Grief and Goodbyes.

Travel allows for a kind of intimacy between two people, a kind of immediate knowing that I have found is impossible to replicate in any other life circumstance. 

When you are stuck with a person, for weeks or months on end with them at your side every waking moment, sharing long rides in a car or a plane together, sharing every meal together; you get, perhaps sometimes by force, to know someone on a deeply intimate level. You can meet a perfect stranger traveling, and a special kind of bonding very often ensues at an accelerated pace and level of depth, which, in day-to-day life, might take months, or even years to develop.

You have no distractions except each other, and perhaps in many cases, no internet or cell service, so you pass the time talking with your travel partner, day in, and day out.

If you are a traveller, you know what I mean.

Nearly three years ago, I went to Kenya for work for two weeks, and a new trainer a midwife, who’s name I will leave out because she was a deeply private person and I am not sure she would want her name out there, was the clinician who travelled with me.

I had never worked with her before, and I actually hadn’t even ever met her. We had spoken on the phone twice, and she came highly recommended from my fellow colleague and trainer, and now dear friend, Karen.

I had a photo of this new midwife trainer, and I literally picked her out of the crowd at the Nairobi airport.

She was hard to miss: She was a tiny little lady, with big, beautiful curly brown hair, and wore heavy, dark rimmed glasses. She would be easy to find anywhere, but in Kenya, she was impossible to miss.

She was from Norway, and had moved to the US in her young adulthood, and married an American man, and they went on to have a son together. While she had been in the US for quite a long time, she was still firmly Norwegian, which I loved.

We spent two weeks together in Kenya, conducting clinical site visits. The travel days were long; sometimes we would spend 6 hours in the car a day, with just the two of us to keep each other company. We shared every meal together, spent hours talking about our global health work, life in Seattle, marriage, children, love, my Mom’s ALS diagnosis, women’s health, politics, and just life.

She very quickly became a ‘kindred spirit’ to me. It was still relatively early days in my Mom’s diagnosis – less than a year from when we found out, and I was still coming to terms with the diagnosis and how my life was being radically reshaped from what I had always imagined it would be. I spoke to her about my fears for the future regarding my Mom. I talked to her about deeply intimate things that I had never talked about with anyone at that point:

That I deeply wanted my Mom to see me get married.

What my life would look like when I had a baby without my Mom being able to be a part of my own transition in becoming a Mom.

What it would be like for my future children to not have a grandmother.

Maybe it was because she was a mother herself, but I felt such an incredible connection with her in such a short period of time. She seemed wise beyond her years, and was I think the best listener I had ever met, in my entire life.

When I talked about my fears, hopes, dreams, and anxieties for the future, she didn’t offer advice; instead, she would look at me in an all-knowing way, and just nod. 

She got it.

She had worked in Afghanistan as a midwife during the war, and had extensive experience living and working around the globe, so we were able to speak candidly about some of the enormously difficult things we’ve seen and experienced while engaging in this work. She had such a sage wisdom about her.

About ten days into the trip, one night at dinner after I had gotten off of a call with my Mom, she asked me about my boyfriend.

I was at the time dating someone who I was deeply unhappy with, but was just plodding along with because around 6 months into my Mom’s diagnosis, I became consumed with the idea that my Mom must see me get married. I threw myself aggressively into dating.

I was on a mission: Not to find a boyfriend, but to find a husband. This individual wasn’t a bad guy by any stretch, just not the right one for me.

We were seated outside at our hotel, poolside, in the early evening. She reached across our candlelight table, grabbed my hand, looked at me and said,

“I never hear you speak about your sweetheart. I don’t even know his name. You don’t seem happy.”

I immediately collapsed into heavy, deep, and painful sobs.

She was right, I was not happy.

I wasn’t happy; I had become deeply committed to my mission. My mission was watching my Mom see me get married, and not to be in a happy and fulfilling relationship. This guy seemed totally game, so there I was, trapped in an immensely unhappy relationship.

When I regained a little bit of composure, I looked at her, and I just nodded. I told her about my “mission.”

She squeezed my right hand, which she was still holding, and told me the single greatest piece of advice I have ever received, and may ever receive.

She looked me in the eyes, with such an intense compassion and knowing emanating from her, and she said:

“You cannot be intentionally unhappy just because your Mom is dying. She would not want that. You will suffer enough.”

I broke down; violently sobbing at the table. Sat by the pool, at a romantic candlelight table, at a crowded restaurant.

It was such a release that I wasn’t even aware I needed. I think I was looking for someone to give me permission to let go of my mission.

Maybe it was because she was a mother herself, that I could finally hear and take her advice to heart, advice that others had given me, albeit less sagely or eloquently. Or maybe it was because she was wise beyond her years. I didn’t know.

I eventually regained composure, and blew my nose into a shitty rough, red fabric napkin, as one does when at a nice restaurant. It made us both laugh.

I was resolute that I would end this relationship. And I did. I literally went from the airport to his house upon my return home, and ended it.

She and I continued our friendship in Seattle, meeting for lunch and coffee over the next few years. Sometime last summer, Karen and I, the friend and colleague who introduced me to this woman, were working in Kenya together. The topic of our friend came up; Karen asked if I had heard from her in awhile. I said that my emails had been unreturned for quite some time.  She sat with the information for a few moments, and then said,

“She must be sick again.”

My face clearly gave me away, because she immediately said, “Oh god, you didn’t know?”

I found out that she had a brain tumour, which was terminal, and had known for many years.

I was suddenly spinning, thinking about our time together, her not mentioning it. I was absolutely shocked, I thought we had shared so much, how could she have not mentioned it?

I then realized, she probably didn’t disclose this for many reasons, but almost assuredly due to the fact that very quickly learned that I was a daughter currently losing her mother. 

It likely hit too close to home to her – her son, under the age of ten, would someday experience all of these things that I was voicing out loud to her. Things I am confident she had thought of, but I was embodying them, right in front of her. 

A living, breathing, grieving, crying, daughter.

How will I be able to go on without my Mom?

What will I do without her?

Had I known my friend was sick, I don’t know if I would have said as much as I did. Perhaps I would have felt like I needed to be more sensitive, guarded, and compassionate about her own situation.

In that moment, I realized that not only had she given me the best advice I may ever receive in my life, but also she did me an incredibly unselfish kindness:

She let me be a daughter losing her Mom, instead of she being a Mom losing her life.

She listened, and consoled, and looked at me in her all knowing ways. Her eyes spoke volumes; they seemed to understand my pain in an intimate way. I thought, well, that was just because she is who she is.

I realized it was because she did understand my deep, raw, grief, only in reverse.

How incredibly selfless of her, to just listen, encourage, and affirm my deep pain.

I will never be able to repay that incredible kindness she showed to me.

I found out a few weeks ago, from Karen, that our friend died while Karen and I were recently in Kenya in February, and the funeral had already been held while we were away.

I was going through a lot of my own turmoil, in part from the traumatic accident we were in, and in part my Mom and other issues, so I couldn’t totally process the information she gave me.

Later that same day, I was at my parent’s house for dinner. My Mom, for the first time I had ever seen, had to be in her bed hooked up to her bypass breathing machine because she was struggling to breathe without it.

My Mom’s sole form of communication now is through text, and when she is in bed, she cannot do that.

So I went into the room, sat in her wheelchair that was next to her bed, and just sat with her. She laid on her right side, and she suddenly looked so fragile to me, so mortal.

I sat in silence, and listened to the rhythmic pattern of her breathing machine.

In. Out.

In. Out.

Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.

I sat there, and was overcome with an incredible wave of raw, painful grief.  I swallowed the tears down before they bubbled up.

She pointed to her phone; I figured she had typed out a message prior to getting into bed. I opened it, went to the notes section, and scrolled down to the most recent note.

She had typed out that she needed my sister and I to help my Dad setup payment for his health insurance, because it was too hard for her to use the computer anymore. She wanted us to set it up on automatic payments.

It felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.

I struggled to keep my composure, but assured her we would do that tonight.

There was more subtext between the lines of that text, than anything I have ever read.

It was:

The end is coming. I need to get all of my affairs in order. I won’t be around or able to do this soon.

A few days later, I was getting a massage, to treat some of my injuries from my car accident. As I lay on the massage table, face down, I suddenly thought about the enormity of everything that had happened in the last few weeks. My friend’s death, the car accident, my Mom’s rapidly deteriorating condition, the reality that I am going to lose her, but also about the incredible kindness my friend showed me while in Kenya years ago, and the powerful, literally life-altering advice she gave me.

It all came crashing down on me like waves. The tears began to fall.

I was able to regain composure enough so it wasn’t obvious, and thankfully my massage was about to end.

I rushed out of the office, into a literal torrential downpour, and broke down on the sidewalk.

The tears poured out, and the pelting rain washed them away.

I was grateful for the rain; it felt cleansing.

My car was two blocks away, and for the two blocks, I sobbed, heavy, loud sobs, and continued to have my tears washed away by the rain.

Letting everything out, everything go.

When I got into my car, the crying continued.

Heavy, heaving, sobs.

I had tapped into my pain and grief that I hadn’t allowed myself to do in a long time.

I thought about my friend, and her son. The things he and I share. What I could tell him, if I could talk to him, what I would want to say to him, perhaps when he is a little older?

I would tell him, that I understand what it is like to lose your Mom, a little bit at a time, the passage of time stealing tiny parts of her everyday.

That I am acutely aware of not always remembering what it was like before she was sick.

That I understand that permanent demarcation of before, and after, in my life.

That I too, am intimately familiar with a long, long goodbye.

Even though I haven’t lost my Mom yet, I have lost so much of her, and know that every future milestone, no matter how happy and filled with love, will always be rife with loss, that she isn’t there, when she should have been.

That this club, the club of children who lost their mother too soon, that we will soon both unfortunately find ourselves a part of, is super, super shitty.

And that I am so sorry that you had so little time with your incredible, compassionate, and kind mother.

That the loss and the grief you feel won’t just be at her death. That it will be forever, at every lost moment that should have been.

While the mourning will change, softened by the tincture of time, it will never end.

That if he has children, that the birth of his babies, particularly given the fact that his Mom was a midwife, will likely be an incredibly painful experience because she would have been such a monumental part of that transition

That he will always miss her; but so much of her is within him as my Mom is within me.

I would tell him the hopes and dreams she had for him, as her son, as the son of a Norwegian, and a midwife. How she wanted him to hold onto his Norwegian roots, and for them to be just as foundational in his life as his American ones. That she wanted him to grow up and respect women, and be a fierce feminist. That he better always wear a condom, and that he could always come to her with any questions about sex, or otherwise. She hoped that her being a midwife would open the door for many of those conversations that don’t always occur naturally between parent and child, but particularly mother and son.

In reflecting back, I am sure she shared so many of her hopes and dreams for him with me because she needed to say them out loud, even if I didn’t understand the context in which she spoke them at the time.  

Mostly, I would like to tell him, that his Mom was an incredibly kind, compassionate, passionate, and wise woman beyond her years.

And that she saved me in a way, she saved me from myself.

She mothered me, even if for a few moments by that pool, and freed me from my misery of my own making. It must have been so incredibly and deeply painful for her to hear my fears about my future, knowing her own, with her own son.

To tell him, that the many gifts she left on earth will continue to touch and impact people far beyond her death. Including the kindest, and one of the most life-altering gifts she gave to me.

I would tell him, I will remember your Mom forever, and that even though I didn’t get to say goodbye or tell her directly, I will carry a piece of her with me, always.

Always.

And for that, I will be forever grateful.

For her, for her friendship, for her sage words of wisdom.

In the last three and a half years since my Mom’s diagnosis, my grief and sadness has come and gone in waves. The wound that was created the day I learned my Mom was going to die has seemingly scabbed over and split open a million times over. Currently, it feels split wide open, suddenly raw and fresh. I am so viscerally aware of this impending loss. It feels like a deep chasm that will never close.

It feels so much like the beginning, but yet so different.

People often ask me since my Mom’s diagnosis if they think it is better for someone to die suddenly, or have them go slowly, and experience a long goodbye.

I would say:

Both are impossibly hard.

Both come with regrets. Both come with unimaginable sadness.

I have said a million goodbyes to my Mom, sometimes all at once, and sometimes a little at a time, and will continue to until she is gone, and beyond her death, for the rest of my life.

I didn’t get to say goodbye to my friend, but I feel at peace and confident that she knows what she meant to me and the impact which she had on my life.

I was listening to Kate Braestrup on NPR last week, on the Moth, in a piece called, “The House of Mourning.” She spoke as a chaplain, about her experiencing with people who have lost love ones, and their need to actually see and say goodbye to their loved one’s dead body. I wept listening to it, particularly at this passage that was so heartbreakingly real for me:

“You can trust a human being with grief. Walk fearlessly into the house of mourning, for grief is just love squaring up to its oldest enemy. And after all these mortal human years, love is up to the challenge.”

 https://themoth.org/stories/the-house-of-mourning

So my answer to people? Losing someone, no matter the manner, is never, ever easy.

With deep love, comes deep grief.