An Observation of Grief

It has been 2 months now since my father passed away. His sudden death, from a massive heart attack, left us all in shock, but was also made more upsetting by the fact that he lay on his patio flagstones for several days before anyone became aware of his passing. Days and nights went by while we remained oblivious, continuing our lives while nature took its course with his body. His dying left us with shock, and sadness, and grief, and regrets, but also a mountainous to-do list which we are slowly working our way through. An impromptu on-the-job education in the logistics death is what I feel I have had over the last 8 weeks, whilst also observing myself as I progress through the various stages and guises of shock and grief.

It really has felt like an illness, an impact to the physical and emotional body that has reverberations which seem like they will last for years - if not forever - albeit while they gradually lessen in amplitude. 

The most disturbing ‘symptom’ so far has been the impact on my cognitive function. I appear to have lost my mental capacities overnight, developing a rapid onset case of amnesia and a new found empathy for all my patients who complain of brain fog. Although - as one very astute teacher of mine kindly pointed out - of course this is happening, why would you want to be fully aware of everything when going through such an intense emotional experience? That reassured me. I have learned that there is a condition known as 'grief brain' whereby rewiring occurs that over time can "disrupt the diverse cognitive domains of memory, decision-making, visuospatial function, attention, word fluency, and the speed of information processing"*. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick and tick.

The other debilitating symptom is the total exhaustion that settled into my system a few days after finding out the news. As the incessant tears slowed their course, I then found myself passing out every night on the sofa as soon as I had eaten dinner - something that I had not experienced since the early stages of pregnancy. I would wake every morning feeling heavy and drowsy, limbs protesting as if they had been put through some kind of crossfit challenge when all I had done the day before was sit and cry and answer a few emails. This emotional hangover making it impossible to do anything efficiently or at speed - making the advice of another teacher especially pertinent. Advice that his teacher had given to him when his father passed away: slow everything down to a crawl. Breathe slow, eat slow, move slow. And train this slow pace daily, sit and breathe and do nothing else as you wake, even for a few minutes, then carry that pace throughout the entire day until you repeat it before you sleep.

As these two initial phases soften, and the fragility become a little more resilient, I am aware of a shift that feels as subtle as it does gargantuan. My father no longer walks this earth, I no longer have a father in human form, the man who gave me life has gone. I cannot seek his opinion, request his advice, hear his voice, see his face. His inappropriate remarks will no longer irritate me, his silly jokes will never again amuse my children, he will never again walk through my front door with his brown leather briefcase and overnight bag. The brutal finality of it all feels so hard to accept, although I know that time will make it more ‘normal’. It is what happens. We are born, we live and then we die. He was lucky to get a good run at the middle bit. 

I have been angry at myself for not being able to get over my difficulties with him, to get passed my irritations at his not behaving how I wanted my father to behave, at his not being what I wanted my father to be, but I also have to acknowledge that had he not been how he was, I would not be as I am. There is something reassuringly necessary in the unsatisfactoriness of it all. I initially wished I had had some warning, some little inkling that the rushed hug I gave him as we said goodbye after a tiring overnight flight back from a family holiday in Canada would be my last, or that after the phone call the following week I would never talk to him again. I just desperately wanted a chance to say a proper goodbye, to tell him I loved him and that despite all the difficulties I was grateful for everything he had done, and I could let go of the rest. But I can also acknowledge that we weren’t really able to have the conversations that I so craved to be able to have with him, he wasn’t able to express his emotions and would instantly shut down any of my attempts to get him to do so. Would that have changed had we both known how little time he had left? I guess I will never know. 

As the reality of his death gradually beds into my system, it feels like coming out of a bad fever. There is a relief at the lessening of the intensity of the experience, a catharsis from all the sweating/tears, and a sense that something is different now in my system. As a virus re-patterns our biology, grief feels like it has recalibrated my entire being. I am a different, fatherless, version of me now. I am finding a new gratitude for what he was, and am welcoming my ability to soften around what I previously held on so tightly to as his failings and wrongdoings, despite the aching poignancy of not being able to do so while he was alive. I have been told that communication is still possible in the spirit world, so find myself talking to him constantly in my head and my prayers just in case.  

*Neurologist Lisa M Schulman - https://www.americanbrainfoundation.org/how-tragedy-affects-the-brain/