A Time of Grief

An update

2008-03-03T00:28:00.003-05:00

It's been a long time since I've added anything here, mostly because I haven't wanted to. January was a very difficult month for me. February was a little better. I have a good feeling about March.

Since my last posting I have stopped reading grief books, stopped crying on a nightly basis, and have gotten back to what others would call "life as normal". I've also started weekly grief counseling with a therapist and joined a bereavement group with my mom (Grief Share). And last (and pretty much least) I've ordered wedding invitations and hired a photographer.

I've settled much more into my grief and care much less about the wedding, so I expect the tone here will be more about grief in general. I've also really been enjoying my Grief Share workbook, so I'll also probably be sharing some of the exercises from it.

Overall, life hasn't changed much over the last six weeks so there hasn't been much to inspire me. Hopefully through my new programs I'll find more inspiration.

Living with grief

2008-03-03T00:12:00.004-05:00

At the end of the week, my Grief Share workbook has a list of suggested topics to write about. Here's one from Week 1:

From the moment you wake up until you crawl into bed at night, what it is like to live with grief?

From the outside, it looks pretty much the same as life did before. I get up, I go to work, I come home, I watch TV, and I go to bed. Internally, though, it's all a little different. I wake up absurdly late and get ready for work in a fog. Most mornings I don't feel like showering. During the week I make a somewhat effort to look nice. On the weekends I simply don't. When I go to work (also absurdly late), I spend the day completely focused on the work around me. I love my work because it keeps me distracted all day long. I take a long lunch and don't care, because it's all about escaping. Then I leave (again absurdly late), go home and heat up whatever leftovers there are from my sister's dinner. I shower, I get in pajamas, and I spend the next several hours watching TV. There's never anything good on, but I watch it anyways, because I don't want to do anything else. Finally when I'm so exhausted that I believe I'll fall asleep as soon as I get in bed, I turn off the TV and go to bed. Then, suprise!, I'm no longer tired. Instead my heads fills with random stuff (work, dad, family, etc.) and I lie away in bed for an hour or two until I can actually sleep. If it was a hard day or if the wrong memory drifts into my mind, I cry. Sometimes I think about how much I miss Dad. Sometimes I think about how certain things wouldn't be happening or would be happening differently if only Dad was around. Sometimes I think about how I cruise through my workday and everything thinks I'm fine, but the reality is that everything is different. So basically, for me, living with grief means a day of distraction, pretending, disappointment, sadness, loneliness, and frustration.

Ups and Downs

2008-01-18T20:41:00.000-05:00

It's been a week of ups and downs for me. Some days are good. Most days are tolerable. And some days are downright bad. But hands down, this month has been tougher than last. I'm not sure why, but from people that I talk to, it seems to be getting harder instead of easier. There's been a lot of "if Dad were here..." moments, which are usually followed by "why the hell isn't Dad here?" moments. There's been a lot more stress and a lot more tears.

And somehow, in the midst of what have easily been 2 of the worst weeks of my life, I seem to have decided to start wedding planning again. Why? I have no clue. Thinking about it now, it seems just wrong. I've been a tortured soul most days, so it just doesn't seem right that I've also allowed myself to be genuinely excited about planning the ~~happiest~~ stupidest day of my life. I'm guessing that most people feel this type of contradictory happy/sad feeling. At least, it seems to make sense that people would feel contradictory about it. After all, weddings are supposed to be happy things. But how can it be a happy thing when there are no happy things right now? And when I'm experiencing a seemingly happy moment, isn't that wrong? No, I know it's not wrong... but it sure does feel like it ought to be.

On hating the world...

2008-01-12T11:25:00.001-05:00

Pearls Before Swine, Jan. 11, 2008

Fatherless brides

2008-01-09T00:09:00.000-05:00

Today I had the pleasure of getting encouragement from two other women who both lost their fathers shortly before their weddings also. The one I have known for a short while and we got the chance to sit and talk for a while tonight. The other is an old friend of my sister's who I haven't seen since I was just a little girl. It was funny, tonight J and I were talking about how we haven't heard of anyone else who has had this happen to them, and then when I got home I had an email from this long-lost family friend. So now I know of 3 (including myself). I'm sure there are more out there, but it's not the type of thing that comes up in general conversation. Unfortunately, it is also not the type of thing that there are many internet resources for. When I type "fatherless brides" into Google, I get a few results of etiquette. If I add the term "grief" to the search I get a bunch of useless nonsense. Hopefully this blog can help change that and make it so future grieving fatherless brides can easily find some comfort in the thoughts and ramblings of another who has gone through the same thing.

Book Review: A Grief Observed

2008-01-07T23:30:00.000-05:00

I got C.S. Lewis's book, A Grief Observed, on CD and listened to it on Sunday. It was a quick listen and only took about an hour and a half. It's essentially his journal of the time after his wife passed away, documenting his thoughts and feelings on grief, loss, and religion. The book was a little difficult to listen to, but I'm not sure if that was because of the content or because it was my first time listening to a book on CD. Ultimately though, he hit on some great points:

The general sadness and anguish of losing someone
The desire to hold onto that person, or the idea of that person
Frustration with the religious community's reaction to death
Frustration with God. Is God really as good as we're told? If so, why would this happen?

He touched on a lot of the same things that I have been feeling and have yet been able to reconcile. For me, there were not a lot of answers in this book at this time; it was more helpful to hear the same things that I'm feeling. I expect that once I'm further along in this process though I may find some answers if I listen to the book again.

Denial & distraction

2008-01-02T23:50:00.001-05:00

There's a lot of different guides to the phases of grief out there. One commonality between all of them is a phase of denial. This doesn't make much sense to me. Of course I know my dad is not around anymore, I don't deny that. I'm starting to realize though, that maybe my form of denial is avoiding steps that support the fact that he's gone. For instance:

Removing his number from my cell phone. This is even more peculiar since my sister from out of the country is still here and using his cell phone now, so every time she calls me my cell phone says "Dad calling" & I think "I ought to change that sometime soon", but then I try & I just can't yet. I mentioned this to my other sisters and they haven't changed theirs yet either - at least I'm not the only one.
Sending comic strips. Dad enjoyed emailing comic strips that he found funny. I would occasionally find a good one and send it to him too. In the last month I keep finding good ones. So I send them to other people. It's not the same but at least it's close enough.
Deciding who will walk me down the aisle at the wedding. I shouldn't have to make this decision, so therefore I'll put it off and hope it goes away. After all, picking someone for the job would make it real.

Even more than denial, I'm enjoying a good dose of distraction as well. I watch TV & read until all hours of the night. I blog. And ironically, I think about wedding details. Mostly I think about things like what the invitations should say, how to avoid the "giving me away" part, what exactly to do about photos, and which flights we should take for the honeymoon. I think about wedding details, I talk about wedding details, but I don't actually do anything about wedding details. As soon as I do something about the details they won't be a distraction anymore, and then what will I do? Most girls enjoy planning their wedding; I use it to numb my day to day.

Book Review: Fathers Aren't Supposed to Die

2008-01-01T11:31:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading T.M. Shine's book Fathers Aren't Supposed to Die. It's the story of his father's struggle with a subdural brain hematoma (bleeding on the brain) and his ultimate death. Through the process, T.M. and his four brothers gather at the hospital to spend their dad's last days together.

I picked this book up thinking it would be a good story about the struggles that siblings go through when faced with their father's death. I ended up with a surprise when the story of their dad's struggles ended up very similar to my own. While my dad had lung cancer, what ultimately caused his problems in the end was bleeding on the brain caused by the metastasis to his brain. As I read about their interactions with their dad, it mirrored vivid memories of my own:

His tightly squeezing hand and the uncertainty of whether it was really him squeezing or just a reflex
The desperate searching for any kind of recognition or communication
The horrible seizures
Camping out in the ICU
The good nurses and the not-so-good ones
The point of realizing he's in pain, there's nothing that can be done, and it's only a matter of time

While it was extremely hard to read this book at times, it was also somewhat healing. I was faced with all the ick and grime of what happened in the form of a story about someone I don't know. It was personal, without being too personal. Someone had gone through some of the same things that I did. Things that I thought were unique to us happened to this other family also. Someone else has been there and actually had it rougher than us. I won't say how it was rougher, that would give away some of the impact of the story; but it's definitely worth reading.

Who needs pictures anyways?

2007-12-28T17:41:00.000-05:00

When I first started planning this wedding, Dad was the picture of health. Ok, maybe an overweight, non-active picture, but a healthy picture nonetheless. When I interviewed the first photographer, he recommended that I make a list of all of the pictures that I definitely want. My list looked pretty typical:

Us
Me & my siblings
Us & my family
Us & my extended family
Us & his family
Etc., etc., etc.

My thought was that for the first time in a long time, the entire family will be together and all dressed up so we should take advantage and get lots of pictures of all of us. BOY has that changed! Shortly after Dad died, one of my first thoughts was that I definitely do NOT want wedding pictures because Dad will be obviously absent from them. Almost one month later, I still feel the same way.

Would I regret this decision later in life? Possibly. But I don't think so. I'm not a huge picture person in the first place, and I think it would be immeasurably harder for me to have to stand around for family photos without Dad there & then later look through those pictures knowing that he had to miss such a fun occasion.

I think what I'd rather do is have just candid pictures on the wedding day & then get dressed back up later in the summer and go get pictures of just us, with no additional family. Then I still get nice pictures of us without having to have the whole wedding photo experience.

Dad's handkerchief

2007-12-28T15:54:00.000-05:00

When I was growing up, Dad always carried a plain, white handkerchief in his pocket for his constantly drippy nose. As a little girl, I always liked to use his handkerchief because it was so much softer than a tissue. I think I also enjoyed the reluctance with which he gave it to me. I would tap him on the arm in the middle of church and tell him I needed a tissue. He'd give me a disapproving look, pull the handkerchief out of his pocket, unfold it and refold it to a clean section, and hand it to me. I would then shake the handkerchief open, stick it up my nose and wipe excessively, and then hand it back to him. At the time I didn't see anything wrong with that, but now I understand why he always gave me that disapproving look.

The day after he died, the first thing I did was open the top drawer of his dresser and pull out that old handkerchief from its resting place on top of his socks. It was much rattier and parts were yellowed with snot stains, but it still smelled like him and that was worth ignoring the thought of germs.

For the next two weeks that handkerchief helped me through the tears, the viewings, and finally the funeral. I eventually had to wash it, so it doesn't smell like Dad anymore, but now it sits in my top dresser drawer waiting for my next case of a drippy nose.

How I ended up here

2007-12-28T12:43:00.000-05:00

My dad died on December 1, 2007. It was fairly sudden; it was certainly unexpected; and I never imagined he wouldn't be at my wedding in May (or that I would care). In late September he had walking pneumonia. When he still had a hacking cough near the end of October, he went back to the doctor. A few tests later and we got the 'cancer' call.

"It looks like lung cancer. We need more tests to be sure. It will take about 2 weeks before we know anything for certain."

Two weeks is a long time. But looking back now, it all happened so quickly. By early November we found out that it was indeed adenocarcinoma lung cancer and it had already spread to his brain and his spine. That at least explains the terrible back pain he had been having. The doctor quickly started him on a new treatment, Tarceva, and pain relievers to help with his back.

His first week on the Vicodin was by far his best week. He still had a cough, but his back pain was much better and he was able to get out and around. After that his back pain started to get worse again, and his face broke out in a rash (a common side affect of Tarceva) which made his whole head hurt. By the next week he had bronchitis and was in the ER with difficulty breathing and a fever. The ER gave him an antibiotic and sent him home.

The day after Thanksgiving I picked him up and brought him to my house for a couple hours. On the walk from the car to the door he picked up one of my empty trash cans from the curb and carried it up for me. By the time we got inside he had to take a few minutes and catch his breath. We sat and watched TV for most of the time he was there. We tried talking a couple times, but every time he tried to talk he ended up having a coughing fit, so eventually we just gave up. Walking back to the car was the same thing: he took a few minutes to catch his breath and was ok again in time to get out of the car and walk back to his house. This was the first time I realized how bad he was doing.

Sunday night my mom called me. Dad had a fever again and she needed me to drive them to the ER. We took Dad in and several hours in a cold ER room later we found out he now has double pneumonia, fluid in his lungs, and fluid on his heart. They decide to admit him and give him IV antibiotics. He should be able to come home Thursday.

Tuesday I went to see him and he was same old Dad. Crabby because he was in a hospital, but still in good humor otherwise. We playfully made faces at each other while Mom was talking to a friend and he slyly gave me the finger and I shot it right back at him. At the time I had no idea that this would be our last normal interaction.

Wednesday morning he woke up and couldn't see. The brain tumor (which we were told wouldn't be an issue for 3-5 months) had grown and they decided to do radiation on it immediately. Later that afternoon my sister called me from the hospital and put Dad on the phone. He wanted me to go to the MVA for him tomorrow because the car my sister was driving needed to be transferred to her name before the registration expired at the end of the month. I thought what we had was another normal conversation, but apparently he was having an extremely difficult time finding words, which explains why he told me the wrong place to look for the paperwork.

That night I got another call from Mom, this time crying. Dad had a stroke and was unconscious. They were transferring him to the ICU & she had no idea how bad it was. I called my brother in Philadelphia & he decided to drive down that night. I called my sister in Japan (who was due to come home on Friday) and she got an earlier flight to come home Thursday instead. That night my mom, my brother, my oldest sister, and I sat in the ICU with my dad who could barely talk and had what were my last conversations with him.

He insisted that I go to the MVA in the morning, so I got up early Thursday and took care of that. By the time I got to the hospital he wasn't able to talk at all. The only way he could communicate was to squeeze our hands with his right hand and raise his right arm. When our hands were in his he constantly squeezed it tight. When he really agreed with something we said he lifted our hand straight up in the air.

Things declined from there quickly. Thursday and Friday he suffered from seizures and breathing fits. By Friday night they told us it was time to make him comfortable and transferred him to a hospice room. By Saturday morning he was completely unresponsive to anything going on around him. No more hand squeezes. No more signs of recognition. We spent the day in his hospital room, with Mom by his side and the rest of us talking and sometimes carrying on as usual. Until Saturday night when his labored breathing finally stopped.