Stupid, Ugly Grief

Grief is weird and uncomfortable, but I’m forcing myself to sit in and not ignore it. I’m letting the tears roll as they come and the laughs bubble over when they arise. I also understand that there is no timeline and this stuff is different for everyone. Thank you to those who have been by my side through it all. I feel your love and prayers. I can’t do this without you. 

I got the first call on a Sunday night, and even though I knew Grandma was declining and in a lot of pain, I was still really shocked. So much so that I didn’t really react or feel the need to rush over when my aunt explained to me that they had made the decision to bring in hospice care. I had been fighting a head cold and the last thing I wanted was to pass that to my family, so I rode the first night out at home, fully in the denial phase of grief. 

I stayed home swaying in that floaty, sinus head cold drowsiness for a full day. In my lucid moments I waited for updates. That night was the first of many nights that we were told Grandma was probably not going to make it through the night. So in a flurry of fast, DayQuil aided decisions I headed to my Grandma’s house around midnight, and my mom and sister arrived shortly after. 

The next several days were weird. Awful in parts. Profoundly beautiful in others. The hospital bed was in the living room, which the house opens up into as soon as you walk in the door. One of the first things I saw and heard was Grandma. She wasn’t herself by any means. The only signs of life that were noticeable were her clammy skin and deep, dehydrated snores. Eyes closed and mouth wide open, that’s where Grandma stayed until she left this earth. 

I would tell you the nights were the worst, but the days were bad too, just for different reasons. However, the nights were spent sharing shifts every two hours giving the zombie that was Grandma doses of morphine we placed in a syringe and emptied into her increasingly dry, cracked mouth. We would wake together each morning with another promise from a nurse that she wouldn’t be with us much longer. That went on for five days.

I couldn’t have done any of this on my own. I needed God and I needed my family and friends. At some point my human strength reached the end of its wick, and it’s candle was snuffed out in the form of a disheveled, unbathed, morning breath, melted chocolate stained Makaela sobbing in the Meijer cat food aisle. That angry, flustered, exhausted headspace hit its peak as I returned to grandma’s and sat at her bedside, hot, mean tears rolling off of my cheeks and onto her fresh, white linen sheets. I didn’t realize it at that moment, but I must have felt that Grandma’s last breath was close.

She died that night. And in an only Bernice kind of way, she chose the way she wanted to die, entirely on her own terms under her own conditions. Even though she was unconscious for the entirety of those days, let me tell you this woman waited until she was all gussied up and she knew we weren’t looking. 

It was the first day her hair and make up had been completely done up. I had left the house to run an errand for my sister after we had just decided we were toughing out another night helping with med shifts. My sister was putting her kids to bed. My aunt was working on turning off lights. We were all doing our own thing when Grandma’s adopted daughter, Jane, noticed her mouth had gone closed for the first time in days. 

My sister met me in the drive way to tell me she was gone. Oddly enough, as though God had heard all of our conversations and delivered without us asking, these were the two scenarios my sister and I had described earlier that day as being ideal for each of us. I didn’t feel the need to be there in her final moment, and Syd felt like she would need that as closure. She felt that last moment of life, Grandma’s last heartbeat before stillness. I was just able to walk into a room full of serene peace. 

I’m not kidding, and I am not exaggerating. The way my Grandma looked in death was the most beautiful I had seen her in maybe 3 or 4 years. She was gorgeous. Her skin seemed to literally glow, and there wasn’t a single wrinkle in sight. She even seemed to have a little smirk. I was already confident in her love of God and that promised eternity that awaited her, but seeing her in death was the most unexplainable confirmation of it all. 

She was finally able to rest. Finally able to be without pain and sadness. Knowing where she was going has been the most comforting part of all. 

On one of her last nights, my mom, Aunt Robyn, Sydnie, Jane, and I all sat around Grandma together. We all were sitting in stillness in the dark when I grabbed her hand and told everyone I was going to sing. I was running on virtually no sleep and the remnants of this head cold still seemed to be lodged in my nasal passages and clouding my lungs, but through squeaks and cracks, my heart just started pouring out. 

The Holy Spirit seemed to move from one piece of an old hymn to another. I ended after feeling led to sing through the bridge of Phil Whickam’s “Living Hope.” Those lyrics were some of the most honest words I’ve ever heard, so true to that very moment. I sang, “How great the chasm that lay between us. How high the mountain I could not climb. In desperation I turned to Heaven and spoke your name into the night. Then came the morning that sealed the promise. Your buried body began to breathe. Out of the silence, the roaring lion declared the grave has no claim on me.” 

Death is not what holds my deeply beloved Grandmother. Jesus is. What more comfort could I ask for? 

Grief is strange though. It’s just kind of there. I know my Grandma is in the absolute best place, but there’s an emptiness without her here. Grief is like a monster with claws latched into me whose grip just seems to incrementally loosen as more days go by. It’s still a fuzzy, lingering cloud, but I know from past experience it doesn’t stay forever. 

While on vacation, I had some of the first quiet moments alone with my thoughts since she passed. Those moments were hard. The two weeks before, I had been pretty consumed with surviving, limping my way to some time off and away. Even in grief, I’m quick to sacrifice my own healing and space in place of the comfort and aid of my loved ones. I have zero idea how people traditionally move from death through a funeral and burial so quickly. Unfortunately, in a few short weeks, I would have to face that. 

8 weeks later, I received another phone call on a Sunday night. I was snuggled into my chair ready to watch the Lions on prime time, and I got the call that ruined my week. My Aunt passed away suddenly and tragically. I didn’t want another crash course on grief so soon, but here it was.

There are things they don’t warn you about when it comes to death and dying. They don’t tell you that if someone dies tragically and you’re around, for better or worse that version of them you see last will be engraved in your memory. You can just hope and pray that the mortician does a decent job at cleaning your loved one up so that you can remember them comfortably and at peace. I’m grateful that the Aunt Tracy that I saw on Sunday night is foggier in my mind than who I saw lying in the casket the following Saturday.

They don’t always warn you that death is cold to the touch. My Aunt Tracy hated being cold, and in death, her body had no choice. Her bloated skin was like ice, even though the top she had been dressed in for the viewing was a plush, pink, cable knit sweater. She looked cold. She looked caked in makeup. It barely resembled her and yet I kept looking down at her chest watching for breaths. 

Eventually, the lid of the casket was closed and it was loaded into the back of a hearse followed by an obnoxious and unnecessarily loud bang of the back door. Without a word, the funeral home drove her away. I didn’t expect that goodbye to be the one that knocked the wind out of me, but it did. For the first time all week, I let my baby sister hold me while I sobbed against her scarf and we fell apart together. 

When I looked up, my cousin stood crying onto her newborn baby who was just born 8 weeks before. Quite possibly the most unbearable part of all of this is knowing that Isaiah doesn’t get to grow up knowing his Grandma Tracy. 

They don’t warn you about the cry of a daughter who’s just been informed that her mother was pronounced dead just a few feet away. I could hear my sweet cousin through the phone when my sister gave me the update. Even if I was a next door neighbor, I could never have been there fast enough. I’ve never wanted to be able to travel straight through a phone as badly as I did that night, desperate to catch my family as they broke. 

Thankfully, my cousin’s house is between me and my aunt’s house, so I was able to go on a refrigerated breast milk rescue mission. Their house is in the dark in the middle of the woods. I was alone and my nervous system was maybe the most heightened it had ever been, so setting their house alarm off added a really fun spin to that moment. But the milk was acquired, and eventually I made it there. 

The rest of it was stupid and awful. I don’t wish it on anyone. My sister threw up. I was close. My Aunt looked scary. My cousins had to watch their lifeless mom get loaded onto a gurney and rolled outside. I didn’t cry once that night. That isn’t a brag. My body and brain just went into full shock and denial. I was there to crack jokes and keep my loved ones up right. About 36 hours later I wasn’t okay. 

I think there is a lot surrounding death and tragedy that is taboo to talk about. A lot of that lies within the ugly, uncomfortable details. But I also know that I can’t heal unless I process and release even the hard to talk about things. Like how annoying grief can be. One moment I’m fine and another moment because I chose to start singing a song that reminded me of Aunt Tracy, I’m leaning against the public bathroom wall for support covered in tears.

They don’t tell you how physical grief is. My appetite virtually disappears while I’m grieving. If I don’t eat the moment I’m hungry, the wave will pass and I’ll forget to feed myself. You don’t realize how dehydrated you get from crying and not replenishing that water. I just ended up with a headache at some point and very chapped lips. Several days and many hydration packets later, I feel like maybe I am catching up. It’s been a few days since the funeral, and I’m still experiencing pain and fatigue. 

I just kind of have to release the feelings as they come. If I feel the urge to curl in a ball and cry I try to make space for that, even if I’m at work. If I need to yell at something, I yell while I go for a drive or while I am home alone getting dressed and am out of earshot of others. I imagine I’ve said some things that are very upsetting to ears other than mine in the last few days. But if I don’t feel it, don’t release it, I’ll explode. Exploding isn’t healing. It just hurts me and the people I love.  

Even though I am struggling to own this, I know a heart that grieves is a heart that is blessed. It hurts this much because these people matter to me. It hurts because they loved me and I loved them. Not a lot of people get that from their family. I’m blessed. Hold your loved ones close. We have no way of knowing how long we have with them, so loving them with everything we have to give is the best we can do.

In the quiet spaces I’ve found sadness for the places and moments that won’t include Grandma or Aunt Tracy anymore. I’ve found some regret in not calling them more often. I’ve found a strong conviction to remember the sound of her voice and the way Grandma exclusively called me, “Muckala,” or the way Aunt Tracy was the only one who ever called me, "Muckaluck Wingdinger." I’ve found anger and frustration with my dad for not being here as an extra set of arms to carry the burden of decision making in Grandma's death, anger with my aunt for leaving her family so soon. I’ve found great sadness in Grandma being another connection to my dad that’s lost, and I have found great sadness in not being able to hug any of those loved ones again.

Among the pain there have been moments of joy though, moments that I’m sure that if Grandma and Tracy are able to witness somewhere, they are smiling too. My heart truly misses my Elvis obsessed beauty queen of a grandmother and my unconditionally loving Aunt. It probably always will. I hope I tell stories about them for the rest of my life. They were so special to me. They ARE so special to me. 

That being said, grief is stupid and it sucks, but it’s necessary. Let this be your reminder and mine to drink our water, eat our protein, get our rest, get our steps, be outside, and take our breaths. If you’re grieving, I see you. There’s no timeline. No expectations. You do what your soul needs. You release what your body needs to release. Don’t feel guilt for finding joy. Someday, this will all feel lighter, I promise. That is once again typed for me just as much as anyone else.

You are truly and deeply loved.