Grieving

I've been trying to keep my fingers and mind busy lately so that my heart doesn't hurt so much. Our family suffered a terrible loss two weeks ago and it's been rough. I'm not sure how other people deal with grief but personally knitting has been a tremendous comfort to me because it's given me something to focus on, other than my sadness.

Friday before last, June 10th, Chuck, my step-father-in-law, died. It was just a day before Lilly left to spend a week in Florida with my parents. So we didn't tell her until she got back this past Saturday. She cried, so hard.

Honestly, I did too. That whole week she was gone was awful. The day he died Lilly and I actually saw him. My MIL has been watching her this summer and I went to pick her up earlier than usual that day so we could run a few errands before I dropped her off at my parents house that night. She said good-bye to him, that she loved him and would see him in a week. He said to write him a letter in Florida. By 6pm he was dead. Apparently he laid back down after we left and fell asleep, and never woke up. Most people seem to think it was a stroke. My MIL went to ask him what vegetable he wanted for dinner and he was gone. She's a widow twice over. Loosing both husbands in that same house.

Any other day I would have picked Lilly up around 5pm. She would have gone in to wake him to say goodbye and would have found him. I cannot imagine how that would have affected her. And I almost left with her without having her go in to say goodbye. I wanted to hurry and get our errands done. But I thought "She'll be gone a week...he'll miss her." So I told her to hurry. If I had known I'd have let her sit with him for hours...

My little girl has lost her Poppa. And all four of my grandparents are still living. How the fuck is that fair?

We held a memorial service for Chuck the following Tuesday. He didn't want a showing, didn't want to have people standing over his body. He also wanted to be cremated. So there was no funeral. I thank him for that. Having never lost a loved one before and not having to go through those difficult rituals was personally a blessing. I tried so hard to keep it together, to be strong for everyone else. My MIL kept thanking me for helping, for taking time off work to just *be there*. I felt like if I didn't do something I was going to loose it.

Jim picked at me for days after. I tried to be understanding, tried to understand it was his way of dealing with his grief. However Wednesday we spent the afternoon with his family and he just pushed me too far. We all went out to dinner and afterward he wanted to apologize but I told him I didn't want to talk about it. We drove home in silence. I got out of the car and started to walk in the house and he tried to talk to me about it again. I told him "I can't do this right now." And he said "Oh, so that's how it's going to be?" And I told him "Yes Jim, right now, that's how it's going to be." I went inside, he was going to head to his sisters, and I plopped down into my chair and started to cry. He came into the house and wanted to talk again, I wanted to scream at him. Instead, before he could even start I told him, through tears "I can't do this right now Jim. I've spent the last 5 days taking care of everyone else. Putting my own grief on hold because I thought it was too selfish of me to be so sad when everyone else was hurting. Seeing you, your sister, your family, so many people I love in pain has been unbearable. Right now I need to be alone. I need for it to be okay for me to be sad about Chuck, about everyone else's heartache. I need to be alone to take care of me, I can't take care of your heart right now because mine is grieving. Please leave me alone so I can take care of my own heart."

He looked a little....lost about it. And then he asked me if I needed him to take care of me. And I told him I needed him to go, to leave me by myself. So he did.

I broke down and wept. I almost cry now just thinking about it. I cried so hard I collapsed to the floor and shook. I've never had to deal with grief or loss like this. It's indescribable. And watching my sweet, sensitive girl deal with this has been hard. Especially when I'm so ill-prepared for it myself.

We all knew Chuck was sick, we just thought we had more time with him. He had been in so much pain, for all his life. Polio as a child. As an adult, diabetes, a car accident that screwed up his back, pancreatitis every other year, heart problems, oxygen problems, one leg was amputated years ago due to a diabetic related infection that started in his foot, then two years ago he fell and broke the other leg which left him confined to bed. That's what really did it we think. He couldn't get out of bed, couldn't do any of the things he loved. He gained so much weight...he was around 400 pounds. The night he died it took 6 firemen to get him out of the house. And it was well after 10pm before they got there. I didn't realize he would still be there when we went over. I have never been that close to a dead body. It was Chuck, but it wasn't. I got to say goodbye. I had to pull the quilt over his hand though, because the fingers had turned a yellowish color that just upset me.

I'm having a hard time getting past the fact that he was alive at 12:30pm and was dead by 6pm.

The whole family is grateful that it was a painless death. He hated hospitals as well, so dying peacefully, in his own bed at home, it was the most merciful death I could imagine. If anything it was justice for a life spent in so much pain.

But we are all so sad.