I suppose it’s part of the process to be unaware of what stage of grief you are in, but I would have appreciated at least a little heads up.
My Grandmother Terry passed just days before I left the country, and her funeral started exactly 24 hours from when my plane would take off.
I thought I had cried all of the tears when I first got the call. She was in a hospital in East Texas and I was on the other side of the state having a final hurrah with friends. It was impossible for me to get to her to say goodbye, and she passed that night. I headed east the next morning.
Stage of Grief: Shock and Denial
I went through the next week numb. I was packing and finalizing documents and saying goodbye from somewhere other than reality. My limbs felt heavy. The funeral felt like a dream. Nothing felt right and I was only vaguely aware of something in me missing. left the country the next day eager to get to France but with only part of my senses caught up to speed.
I thought it would hit me when I disembarked in France. Grandmother was going to be the first one I called. Surely the jubilance of finally having made it and starting my great adventure was going to wake me up and bring me back to reality. But even then my heart felt dull and I would think:
“Oh, I’d like to call Grandmother but I can’t for some reason. Huh, that’s odd.”
Guilt and Heartbreak
She passed a year and two days from her husband, my sweet Granddad. A stroke while out at lunch is what the papers say, but me and the rest of the family know it was heartbreak.
Grandmother I had seen just a week before she passed. She had jump-scared me with a Halloween mask she had found while cleaning. We had laughed like best friends. Of my entire family she was the most supportive and excited about my move to France. Her eyes were so pretty blue, bright and speckled, and she’d tear up for thinking about all that I would experience and enjoy and learn once abroad and though months have passed it’s tearing me up to know I can’t call her to tell her about it now.
“Honey, go. Be happy and see the world, you’re only young once. I only wish I was coming with you.”
She is gone in an earthly sense but in my mind she’s still so present. Still my brain reasons, saying “I’d like to call her, but I can’t. How strange. Maybe tomorrow.”
Holding Back Tears in the Window Seat
One month later grief caught me. Window seat on my flight from Nice, France to Berlin, Germany for Christmas. I was marveling at the horizon of snow-capped alps I could see. Unlike anything else in the world with how they cluster and rise together so sharply. Mind and heart were open, drinking the sight in. But once open they contracted. Like a cold blast of wind I missed Grandmother and I knew she was gone in an unreachable sense. I knew I would not again get to hear her voice in this life and I had to hold back tears.
Through my whole two weeks in Berlin I felt the cold wind of her loss in my face. I’d see a monument, a cute store, or a sweet-faced German oma in the streets and I’d get so down. At times it made me angry. Mostly it made my chest feel heavy.
The reason my grief hit when it did is this: I was finally adventuring.
Upward Turn
Moving to France was like moving home. I knew the culture, the language, and the geography before I even stepped foot here. I was moving to a familiar place: expected and welcomed. But in Germany I was fully out of my element and in way over my head. Strange language that I can’t speak or read a word of and its freezing and it’s dark and my friend and I are lost in Berlin and all my senses are forced to catch up and grasp the reality that I’d lost my grandmother and that I was suffering her loss.
In Germany I was fully vulnerable and at the mercy of strangers. That’s when I was finally open to the first stages of grief.
Grief is not linear and I’m still crying as I write this. But at least now it’s allowed to move through me, and get to the point of remembering her in her joyful glory, in her wicked-good card game skills, her east Texas accent, in remembering the woman who loved me without condition and without question.
Reconstruction
As many before me have, I could wax poetic about the head and the heart and how they work together in funny ways. But I’ve got better things to do, so here’s the facts I’m sticking with: that my Grandmother is in Heaven, and from there she’s got the best view of all the adventures I’m up to, and she’s grinning from ear to ear for me.
I’m on the adventure now, Grandmother. And I’m going to be happy. I promise.