DEALING WITH GRIEF

Please don’t read any further if Summer is about.

(decided not to have this in our messages as I want our messages to be a happy place) It’s nothing bad, it’s just very sad and I’m really sorry to take you there in the morning but it might explain why the Unniverse is going in to bat for us and it is easier for me to write than say this in person. I don’t think that I could without breaking down – it’s just too hard.

It was the Illustrated Guide that triggered all this. In just another coincidence to add to our list – I have dated someone in the past who was a widow. Her husband got a brain tumour and they tried everything – even going to South American to Peru I think and walking into the desert to meet Shamen. When they got back to NZ they had another scan and the brain tumour had shrunk significantly and looked like it was nearly gone. Then she woke up one morning and he was gone. The grief was so bad her sister moved into the house to help her look after her young children as she couldn’t cope she was so distraught. Then her brother died a few weeks later.

Fast forward a few years later and we were dating. There were many times when something would trigger her – invariably it would be an old song and she would be inconsolable, so I would simply hug her and stay silent and be there for her. She would always say afterwards that for her that was best (the silence) not to try and talk – just to be. No doubt something will trigger you and I just wanted you to know that I will be there for you and just hold you and just be – whatever works for you. I’m in awe of how you climbed the grief mountain and how strong and resilient you are. I didn’t cope very well with it at all with my mother (sorry one more sad paragrah and then we’re done). I should have started a journal like you do. Instead I joked that I got the Corona virus as I would drink a box of Coronas after visiting Mum to deal with my grief. She honestly couldn’t have written a worse script to end her days.

I used to ring my mother every Monday around 6pm for our weekly chat. My work asked me if I could help fill in for their cricket team so I rang mum and left her a message that I would call her the following day (but I completely forgot). The neighbour would check on Mum and noticed her curtains weren’t pulled and on Wednesday she found her on the floor unconscious. She had fallen, knocked herself out and broken her hip. Fast forward say 8 weeks, she’s in a care home with pain relief on her back (she kept deliberately rolling of the bed to try and hurt herself) and her mood slowly changed. I would drive the 7 hours down to visit her each weekend then one day she asked me to try and send her on her way as she wanted to go. She had a large brown morphine bottle in her bathroom she wanted me to sneak it into the palliative care centre to give it to her through a syringe (that’s how Dad went – he asked the nurse at the hospice to double down and send him on his way). They never told me that he had cancer until right at the end when he was in there and I got a last minute phone call in Auckland, flew down but he was gone when I got there 😔.

Anyway, it became an awful burden. I also felt so guilty that I didn’t ring her on the Monday and that she might have been fine if I called – at least they would have found her a day earlier had I remembered to call her the next day (I never could play back her messages). I researched the dark web and the responsibility of trying to kill my own mother was like a dark cloud that just got darker. Each Friday I would drive back down and visit Mum and drink more Coronas and try and hatch a plan (or not) and then one day I went to get the bottle in the bathroom cupboard and it was gone (she must have also asked my older brother the same thing). It’s a horrible thing to say, but fortunately Mum got a chest infection that took her and the burden was no more.

I just wish I had dealt with the grief better. Alcohol just made things worse.

I’m so sorry to put you through all that but thanks for caring and making the effort and being brave and reading it. To me your Ahipara home is sacred for you and a time/place for you (and your memories). If you wanted to get away and we went up there, I can just go stay at the new houses my mates are building (4 or 5 of them completed so far).