People tell me I’m grieving my mother. She’s been dead and gone over 3 years now. I think they are wrong, at least in the way they probably mean it: she died and I’m sad because she’s dead and I miss her. It’s a little bit true, but not really.
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.
I’ve been grieving the lack of a mother since I was small. I can remember two kind things she did for me when I was very small. Once, she re-covered my toy dog that I’d worn out (How many kids had a flowered toy dog, I wonder?) and I can remember he letting me sit on her lap when I got scared watching Chiller with my brother. Other than that, I was just another source of stress in a dreary life full of hard work. Later on, from the perch of adulthood, I realized my mom did the best she could with the shitty hand she was dealt. She never meant to neglect any of us kids and did love us in her rough, country, grub-or-starve way. Still, I have deep regret that I got little in the way of encouragement or faith in my abilities or hugs or kind words or smiles or laughter. Though again, from the perspective of adulthood, we did have some laughs as adult women together in the last three years of her life. She decided she’d best do some living before she died, so she enlisted me to place an ad in the paper for a boyfriend which I was glad to do. I won’t go into the cast of characters that turned up, but I’m glad for my widowed mother that she got to do something except be around her old maid daughter; she got out and had ice cream and she even got laid. Still, in the midst of all this goodness, she was getting frailer and I knew I would lose her before too long. She went from a raw-boned, big boned woman as strong as a man to needing me to help open packages. The doctor’s visits got more frequent and so did the hospitalizations for pneumonia. I reckon I “pre-grieved” my mother for a good five years before she finally passed.
No, I’m not really grieving the loss of her, not the physical her. Her life was, for the most part, so hard and painful that I’m glad it is over for her. She knew almost nothing except dire poverty, brutal physical work, and the hell of being married to an alcoholic child-molester (guess how I know that last bit?). Then she went through the breakdown and poor health the body suffers after a life like that. No, she is at peace now – at least she is if she can’t see me from the afterlife and continue to be disappointed.
The main thing I’m grieving is the death of my self, I think. I keep thinking there’s a different person I could have been if only I hadn’t had to carry the dead black dog of depression around on my back for decades with only a broken heart to pump my blood - a person with a lot more achievement, friends, and self-respect. I certainly wouldn’t be grieving the loss of a 14 dollar an hour job with benefits while working at home – with no rent or mortgage. When you don’t have to burn gas or pay for housing, 14 bucks an hour goes a long way here in West Virginia. I had a job other people envied, and I fucking threw it away because I didn’t or couldn’t get my shit together and fucking concentrate. I got fired for trying to cover up my poor performance, in the middle of the worst depression since the Great Depression. Anybody that goddam stupid deserves to have her ass kicked. I haven’t had a full time job since and that was 2009. What would she think if she knew? Oh God. Who I don’t really believe in anymore.
That’s the other thing I’m grieving: I have lost my Christian faith, what tiny morsel of it I ever had, anyway. There goes a big chunk of my identity. There goes the closest thing I’ve had to a family in the last 6 or 7 years. Other people can tell a story of being free and apparently happier once they lost religion, but all it means to me is that I’ve lost about the only connection to living breathing people who included me in shit, even if at times it felt a bit superficial. At least I got hugs. And, get this freaky shit: they didn’t judge me. Yeah, I know, hard to believe, ain’t it? But they’re UCC. I blame pastordan for getting mixed up with them. :grin:
I went back for the commitment ceremony of two of the members of that church who are particularly dear to me. I agreed to stay for regular church services the next morning just to see if I could bear to hear the usual words. I couldn’t. I lost it and had to go out and sit in my truck and cry. I just don’t believe it any more. I don’t know that I ever really did, deep down. I wanted to, very much. I still do. But I can’t. There goes my hope of anything ever being truly good. I know things will never be good for me in this life. I’m nearly 50 and, despite multiple meds and years of therapy, they’ve sucked shit so far. With my effed work history and the economy permanently damaged, all I expect to happen is for me to crawl along in the fearful poverty that I thought I’d finally escaped with my last job. The thought of 25 or 30 more years of this shit? Me and the black dog sitting in ever increasing squalor…and now there's no chance of getting to be me without the scars. That’s the main thing heaven meant to me. I didn’t give a shit about gold streets or mansions, and while harp music is all right, I prefer electric guitars. I just wanted to stand in the presence of all-encompassing love and not be in pain any more. I wanted to find out who I was without all the scars and blame-static in the way. I guess feeling nothing and being nothing but worm food will have to do. But I miss the dream of heaven very much.
So, there are some of the things I’m grieving for. When I’ve tried to explain my depression to others, I’ve explained it as being like grieving a death. Mine most days is like that part after the visitors have gone home, the flowers are wilted, and you know you need to clean that up as well as the sympathy cards strewn around and get the remnant of the meat tray out of the fridge, but you’re too fucking tired and numb to move…so there you sit. Alone. Except for that damn black dog.