Taking Care - With Grief

[Vince]

This one is serious for a change. It's based on Taking Care, a poem written by Callista Buchen.



Full comic at: theoatmeal.com/comics/taking_care

[Cathy]

I deal with grieving people every day. Deal isn't the right word but I don't know how to describe it so someone else will have to come up with the word. I sit with those who are grieving, sometimes it's anticipatory grief, sometimes it's as someone watches their loved one pass on and sometimes it's someone grieving weeks or months after losing a loved one. The ultimate worse is when a parent is grieving their child. Just rip my heart out of my chest and stomp all over it. The grief is so intense.
Rosie grieves the loss of her mother and something I learned from her, because I've had very little loss in my life, far less than she's had, is to honor grief. You don't wish it away and you don't try to ignore it. You have to honor it. A big lesson from a little girl.

[Kim]

I was just talking with someone the other day about grief and honoring it.  I think honoring grief is a part of living life with intention.  Grief isn't something to fear or run away from because great grief means great love.  That was a lovely poem.

[Rosie]

Honoring grief sounds weird don't it? But it is something we got to do.  We got to honor it in our own personal way.  Something that I do not want to do is to be all like morbid about it. That is not honoring the person you are missing you know.  My grandma does that some with my mom.  She can suffocate in her sadness. I understand that in a way but I just got to remember and celebrate even my mom when she was living and not get stuck in her dying.  I don't know if that makes any sense.  I think we honor our loved one when we can take grief and celebrate no how.  I have figured it out that we are not ever going to stop missing somebody we love but we cannot forget there is a today just cause yesterday is gone.  We are all going to die someday.  Every single one of us.  It is just how it is.  We are born to die.  Crazy right?

[Ruby]

Your grandmother does take it to a crazy level. She needs some grief therapy or something.

[Vince]

Well, as hard as it is to lose a parent when you're young, I think it's even harder for a parent to lose a child. It's not supposed to happen that way. So I can see why Rosie's grandma was so profoundly impacted.

[mandy]

I think one of the reasons my mom has the mental health problems she has is because her first baby died from a heart condition.   I know her and my dad have argued about it because he says she wallows instead of appreciating what she's got.  I guess that's probably not fair of my dad to say to her but the truth is I sometimes feel jealous of my dead sister.  I'm never going to be as important to my mom as she is.

[Vince]

Mar 25, 2024 19:40:23 GMT -5 mandy said:

I think one of the reasons my mom has the mental health problems she has is because her first baby died from a heart condition.   I know her and my dad have argued about it because he says she wallows instead of appreciating what she's got.  I guess that's probably not fair of my dad to say to her but the truth is I sometimes feel jealous of my dead sister.  I'm never going to be as important to my mom as she is.

It's totally ok to feel that way sometimes, Mandy. I can imagine that the fact that your mom seems so preoccupied by your sister's death can make you feel like you don't matter as much. Have you ever tried talking to your mom about this?

[scarlette]

Mar 25, 2024 18:04:03 GMT -5 Vince said:

Well, as hard as it is to lose a parent when you're young, I think it's even harder for a parent to lose a child. It's not supposed to happen that way. So I can see why Rosie's grandma was so profoundly impacted.

Probably true but Rosie's grandmother does have some dysfunctional grief happening.  It's normal to miss someone but the intense longing she has for her daughter, she would probably lay in the ground with her if she could.  There's a point when you have to say, this is no longer normal and the person owes it to themself and everyone around them to get some counseling to help and guide them through the grieving process.  Look at how Mandy feels.  I doubt it's intentional on her mother's part but darn, you get help because you don't do that to people you love.  Rosie's grandmother has lunch with her dead daughter.  She literally goes to the cemetery with her lunch to visit.

[Vince]

Mar 25, 2024 22:55:27 GMT -5 scarlette said:

Mar 25, 2024 18:04:03 GMT -5 Vince said:

Well, as hard as it is to lose a parent when you're young, I think it's even harder for a parent to lose a child. It's not supposed to happen that way. So I can see why Rosie's grandma was so profoundly impacted.

Probably true but Rosie's grandmother does have some dysfunctional grief happening.  It's normal to miss someone but the intense longing she has for her daughter, she would probably lay in the ground with her if she could.  There's a point when you have to say, this is no longer normal and the person owes it to themself and everyone around them to get some counseling to help and guide them through the grieving process.  Look at how Mandy feels.  I doubt it's intentional on her mother's part but darn, you get help because you don't do that to people you love.  Rosie's grandmother has lunch with her dead daughter.  She literally goes to the cemetery with her lunch to visit.

No doubt, not saying she shouldn't get help, just that the grief may be a couple of orders of magnitude greater and there's a lot more inertia to overcome to pull herself out of that emotional tailspin. She may not even see the damage it is doing to the ones that are still in the land of the living with her.

And that's not to cheapen the grief Rosie feels either.

[Tatiana]

I don't like it when people assume that a parent's grief is greater than someone else's grief.  That could be true for many or most but I'm sure it's not the way it is for all.  Grief is personal.

I have a thought.  We say it's unnatural for a parent to bury a child but is it really?  Parents used to have 10, 12, 1000 children and hope that 3,4 or 5 would reach adulthood.  It doesn't seem unnatural if you think of it that way.
In my mind, it isn't that grief would be so much more for the parent than the child but different.  A child will lose their sense of safety and security for the present but a parent loses a part of their future.  Maybe it's easier to deal with and move forward with something in the present than it would be for something that's the future.
I think Rosie's grandmother lost two children.  A boy and then Rosie's mum. 

[Vince]

Fair point, although I'm not talking about times when child mortality was still high. But yes, grief is certainly different for everyone. Some handle it well and others, not so much.

[Cathy]

Rosie's grandmother did lose two children. A boy when he was a toddler and then an adult daughter. That's a lot of loss for one mother.  Grief is definitely a very personal journey.

[Kim]

We really have no way to measure the depth of someone's grief.  I would think losing a parent at a young age would be far more difficult than losing a parent in adulthood when we're not so reliant on our parents.  But, we all depend on our parents differently.  I can't even imagine losing a child and I've never had to.  I've never lost a child.  We've come close and even close was unbearable.  I've miscarried twice and that was hard.
We can't measure it but we can support someone and encourage them to seek help if they aren't progressing through their grief in a "healthy" way.

[Rosie]

The weird thing about when my mom died and I came here is I was thinking like she was going to come back.  I knew in my head that she wasn't going to cause I was not even in my home no more but I still was looking for her.  I don't know and maybe my grieving is not enough you know. I don't like to think of my mom as being dead and I don't want to be sad neither.  I want to remember my moms laugh is all.  I don't know. Something me and my doctor talked about before is how everything becomes before and after and so it is like being divided into 2 different people.  I know a lot of the anxiety I got is from my first mom dying and me being afraid that my now mom or my dad will die to.  I know we will all die some day but it worries me sometimes that when I go to sleep that they won't be there when I wake up again.  I don't know.  Crazy stuff.  My grandma did lose 2 and her first one was her little boy who drowned. That was before I was even born.