22
Nov
2014
0

Grief future, past and present

I had a real aha moment this week. A lightbulb flashed on in my head and I wondered how I’d ever managed to see things in any other way.

My epiphany was to see my grief as rooted in thoughts of the future. “Grief is opportunity cost” (no wonder economics is the dismal science). All my sad thoughts were thoughts of the future. Thinking about the way life should be. Mary should be here and our plans for the future should be unfolding.

I’ve always avoided the use of the word should, thanks to my father, who on hearing me (or anyone) ever utter the word would echo it back “should, should?”. His thinking – that the word is laden with subjective judgement – I agree with, but in this case it is right word. Mary should be here with Harry, Cara and I.

Funny thing about sudden insights, they’re often plain wrong. Thinking about the temporal nature of thoughts and sadness over the rest of the week I realised that grief isn’t just in the future. Getting to that point of understanding feels important, a little journey in itself.

I was chatting to a friend who had generously shared her own grief story. Our stories are all so different. It’s difficult not to compare and contrast. I found myself immediately thinking about the differences and similarities between her story and mine.

(As an aside, I’ve found people sometime feel awkward sharing their stories, or wanting to apologise for sharing because they feel the source of their grief may not be as significant. Please don’t hesitate. If you feel like sharing please do. It’s finding out how to get through this that’s important, not the relative size of the grief event. Sharing and understanding helps.)

My initial internal response to my friend’s story was that she didn’t have the backstory I had. Her loss (though no less significant) was not borne out of two decades of knowing someone and all the associated memories. Therefore, I concluded, if there are no past memories to think about, then her grief must be about the future. Her loss must be about the future life never lived. That’s it! It’s the same for me, I thought. I don’t get sad thinking about the past, that’s where I’ve got happy memories of Mary and our family. I get sad thinking about the future. I’m not quite sure why this felt like a revelation, but it did. It also ignores the waves of sadness that sometimes appear out of nowhere.

My friend, helped me see where my thinking went wrong. Her grief is also in the lost past. In my case it’s just that time hasn’t quite moved on far enough for me to see it. As I eventually said, “bugger me if it isn’t just everywhere”.

I do have one recent memory that keeps returning. The very day after Mary passed away, our daughter Cara lost her first tooth, and the tooth fairy forgot to come that night. Mary should be there in that past memory and the memory would be so much better for her presence. I feel sad each time I think of it. (By the way the tooth fairy was forgiven. Cara decided the following day that the New Zealand exchange rate was unfavourable and the tooth fairy was probably waiting until we got back to Australia. Luckily the tooth fairy got the message and was likely feeling bad for any confusion caused, so the per tooth rate doubled from two to four dollars.)

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I revisited my road metaphor. I realised that the point where my road changed doesn’t move, but I’m moving forward. The space between that point and me will grow and fill with memories of the walking, some will be happy and others contain an emptiness, a longing for Mary, for what should have been. I also realised that looking forward, the road is always changing, it’s not predestined. It was always changing up ahead, even when Mary was here. Sometimes you can’t even see it.

When Mary was in her first coma, following our daughter Ellen’s death in 2003. I vividly recall that I could not see the future at all. I went looking for it at times but the future was like a room with a door. It wasn’t that the door was closed, or locked, the door had actually vanished. The future was not there. I have never had the same sort of experience again. It was a short time in my life where I was living in the moment. I think about that experience a lot.

When Mary was in her coma following the bicycle accident in 2012, and I had no idea what level of damage she’d sustained, it wasn’t the same experience. Nor has it been the same experience this time. Harry and Cara force the future on me. They’re beckoning me at the open door. When it was just me, I could afford to just subconsciously block out the future, and stumble from one set of bad hospital sandwiches to the next. But now there are kids to get to school and pack lunches. The future holds all sorts of opportunities for worry, fear and sadness.

I’m wondering now whether I was right. Grief is opportunity cost, but it includes the thoughts of past opportunities, not just the future. This seems a little obvious, but for some reason it seems to help me.

What of the present? If I define the present, not as this week or today, but as this very moment, then there are brief escapes. If I am completely present then there are moments where grief and sadness don’t penetrate. I was with Cara playing at the beach last weekend. She was having so much fun jumping over waves and riding her surf mat. It was wonderful to watch. Those are moments to hold onto.

My grief may lie in future thoughts now and increasingly in the memories that are created, but in this particular moment as I type and am absorbed in the actions of my fingers across the iPad’s screen it is not here. Unfortunately though it’s a very slender gap – this moment – that separates the past from the future, but I feel like it offers glimpses of life without Mary which is hard to imagine any other time.

3 Responses

  1. Kathleen Winter

    My dear Trent,

    Through tears, I feel your words, thoughts and reasoning so
    poignant. Whilst coping with your own grief, you are helping
    others. Keep writing, you have a gift.

    Love Kathleen x

  2. Peter Jordan

    As a father, reading the thoughts, and feeing the hurt of a son , through tears of pain, and gut ache of unfairness & smiles of admiration, Trent, I am in awe of your logical & emotional persistance to look at and take on your grief.
    I am filled with hope as I observe you relating to and loving Harry & Cara.

    Dad

  3. Annika van Aswegen

    Hi Trent,

    I pray that time will help to widen the gap and stretch that moment of hope for a future that will not be cloaked in sadness, and that in time you will collect enough happy memories with your children to establish a new balance between past and future. You and your children are in my thoughts and prayers.

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