It’s very hard to do grief during a pandemic.
(No shit!)
It was hard coordinating hospice care this time last year. All of our nurses wore masks. These women, especially Betsy and Michelle, accompanied us through the hardest and most grace-filled months of our lives, and the last months of my mom’s life, and we have never seen their faces.
Lockdown restrictions began to let up a bit towards the end, and the height of summer, so friends and family were able to visit.
The funeral celebration (“Susie’s Motown Get-Down”) was outside at a wedding venue next to Red Rocks that was hurting for business. The couple that runs it, Gregory and Lawrence, were fantastic. We had sixty people outside on this terrace, distanced, with a light breeze, and it was really something.
Will I ever listen to the Temptations without sobbing? Who knows. I’ve tucked that music away for a while.
But then, boop! Back to pandemic. No baseball games. No comedy. Certainly no concerts. Beers on the porch were about it.
A part of me longs for those nights on our back porch, my dad, brother and dog, sitting and drinking beers as our mother slept in the office we converted into a bedroom. The singular, overwhelming, anticipatory grief that drowned us felt more manageable than this fractured, sometimes-numb-and-sometimes-sharp, post-death grief I wear now.
We sat on the back porch with whichever craft beer Danny picked out that week, staring at the trees and the sky and sometimes each other. It felt like waiting for important guests to arrive. The whole house was prepared for Death, and that porch was like sitting in the living room, checking the appetizers and making last minute looks in the mirror.
We sat there, sometimes talking, sometimes crying, sometimes telling stories. My dad ran a regular laundry list of blessings. We’re all here. We have wonderful hospice help. Our friends make sure we never have to cook. She’s at home. She knows she is loved. We know she loves us.
Things were very hard, like lifting her up to move to the commode, and then to change her diaper, and redo the dressings on her bed sores. It was hard when she thought I was her college roommate, and when she got confused and yelled that she was going to bike home to her dad. It was hard when she told us she didn’t know us. It was hard when hugging her too tight hurt her because of the tumors all over her body.
But it was easy to know that doing those hard things was the only thing to do. We stood under the wave waiting for it to crash. Once it did, we were lifted up into the water and let our tears mix in it.
But now I’m on the beach. I’m sopping wet, but I can’t stay here. There is movement to be had. I’m hitting ten months since losing her. I’m ready to push and pull myself into new life, but it is at a standstill. Vienna is in lockdown four, and it was just extended another week.
There are no restaurants. There are no museums. I have annual passes to both of the big art museums, and they’re worthless. My most subversive and satisfying refuge, stand-up comedy, has been absent since October.
I love sitting at a bar, writing out a set. I can talk to anyone. It’s a perfect way to get myself out of my head. But not this year.
It’s been so long without an audition or show to prep for that sometimes when I’m practicing I have to remind myself that this is my profession, and not just a very expensive hobby.
It’s hard to discern what’s at the heart of a day’s sadness: Do I miss my mom? Am I mourning lost career opportunities? Am I unhappy because of something that, in any other situation, I’d be able to name and address? And if the last one is true, what do I do if I can’t figure out what’s wrong?!?!
The other day I texted a friend, “I am deeply unhappy. I can't tell if it's losing my mom, the pandemic in general, or a shift in my vocational desires.” How is anyone supposed to make informed, discerned decisions about life in this situation?
The families of at least 550,000 Americans are going through the same thing, and they didn’t get to hold their moms to say goodbye.
Who will we be on the other side of this? In a year? In five years? How will the story of my mom’s grand finale be told? Which version of me will I meet when the fog of this two-front war clears?
It’s getting warmer. Time to grab a beer and head to the porch.
LOVE YOU!!!