Dealing with Grief by Bryan Gueri
For those of you who have experienced a loss, getting a grip on "reality" can be a most difficult process especially if the loss was sudden and the loved one relatively young.
For me, it's been a tough road even after a year and a half. "Experts" estimate that the grieving time is about a year, but even today our loss seems so surreal.
I lost my mother on June 2, 2004. It's been a nightmare. She was only 64. She had Lupus and up until a couple weeks prior to her death, she was vibrant, active with her granddaughters' school activities and preparing to make the trip from the west coast to the east coast to visit us.
I received a phone call Thursday, the 27th that she had been admitted to the hospital, released and two days later back in with poor prognosis. My wife and I packed hurredly, bundled our daughter up and were out of the house whithin a few hours of the horrifying news. I drove the 3000 miles from east to west virtually non-stop leaving Thursday night and arriving Saturday morning, May 29. She was gone Wednesay, June 2 at approx. 10:00 a.m. Thinking back to those days, it is very surprising how much the mind and body can indure during an emergency like that.
"Surviving," if you can call it that, are her three children (2 daughters and her son, me), her husband, two grandchildren and her daughter-in-law, mom's three sisters, and just a huge number of people (family and friends) who loved her so much.
In the wake of that event, even after all this time, I find myself distraught over the fact that I can't be closer (geographically) to the rest of my family. Who knows, I might be able to find employment in California easily enough (since I am also a software developer), but the cost of moving from coast-to-coast is beyond our reach right now. I'm afraid everyone's going to get too old too fast or we'll lose someone else before we get a chance to show them how much we really do appreciate them and to spend the time with them that we didn't spend with mom... never having given it a thought that she wouldn't live forever.
This is still difficult to talk about. The story will continue... it gets worse before it gets better.
I learned a hard lesson about life... I guess in the back of my mind I always thought my parents would live forever.
For me, it's been a tough road even after a year and a half. "Experts" estimate that the grieving time is about a year, but even today our loss seems so surreal.
I lost my mother on June 2, 2004. It's been a nightmare. She was only 64. She had Lupus and up until a couple weeks prior to her death, she was vibrant, active with her granddaughters' school activities and preparing to make the trip from the west coast to the east coast to visit us.
I received a phone call Thursday, the 27th that she had been admitted to the hospital, released and two days later back in with poor prognosis. My wife and I packed hurredly, bundled our daughter up and were out of the house whithin a few hours of the horrifying news. I drove the 3000 miles from east to west virtually non-stop leaving Thursday night and arriving Saturday morning, May 29. She was gone Wednesay, June 2 at approx. 10:00 a.m. Thinking back to those days, it is very surprising how much the mind and body can indure during an emergency like that.
"Surviving," if you can call it that, are her three children (2 daughters and her son, me), her husband, two grandchildren and her daughter-in-law, mom's three sisters, and just a huge number of people (family and friends) who loved her so much.
In the wake of that event, even after all this time, I find myself distraught over the fact that I can't be closer (geographically) to the rest of my family. Who knows, I might be able to find employment in California easily enough (since I am also a software developer), but the cost of moving from coast-to-coast is beyond our reach right now. I'm afraid everyone's going to get too old too fast or we'll lose someone else before we get a chance to show them how much we really do appreciate them and to spend the time with them that we didn't spend with mom... never having given it a thought that she wouldn't live forever.
This is still difficult to talk about. The story will continue... it gets worse before it gets better.
I learned a hard lesson about life... I guess in the back of my mind I always thought my parents would live forever.
posted by Bryan at 1/06/2006 07:27:00 AM
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