote it down and shared it - to be inspirational on a level I couldn't even begin to articulate.
So, now you know why I am such a fan of Rush. They were, to borrow a phrase from Stephen King, "the first bird to sing into my silence." They were the first thing from outside my sphere of pain to make a crack in that barrier. For that, I will be forever grateful.
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