The Unexpectedly Positive Side Effects of Grief

My biggest fear has always been my loved ones dying. That’s literally the answer I would give you if you asked me what my biggest fear was. Not clowns, which fully freak me out (I think it’s traceable to a VHS of The Howdy Doody show featuring mute horrorshow Clarabelle), but I would actually say “My loved ones dying,” bringing weirdness to what was probably a somewhat lighthearted question. I think I can trace the origin of that one, too- my dad was way older than other dads, and I was acutely aware of it. He was 18 years older than my mom, 49 when I was born. So as far back as I remember, I played a morbid game with myself- how old was I likely to be when my dad died? Hopefully old enough to have a pretty emotionally cushy life, with a supportive husband and solid friends to fall back on, maybe even kids that require my focus. If he died in his 70s, I’d be in my 20s…ehh, iffy, not great. If he was in his 80s, I’d be in my 30s…more likely to have that cushion to fall back on, but it would still suck. Even though the future timeline was fuzzy, I counted down through the years and I dreaded it actively. To spice it up, sometimes I would play around in my head with the scenario of my other friends and family members dying and upset myself, the way as a kid I used to sometimes pretend a vampire was behind me when I was going down the hall to the bathroom with the lights off to freak myself out. It was very healthy.

It’s a particularly tough fear to have because of its inevitability; it’s a Greatest Fear that is guaranteed to manifest itself. I had gotten off relatively light for most of my life and experienced the kind of loss that sucks but doesn’t shatter you- beloved pets, family friends, my grandparents, who I loved very much but wasn’t so close to that it was crippling. But this year my inevitable fear finally came to cash itself in and really doubled down.

At 81, my dad kicked off what would turn out to be 4 months between the hospital and rehab centers, mainly bedridden, experiencing a smorgasbord of symptoms both physical and mental that kept him and our close family alternately rocked, devastated and drained. About 2 months into that period, my half-sister, Karen, his daughter from his previous marriage, was killed by a drunk driver on her way to visit her oldest son at his new apartment with her husband, younger son, and dog in the car (they all survived.) I found out at home after leaving my brother, Will, and our mom in the emergency room with our dad. Earlier that day, the hospital had decided he was fit enough to be moved to a rehab, and had him transported there. He was immediately, in 30 minutes, bounced back out to the hospital, but his previous bed was already taken up so he was stuck in emergency room-limbo. When my other half-sister, Lynne, called and told me what had happened, first I was in shock. I screamed and screamed and literally crumpled into a corner, in some sort of bizarre protective instinct left over from tornado drills in school. I called to tell my brother and mom, who had just left the emergency room to get some rest since my dad was asleep and it would be a while until he got a bed. Will went back to the hospital to tell our father but the doctors advised him to wait until the morning since he was medicated and sleeping, but before he had a chance to get there, in the early morning hours, my dad saw that his daughter had been killed on the fucking news. Did you realize they say the names of victims so immediately in news reports? It was less than 12 hours since it had happened. We didn’t. Turns out they do that.

It was all surreal and an absolute nightmare for my family; it was grief on top of grief. It would be part of a smooth, sad narrative to say that my dad never recovered because of it, but I don’t think that’s quite true- his illness was acute enough that even though I tried to hope, in my heart of hearts I didn’t see him living for much longer even before Karen was killed. But it certainly took an additional toll. Finally removing my dad’s life support and ending his pain was actually probably the least difficult part of the journey, which is really saying something because the unexpectedness and intensity of that experience in and of itself is a story for another day. But the unexpectedness and intensity of my personal experience with the aftermath of death, simultaneously both drawn-out and sudden, is something I’m eager to share with other people going through similar things. When you’re in the midst of grief, or anticipating it like a creepy little kid playing games with herself, the idea of some sort of light at the end of a tunnel is comforting- even a light that’s blinking on and off.

In some ways, my life has improved as a result of experiencing loss. The bad stuff is significant, but it’s obvious- no one needs an essay on what has sucked about my dad and sister dying, I think you can probably take some wild guesses. Make no mistake- I would trade those improvements in a heartbeat to bring my dad and sister back. They’re not worth it. But they’re there. I think it would be impossible to go through what my family and loved ones have and not be changed by it, and I think we all know that as a common platitude- “You’re never the same again.” “A piece of you is missing.” But now I’ve had to find ways adapt and bolster myself through horrific, exhausting situations and that repeated self-preservation dug grooves into my brain and left an imprint, like a sheet of paper with the ghost of a note written on top of it. Granted, I did plenty of shutting down during those times too, which is perfectly natural and necessary- I gave, and give, myself space to feel my feelings, dig in and have pity parties, feel devastated and act out in unhealthy ways. But I also had to go to work and the grocery store sometimes. And basically since I was at about a 20 on the scale of 1–10 for how much a person can process, I had to make it work for me. Some new feelings have sprung up of their own accord, and some existing beliefs have been strengthened. It’s all been interesting and valuable and I would have liked to have known they were possible while I was in the midst of things, so I hope they can be a blinking light to someone else.

I Give Less of A Crap About Trivial Things

This has been super interesting because it’s come fairly naturally, almost like a side effect of having bigger fish to fry. It feels like a magical power that got bestowed to me at the end of a long and shitty journey- “That was all pretty horrible, but here you go! You’re now fairly impervious to relatively minor upsets and to what people think of you!” At the same time I don’t take it for granted because I’m afraid of it gradually slipping away. In the thick of the hard times, I literally didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to care about some of the things that would have normally thrown me, so I took them off my plate if possible.One that stands out was that at my salon job, I had a woman walk in for a hair color consultation and we just were not clicking at all. I had the spidey-sense feeling that she wasn’t going to be happy with anything I did, a feeling some other people in the beauty industry may recognize. To make a long story short, I talked to a coworker who ended up taking care of the client without incident, I took something potentially problematic off my plate- and I didn’t feel bad about it. Before managing my stress level was a matter of self-preservation, I would have pushed my way through by rote and forced something that may not have served me OR that client well.

Obviously it isn’t possible, or even right, to blow off everything that feels stressful, but sometimes things don’t feel right for a reason, and it’s okay to recognize that instead of soldiering through. After having been through the big stuff, I’m also more “Damn, oh well” about little annoyances, like parking tickets and mundane mess-ups. Most things aren’t that big a deal. I even stopped wearing winged eyeliner every day because do I REALLY need the stress of them not matching up every morning? AFTER ALL I’VE BEEN THROUGH?

I Value My Energy as Much as My Time

Admittedly, I was kind of a hoarder of my time and using it wisely even before tragedy stuck. I thought, and meant, “Life is too short” a lot, and used it as motivation to do things I wanted to do- I thought maybe it would be cool to start a podcast with my brother, so we did it. I wanted to teach yoga and meditation, so I saved up and went through training. Lying on the couch watching The Fall also counts as a wise use of time because I enjoy it.

However, as someone who needs a lot of alone time but is also a people-pleaser, I was in a chronic loop of saying “yes” to invitations that sounded good in the moment, but in the back of my mind I knew I wouldn’t want to do later- see every meme about being an introvert ever created. Now, as a result of having so much stress about mortality issues that it pushed out room for stress about more trivial ones, I’ve changed things. I’ve learned to lovingly (I hope) say “no” to plans that I know aren’t going to work for me.Before all this, if I technically had time for a hangout with someone I would say yes to it and even when I went and enjoyed it, I’d be cranky and drained when I went back to work if my days off didn’t include some solo down time. Now I don’t just look at the literal free time in my schedule but think about my energy- if I see I’m free but that I’m going to be really busy at work that week and need extra downtime to recover, or that the night’s free but my day is going to be spent running errands, I don’t make the plans. I’m very lucky to know a lot of people that I would like to spend time with, but to keep myself healthy I spread it out. I know myself well enough and respect my mental energy level enough to give it space, because I respect how valuable that space is and how unpromised our time is.

I’m More Spiritual

This is still a work in progress as I imagine it always will be, full of contradictions and doubts. I’ve always been kind of a hopeful skeptic- leaning more on the “hopeful” than on the “skeptic” for sure. I’m hesitant to even use that word because it seems like today, many “skeptics” define themselves by engaging in takedowns of things other people believe, and as long as no one’s being hurt I could not give less of a crap. But I’ve never been “all in.”It’s true that I’ve always felt a sense that something is going on out there and I’ve gotten comfort from it. I noticed synchronicities before “synchronicity” became modern new age buzzword, although I didn’t call them that- I’ve dorkily thought of them as “winks from the universe.” Things like the classic thinking about someone random and then bumping into them, a friend bringing up something out of left field that I’ve been thinking about too, seeing some little symbol over and over. It just kind of bolsters a faith in me that everything is connected. However, there’s another part of me that says that’s all bullshit- I’ve been driving by the exact same kind of roadwork being done in different towns lately, does that cosmically mean anything? I keep hearing the same Justin Bieber song on different Pandoras, must I go forth and find the Biebs? But lately, I’ve been saying to that other voice, WHATEVER. I do believe that we’re all connected.

I mean that in the tangible sense that we want the same basic thing- love- and the more esoteric way that I don’t fully understand. I also now believe that when people are gone, they aren’t fully gone. I can’t explain it, I know there’s no proof, but I feel it and I let myself trust it. I talk to my Dad most days, sometimes out loud, mostly mentally, and I think he can hear it. I feel like he and my sister are somewhere together, happy and at peace and probably feeling bad for us. That sometimes weirds me out- I actually cried to my husband recently because I feel guilty that I talk to my dad more than my sister and I don’t want to hurt her feelings. I acknowledge that that’s crazypants. But because lately I’ve been allowing myself to put stock in some of my more out-there and yet gut-instinct beliefs, like that the universe is guiding most things and somehow it’ll be okay, I got over it fairly quickly.

I think getting more comfortable with that part of my psyche is kind of a combination of the above-mentioned changes- I give less of a crap about everything fitting together perfectly and logically so I’m more willing to go with my gut, and I value my energy and time enough not to waste it stuffing down feelings I find somewhat embarrassing. Another obvious reason is that many people find faith through hard times, and I’m not too proud to say that’s definitely at play- that “Things are going exactly the way they’re supposed to” line of thinking is pretty intoxicating when you feel like you’re going to lose your mind.

I’m Still a Love Machine

One thing has stuck that was already there, which is being super lovey dovey and expressive. I feel so grateful that my parents told us that they loved us about 50 times a day. We did something called “a family hug” most nights that had Will and I standing on chairs to attain parent-like height and involved an original song, and my dad continued telling us he loved us and was proud of us right until the very end. I’m also incredibly grateful that we said it back and that I have brought that overt mushiness into all of my close friendships and relationships. It got construed as clinginess (which it sometimes was) by some of my boyfriends, but BFD, even though it sucked at the time it turned out to be a litmus test that showed me they couldn’t hang.

I have no lingering regrets about things unsaid to my dad and sister because we said it all. The last texts between my two sisters, my brother and I were first Will and I filling them in about what had happened with our dad that day, and then basically a love fest of us all saying we loved each other and we were glad we had each other through this hard time. If it was in a movie, it would feel heavy-handed and foreboding. But we didn’t know what was going to happen later that night. That’s just how we spoke to each other, because that’s how all of us were raised to speak to the people we love. I am SO grateful for that and always liked that part of myself because it feels good to make other people feel valued, but now I really cherish and appreciate it. Even though I did acknowledge it to myself in a theoretical way (man, I really have always thought about death a lot, good god), now I KNOW from experience that any text or hangout with someone could be the last one. It sounds dramatic but it’s the truth. I really try to make sure that the people in my life know how much I care about them because it feels right to me, it feels good for both of us, and it’s a little emotional insurance in case, god forbid, something happens. If you have something nice to say, say it.

My biggest fear happened. Two-fold. Within 2 months. And it fully sucks. I am in my 30s, and I have a supportive husband and a safety net of loving people to help me through, although I ended up rethinking the whole “kids to focus on” thing and have instead used obsessing about The Real Housewives as a focal point (they’re doing GREAT, thank you.) I’ve gained some things but nothing can change what I’ve lost- what WE’VE lost. I only speak from my own experience, because particularly the grief that the part of my family that spent every day with my sister Karen is going through (they live a few hours away) is much more sticky and deep. I sometimes feel guilty for doing okay when they’re still walking through quicksand, and I don’t want what I’ve observed about my particular life and thoughts to minimize what’s been a seismic upheaval of their lives. But I want people to know- people watching loved ones suffer illness, people reeling from unexpected losses, fellow weirdos with Potential Death Date Countdown clocks ticking away- that although it’s not a graph with a line going straight up- there are a lot dips- eventually, things will be worse but better. Different but okay. Okay okay okay.