Nothing Matters But Love (My Reflections on Grief)

 

~ I asked her what grief felt like, and she replied, with sadness in her eyes,

 it’s like crushing loneliness~

 

     

     It’s been a long time, over a year, since I’ve shared something on my blog, and I apologize to anyone who thought it was going to be a daily or weekly or even yearly column.  I write almost every day, but so much has taken place over the last couple of years, and by the time I finish writing about one thing, some other atrocity happens and whatever I’ve written becomes irrelevant. It’s hard to stay focused, positive, and hopeful when the last few years have been filled with so much loss. Since I shared my last blogpost, I’ve lost my wonderful uncle to Covid, several dear friends to cancer or some other awful disease, our family dog, my faith in humanity when the vaccine became available and so many turned it down, and my faith in our country after the Jan. 6 debacle.  As a community we have lost sacred ground to wildfires (including an entire suburb in Boulder County), friends of friends to a crazy gunman at a grocery store (also in Boulder), hundreds of thousands to the pandemic, and for some of us, our hope for ever achieving equal rights for every single human being. 

     Most devastating of all, I feel like I might be losing my father.  Three months ago, he suffered not just one, but two massive strokes, and while he survived, his recovery has been a rollercoaster ride. The good news is, he’s been working hard at a care center to regain his strength, and he’s made some progress, physically. I seriously thought, around Christmas time, that we were losing him. He went through so much trauma-a week in ICU and another three weeks in a hospital room with a tube down his throat and restraints on his hands so he wouldn’t pull the tube out. Then, on top of it all, pneumonia. He was so debilitated, the doctors suggested putting him in palliative care, which meant they didn’t think he had much of a chance at survival. Thankfully, he went to a wonderful rehab center and was doing better, until he got an infection from the feeding tube in his stomach. Back to the hospital he went.  Unfortunately, in addition to feeling like he’s in a torture chamber (his words), he’s a bit checked out cognitively- or, like one of my friends put it, he’s in a different place. He has moments of clarity, and he knows his family, but I feel like a big piece of him is gone. He is so fragile and disoriented, and there is a lost look in his normally warm brown eyes.  It’s heartbreaking.  I feel like my 85-year-old vibrant, bright, handsome, hardworking, pillar of the community father drove off to the family restaurant in his new Jaguar one day, like he’s been doing for 30 years, and never really came back. I live and work with him, and now the house and the restaurant seem so empty and insignificant without him.  Yesterday I tried to clean his bedroom and I collapsed in the hallway from overwhelming grief. I used to complain about how messy and grouchy and staunchly conservative he is (I call him Archie Bunker and he thinks I’m a communist), but now I would give anything to clean up his red wine spills, vacuum up dog hair, and hear Fox News blasting from the family room. 

     What do I do with all this sorrow? I cry rivers of tears. Maybe not enough to solve our drought problems, but certainly enough to water an almond tree or two. Late at night when I’ve given up on sleep, I make my way to the kitchen, intending to make tea and ponder life. Instead, the tea grows cold, and I find myself with my head cradled in my arms, letting pools of tears drop onto the breakfast table. The same table where my boyfriend and I have had coffee with Dad almost every morning for the past seven years. The same table where we eat ice cream, or, in the old days, had late night cocktails . The same table that's been here for three decades, and even though I threaten to replace it, I never will. The tears fall and add more stains to the already messed up finish, but I don’t care.  What’s happening is real, it’s a big deal, and I need to feel it. I am not ready for how overwhelming and scary it is to suddenly be the caregiver for him, a man who has opened his home, and sometimes his wallet, to me many times over my crisis filled years. A man who has hardly ever missed one of my shows and supports my music career, although he secretly wishes I was an engineer. A man who I argue like crazy with over politics- usually at the infamous breakfast table. A man who I have a complicated relationship with because he left when I was a baby, and I never spent much time with him until my adolescence. He always tells people I didn’t like him until I turned 21, but that’s not true. I liked him the first time he came to one of my swim meets and brought me a John Denver album.  He may not have been a great husband to my mom at the time, but he never missed a child support payment, he was never late picking us up, he spent lots of time with us, including teaching me to ski with the best of them, and he is truly the patriarch of our entire family, extended included. Most of all he is fun and funny and kind, albeit his grumpy moments. 

     I’m always amazed at people who have been to hell and back and manage to look like they’re doing just fine. My neighbor recently lost her husband to cancer, and it astonishes me when I see her outside carrying on with normal activities-shoveling the drive, mowing the lawn, washing her car -as though nothing is amiss. But now I understand, life goes on, even though it seems like the world should stop. So here I am, doing my dad’s paperwork, going to the restaurant, visiting him at the nursing home, cleaning the house-as though nothing is amiss. Except, everything is amiss. Everything is changing, my heart is so heavy, and even though I’m surrounded by love, some days I feel completely alone. Shouldn’t it be ok to just stop and grieve for awhile? This has definitely been an era where bad things are happening to good people on a daily basis, and to just carry on like everything is normal, not just individually but even globally, feels unsettling. 

     My wonderful friends keep asking me what I need, is there anything they can do? I don’t say it out loud, but I think to myself, yes, I need everything!  I need someone to follow me around and pick up the pieces, like the driver’s license I dropped on the hospital floor and the car keys I left in the ignition overnight. I need someone to do my laundry and put gas in my car and run my errands and pick up the dog’s ashes from the vet. I need someone to crawl inside the gaping hole in my heart and hold it together. I need people to be kind and smart and wear masks and get vaccinated. I need people to stand up to injustice. I need us to go back to a loving society- if we ever were. I need people to care about climate change, my God the world is burning down!  But mostly I need people to understand that even though my father is elderly and has had a great life, I am not ready to lose him, and watching him struggle is devastatingly difficult.  I feel like I’m on one of those spinning rides at an amusement park and if I don’t hold on tight enough, I may go flying off into the universe, without Dad to save me. 

     Thankfully, despite the tremendous amount of grief I and so many others are feeling, the love that still exists in this tumultuous world makes it all bearable. The hugs, flowers, cards, sweet messages and phone calls from friends and family mean everything. Really. Sometimes all it takes to heal the crushing loneliness is a kind word from someone who understands what I’m going through. What I have learned, in these challenging times, is that nothing matters but love. Nothing. Surround yourself with people who love you and love the sh*t out of them back. Love your life. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Do whatever makes you happy. Cry if you need to, please, it’s cathartic.  Watch a funny movie and laugh, it’s also cathartic. Offer random acts of kindness. Forgive someone you’re angry with. And even though the world keeps turning, take some time for yourself, savor the repose, enjoy every second, because life can change with the snap of a finger. 

I write all of this with so much love and gratitude in my heart, thank you dear friends, for supporting me and letting me voice my feelings.

Peace, Love, and Namaste,

Sunnie