It wasn’t a shock by any means. My mom had been an Alzheimer patient for over 16 years. Her death didn’t come as a surprise, but when the text message showed up in my phone, it seemed like it all happened somehow too fast anyway. Only a day earlier, I had been in contact with my father who told me that mom wasn’t eating anymore, and that she now had a feeding tube. I asked him how long does this stage usually last, and he said he had not dared to ask the nurses. When I hung up the phone, I did some research and found that the estimated life span with a feeding tube was about a week, sometimes even up to 30 days. My mom’s passing was near but not imminent, I thought.
Well, it didn’t take 30 days. It took a day and a half from that phone call, and when I noticed the text messages and phone call attempts from my sisters, the guilt hit me. Would I have made it to Finland to say goodbye if I had bought a plane ticket immediately when I heard mom didn’t eat anymore? My sisters had arrived to the Northern part of Finland from Helsinki on time, and I was the only one who didn’t get to say goodbye to our mother.
But the truth was that I didn’t want to see her anymore. I had visited her a little less than a year ago and it had been difficult for me to see her like that. The withering, fragile body had not been my mom for a long, long time. Technically, it was still her, but her spirit and personality were not in that body anymore. She did not talk, nor recognize me, nor even react to my touch. There was no indication that my visit had been noted by her in any way. She had been gone already for years, and I didn’t want to see my mom like that anymore. What difference would it have made if I made it there to watch her die? But the guilt came, nonetheless.
And that guilt was followed by anger, depression, and loneliness. I had been angry for such a long time, and now those feelings flared up again. I was angry at my dad for not telling me that my mom had stopped eating already a week before our conversation. I was angry that he had told me not to book that flight right away. I was angry at my mom for never taking the time to heal her childhood wounds. I felt that if she had treated herself better, without sacrificing her own energy to guide us, feed us, and enable us to have the life that we had, maybe Alzheimer’s would not have gotten the best of her. I was angry at this horrible disease that leaves a person breathing but takes away everything that makes them themselves. A disease that strips off the dignity and the very human out of us. The anger, the bargaining, the what ifs. The meaninglessness of it all. How does it happen that in one moment someone is here, and then just like that, they are not? And nothing changes. Was I supposed to feel some shift? Why did it seem like everything was exactly the same as ever? What is the point of living when the dying doesn’t impact anything?
I’m familiar with depression. The sneaky companion that doesn’t necessarily make you broody nor suicidal, but silently turns you numb. Nothing feels like anything. No interests, no motivation, no emotion, no feelings. After my mom passed away, I wasn’t behaving much different from my normal self, but I sensed the lack of emotions in me. I felt numb, like in a cloud, without memories. The sadness made me quiet. It suffocated the enthusiasm for having conversations. At work, I hid in my office, sneaked out for lunch on my own, and left the building hoping no one would see me and talk to me. I isolated myself avoiding people and casual small talk on the hallways. I didn’t want to go to happy hours or social gatherings. I pretended that I didn’t see the text messages inviting me to connect with others. Eventually, my colleagues noticed that I wasn’t making my “rounds” anymore chatting to people and asking how everyone was doing. I was deep in introspection. Looking inside. Staring at the void within. That’s where my mind was.
I didn’t find energy to exercise, even though I knew that physical activity would have probably cheered me up a bit. I felt constantly exhausted, and the only time my energy peaked was when I was drinking. I felt more like myself while a bit tipsy, which was slightly concerning to me, since I pretty much wanted to be tipsy all the time just to feel “normal”. I wished that my low energy state wouldn’t continue so long that I would have to start considering anti-depressants. I had sworn not to take those anymore. While the medication had been a heaven-sent when I fell into depression after the birth of my third child, I was afraid of the horrible side effects and wanted to try everything and anything to avoid going back on medication.
But I wasn’t being myself. I didn’t want to wake up in the morning to go to my scientist job, nor was I looking forward to my coaching calls either. I felt tired, bored, and even slightly resentful toward everything and everybody. I usually love doing readings for people at the psychic fairs, but this time I felt drained and unenthusiastic. The conversations and supporting others didn’t fill me with energy and inspiration like before, and I seriously started doubting my calling.
Finally, I surrendered. I told myself that it’s ok for me to be sad. I am grieving. I lost my mother and no matter how inevitable it had been, I was experiencing loss, sorrow, and grief. I said to myself that it’s ok not to always be on my best behavior and performance. It’s ok not to always be the happy and cheerful one. It’s not my burden to support others when I need to focus on supporting myself. I acknowledged my sadness and said to myself, it’s ok. I’m in this now, and I don’t need to fight it. I am allowed to be depressed. If I try to resist my feelings and make them wrong, I will just end up guiding more energy on the depression. I realized that the fight against my own emotions is just going to strengthen the opponent in me. So, I asked myself if I can allow this experience of depression to just be. Accept, that this is how it is for me now.
And eventually. Bit by bit. My mood started picking up.
There was so much power in just allowing myself to be in my experience. Not make my emotions wrong, bad, or something that needs to be fixed or changed. The push and desire to feel something else than what I was feeling was holding me even more tightly in the sadness. When I finally stopped fighting, the grief lost some of its grip inside me.
Sadness will always be part of life. We will lose people we love, and we will go through grief. Accepting loss takes time. It has now been about four months since my mom passed away. Going through all the stages of grief was not a tremendously long process for me. I am doing my “rounds” again at work. I can feel my energy returning. I have started exercising again and felt uplifted and exhilarated after my latest psychic fair. At times, I dip back into melancholy, but I know I won’t stay there too long. The process continues with less intensity. And life continues after the loss, even when one’s interior world seems to slow down for a bit while we process things.
I’m grateful for my experience. Happy to find myself on the better side of my grieving. Grief opens our hearts to compassion and helps us connect to others on a very raw and fundamental level. Grief reminds us that we are all part of something bigger than ourselves. We are all part of humanity. While it’s easy to see the value in happy moments of life, when we radically also accept our negative emotions like guilt, anger, and depression, we give our souls the full experience of being human. Both light and dark. And that is valuable.
Dealing with loss can transform the way we look at ourselves, the world, and our connections to the ones we love. It seasons our outlook on life and provides us maturity to support others. When the loss in permanent, it changes us. There will always be the time before, and the time after, and we now must form our thoughts accordingly, while we continue living without the subject of our loss. Going through grief and accepting loss will become our embodied wisdom. Our loss becomes a part of our growth as individuals. And this is transformation. Our loss becomes part of our abundance. Despite the temporary numbness that makes us feel like nothing changes, something always does. Something did shift in me as well. I can now view grief as a blessing that shows us how deeply we loved. When grief washes over us, it’s just love revealing itself to us in a different form. It’s another side of the same energy. And we will forever be richer for the experience.
