Quarantined at Dad’s deathbed: Too much loss all at once

Dear Cary,

Thanks for writing about grief. I’ve been grieving too, and any interpretation of grief helps me feel connected. I hope your lungs feel full of air for however you grieve. Telling stories or wailing that losses are always unfair or cycling uphill or laughing at a broken cup.

I wonder what you think about change and upheaval. How do we put back together relationships strained by past hurts, old ghosts, then grief? How do we get close to people hurting? I miss my family and friends, most often I feel lonely for my spouse. My family, spouse and I have been in isolation together for weeks. We chose to gather as my dad died of cancer.

Dad didn’t make it a year from his diagnosis, which came after a medical catastrophe the night before my doctoral defense. In pursuit of this degree I sometimes neglected my marriage, family, and friends. Dad was a scientist, and I wanted to be one too – to wonder and write and teach about the natural world. I thought there was an end to stress, some new chapter on the other side of the degree, so we sacrificed. My spouse and I terminated a pregnancy in those last months of my studies for fear that we were already on the rocks. We promised to make time for each other, soon.

Instead, this past year was a lonely and always chaotic blur. As the tumor infiltrated our lives, I spent all this time away from home. Relocated parents, put my work on hold, started and quit two jobs that I enjoyed. Began drinking more. Had an emotional affair over the internet with an old friend, writing each other. Was questioning and finding my sexuality. I ended it, I told my spouse and undermined a lot of trust. Squabbled with siblings over care as we helplessly watched each other in depression. Saw friends less and less from travel or exhaustion. Near the end, the pandemic had us quarantined together around Dad’s deathbed. Oh Cary, you know how past traumas and tired roles reveal themselves in haunted houses.

After the funeral, there is such hurt. I wonder what to do. I have felt shipwrecked. I want to consider how I’d even begin building something new.

Thanks for your writing, thanks for your thoughts.

Sincerely,

I’m a mess

Dear “I’m a mess,”

First of all, let’s start with the obvious: When terrible things happen in rapid succession, it’s normal to feel bad. Let’s not pretend that any advice from me, or any action you can take, is going to eliminate your current unhappiness.

Your task in the meantime is to manage your unhappiness, monitor its severity, respond to its demands, support yourself during it, and not exacerbate it. You could exacerbate your suffering by, say, taking drugs to feel temporarily better, or making big changes in your life out of anger or desperation or misguided ideas, or by withdrawing from society because in your unhappiness you feel unworthy of friendship. People do these things. They don’t help. What does help is accepting how you feel now and knowing that this is temporary.

The healing is already happening. You cannot see it but it is happening. You can do things to help. They may not make you feel better right away but they will help in the long run. You can get enough sleep, eat well, exercise, sing, dance, laugh, read, make love, take baths, shave. These things will help you feel a little better.

I’ve been watching Ricky Gervais on Netflix in the series After Life and it’s hilarious but also really uncomfortable to see him act like such a jerk. He’s in grief and he’s depressed and he has lost his wife to cancer and he feels like shit and he says some pretty rude things and treats people badly who don’t deserve it. It’s so great! It feels true. A lot of us have been there.

Thank you for writing to me. I know that you are suffering and I know it often helps to tell another human being what happened. I also want to say that this letter touched me deeply and I have worked hard on this column and still feel that I have only scratched the surface. There’s a lot going on here!

One more thing. People have this notion that talking about it always helps. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes all you can do is to carry the stone of grief in your chest and keep on walking. And sometimes people ask you to talk about it but they don’t really want you to talk about it, they want to talk about themselves, and so you start to open up and realize they’re not really listening and then it can be tempting to try to explain or to get selfish people to make good on the conversational bargain–you know, don’t you, that I am carrying a stone of grief in my chest and you asked me to talk about it and now you are doing all the talking and I still feel like shit so, like, thanks a lot … so don’t let people goad you into talking about it if you don’t want to, or if you don’t think they’re really going to listen.

The grief will eventually subside whether you talk a lot about it or not. Guard your feelings when you must.

That doesn’t mean block it out. You have to grieve. You must be awake to receive the gift. The grief will guide you through loss toward acceptance. The gift of grief is its searing, cleansing intensity.

OK, I’ve said enough.

Focus on the return. You will get better.