I’ve generally led a fairly carefree life. “Difficult times” usually translated to either heartbreak or minor everyday life hurdles. Up until a month ago.
On December 18th I found out that my mother was admitted to the hospital. Her voice sounded pretty weak on the phone, but she told me it was nothing serious, just her hematocrit dropped at 17. She had anemia for all her life and I didn’t know much about medical stuff, so I wasn’t worried. On December 19th, she was transferred to the best hospital in Greece and I started suspecting that a hematocrit of 17 might actually be serious. I took the first flight to Athens and went straight to the hospital, where I stayed for the next two weeks. On December 21st we found out it was pretty damn serious, and it had a name too: Acute Myelogenous Leukemia.
Scary as it may sound, the doctors were very reassuring. “Maria, you are going to get well” said one of them, looking at her in the eye. We were told that it was a relatively easy case and that with chemo, she had 89% chances of being completely cured in a month. She started treatment on the same day, because we had to rush; acute leukemia progresses very rapidly.
The first week went by with a breeze. The blood transfusions gave her her energy back and she looked like the person I always knew. She was on the phone all the time doing business or laughing with us, even joking about her condition. We were all very optimistic.
After that first week, chemo kicked in. Apparently, it takes a while. She started having all the nasty side effects you hear about. She was becoming increasingly weaker and weaker and we needed the nurses more and more frequently. She stopped eating. She started losing her spirit. I still hadn’t lost my optimism.
On January 3rd, she was experiencing the peak of the chemo aftermath. She had trouble breathing and was at her weakest. She looked like a dying person. It was the first time I truly felt worried. The doctors repeatedly reassured me all was just run-of-the-mill for chemo patients. I rarely trust my instincts so I believed them. Eventually, at 5am we said goodnight and we both went to sleep. She looked better and I had regained my optimism.
“Please wake up, you need to get out of the room immediately!” I opened my eyes and saw the blurred image of a nurse, which was becoming clearer as my brain caught up with the abrupt waking. How long had I been sleeping? It didn’t feel long enough. I turned right, towards my mother’s bed, and saw a bunch of doctors around it. So many that I couldn’t catch sight of her at all. The nurse accompanied me outside. I tried to get a glimpse of what was happening and she told me not to look.
“Don’t look”?! This can’t be good. I had seen enough medical drama TV shows to know what that meant. My mother was probably dying and there was nothing I could do about it, short of waiting outside and attempting a lame ass attempt at a prayer: “Hey God, I don’t think you really exist, but in case you do, please make sure my mom survives. She’s too young to die yet and I love her too much for that, mmkay?”.
Eventually her doctor left the room and told me we needed to talk. “Is she alive??” was my first question. She reassured me she was, but there had been some complications and she passed out. She took me to an office where she explained what had happened, in more detail than I needed at that point. All I cared about was finding out what her chances of not making it looked like. “The way I saw her? I’d say 90%”. I froze. After a few seconds, my natural optimism trumped reason and I desperately clung to that 10% of hope I was left with. Not for long though.
A few minutes later the phone rang. I got chills. The doctor picked it up, she listened, exchanged a few words and hung up in less than a minute. Her expression told me the news before her words could have a chance at it. My mother had passed away. Apparently, chemo had weakened her heart so much that she had a heart attack and couldn’t be resuscitated.
My mother had just died. My. Mother. Had. Just. Died. Dead, like never, ever coming back. I kept repeating it in my head and it was all empty words, like it was about somebody else, or a movie. I couldn’t believe it. At first, I thought it was a bad dream and frantically tried to get myself to wake up. I had seen such dreams before, it’s just another one, right? Eventually I realized that this time, reality was the nightmare. I wanted to know more. Did she suffer? Her doctor reassured me she was unconscious the entire time and felt nothing. Ultimately, despair kicked in. I felt utterly lost and devastated. It’s been two weeks since, and I’ve played this scene in my mind more times than I can count. It’s so vivid in my memory it’s like watching a youtube video.
My world collapsed in a single moment and is still slowly rebuilding, but it’s a whole new world. Different. In some ways better, as it pushed me to reevaluate my life, my priorities, my goals, which people I want around me and which compromises I’m willing to make for all of the former. I’m still discovering all the different ways my mother’s passing changed me, but one of them is pretty easy: It made me realize how unbelievably short life is. Too short for serious compromises, too short for being afraid to pursue your wildest dreams, too short for being weak. You only get a few decades to live, use them wisely because you’re never getting a second chance.
My mother was the person closest to me, the person I loved the most in the world. She wasn’t just a role model and an amazing mother to which I owe everything I’ve achieved. She was also my best friend. But I survived and if I can survive that one, I can survive any disaster. In the process, I’ve actually found out I’m pretty good at dealing with loss, as I went through the five stages of grief in a matter of days. I still cry from time to time and I certainly miss her, but mostly I’m just grateful for the 26 years our lives overlapped.
Dealing with grief
Here’s a list of things that helped me:
- I avoid looking at pictures of her, going through her stuff, reading her old emails unless absolutely necessary. I know I eventually will have to, but I’ve noticed it gets easier with time, so why do it now, when it’s still tough?
- Depression over grief is largely self-inflicted. It’s not just the “I will never see this person again” thought that makes us sad, it’s also multiple peripheral thoughts like “Could I have done anything to make her feel better?”, “Could I have done anything to save her?”, “She didn’t live a full life”, “She died too young” etc. It’s largely a mind game that yourself plays on you. Think of a few rational arguments to answer these thoughts every time they pop into your head. For example, here are my answers:
- “Could I have done anything to make her feel better?” No matter how amazingly I treated her, I would still wonder about that. It’s just my mind playing games with me, so please stop.
- “Could I have done anything to save her?” Probably not. She had doctors around her 24/7. I did nothing wrong by trusting them so that’s a pointless conundrum.
- “She didn’t live a full life” She was happy with what she was doing. Even if it’s not a full life by my standards, it was by hers.
- “She died too young” She died at 60, which is much older than other people can hope for. She died after having had children and seeing them grow, and after a full career. She never got old and wrinkly which she was terrified of.
- “If I knew, I could’ve done X” But you didn’t know, and there was no way you could know.
- This might sound cliché but don’t take the people you love for granted. Don’t forget to contact them often and don’t forget to tell them you love them. Although I’m generally optimistic, I didn’t take my mother for granted. Not sure if it was intuition, but I was often worried I’d lose her for the past few years. I told her I loved her and what she meant to me pretty frequently and we talked a lot, either on the phone or in person. When she was at the hospital I spent two weeks on her bedside, sleeping in the guest bed. All this is a great source of comfort now that she has passed away.
- Don’t be alone. Ideally, be with people who are also grieving over the same loss. I moved in temporarily with her brother’s family with whom she was very close. They also have two toddlers running around all the time which makes it harder to be sad.
- If possible, try to be in a place where you don’t have memories with the deceased person.
- Find friends who have been through the same (in my case, losing a parent) and talk to them. It helps you realize you’re not alone and they’re the only people that can understand what you’re going through. If you have no such friends, you can always find people online with similar experiences.
- Take time off work if possible, and do things you enjoy. Don’t push yourself to get back on track quickly. Nobody will blame you for it.
- Don’t push yourself to deal with the practicalities (inheritance etc) immediately. Give yourself some time to grieve first. The only practicality you need to deal with immediately is the funeral, but the funeral home takes care of most of that stuff.
- Reconsider your life. Try to set new goals and have new things to look forward to. I know she wouldn’t want me to stagnate and I’m not going to let grief get the best of me.
Religion, or lack thereof
I have been an agnostic atheist for all my adult life. I don’t believe it’s likely that “she’s in a better place” or that “her time had come” or that “God wanted her with him”. Although I envy believers for having that kind of comfort, they don’t seem to handle grief any better than atheists.
You will find that no matter what your beliefs are, a big loss might make you question them. If you’re an atheist, you may desperately try to cling on some notion of afterlife and if you’re a believer you might start being infuriated with God and his decisions. Try to remember your reasons for having those beliefs in the first place. You knew death existed, it’s now a new discovery. Don’t get carried away because it’s now relevant to you personally.
Music
Music has always helped me get through difficult times. When that translated to heartbreak, it was trivial to find songs that could temporarily become my life’s soundtrack. However, there aren’t as many (non-instrumental) songs that could resonate with death and grief. People are far more frequently heartbroken than bereaved. I did however have a few in my library that either related or were ambiguous enough to be open to interpretation. Here’s a list of some of them:
- Paint it, black - Rolling Stones
- Bittersweet Symphony - The Verve
- Time - Pink Floyd
- Goodbye cruel world - Pink Floyd
- Second Life Replay - TSOOL
- Wish you were here - Pink Floyd
- Everybody Hurts - R.E.M.
- The End - The Doors
- Street Spirit (Fade Out) - Radiohead
- Knockin’ on heaven’s Door - Bob Dylan
- The Quest - Christopher Bryn
- Dust in the Wind - Kansas
- Jesus to a Child - George Michael
- Hurt - Christina Aguilera
- Sound of silence - Simon & Garfunkel
- Adagio for Strings - Samuel Barber (The only instrumental in the list — couldn’t resist including it)
- The show must go on - Queen
I tried to avoid including instrumental songs, as even though I love them, they’re not everyone’s cup of tea. Songs are a bit like people: It’s harder for a stranger to comfort you than someone you know well. That’s why I picked well-known songs I’ve heard a million times before, instead of looking for new ones, even if they might fit the situation better.