I remember the hardest thing I had to come to terms with after my Dad died was that it was a pain that was permanent. It was the first time I had to face the concept of a never-ending emotional hurt. Before that, I had the emotional scars from broken relationships or friendships but either A) those relationships rekindled after amends were made or B) we were not close enough for the heartbreak to leave a permanent scar or C) I had not acknowledged the scars left behind yet.
Over the last few years I’ve been thinking a lot about various types of heartache that leaves permanent scars, especially those that sometimes we don’t notice. Obviously the death of a loved one is going to leave a permanent scar, and most of us can’t ignore those. But there are other types of hurts that leave wounds that we may not even realize are there until years of therapy later. I remember when I first sought out a grief counselor in 2015 or so because I felt like I was grieving my Dad for “too long.” I finally found one that I clicked with, and she had to break the bad news to me: Your emotional hurdles that you can’t get over are not related to the death of your father, they’re related to the emotional scars left by your Mother that you now can’t ignore.
I had spent a lifetime being raised by a loving and supportive parent and I didn’t really have to face any of the emotional complications with the parent I only saw every other weekend. After he was gone, those demons just reared their ugly heads and said: DID YOU NOT REALIZE WE WERE HERE?
Wait. I’m mixing metaphors. Let’s stick to scars instead of demons.
Turns out I knew the hurt from the scars were there, I just had never had a professional guide me to understanding my Mom’s role in those scars. And so I spent a year or so working through a grief handbook - not from the standpoint of losing my Dad - but from the standpoint of losing my Mom who was very much still alive.
(This is why you go to therapy, folks. Who would have ever considered working on a grief handbook for the parent that was alive and not the one that was dead?)
So I addressed the old wounds and I honored the scars and I learned to have a better understanding of my Mom and was able to heal a little bit (which definitely made the last 3 years possible) but the scars never left. No amount of healing or boundaries or therapy makes those scars go away. It was maddening when I was going through therapy and I realized that scars would always be there. Sometimes they would twinge in pain when I bonded with my daughter and found myself lamenting over the missed opportunities to have the same relationship with my Mother. Sometimes I’d have a really frustrating phone call with her and it would be like a spotlight shining on the scar reminding me: OH YEAH, THERE IS AN OLD HURT IN THAT SPOT. Those reminders definitely popped up more and more the last 3 years when I become more a part of her life and those scars did not make things easier. Thankfully, the years of therapy made my caregiving role possible. I had addressed a lot of the pain and healed a lot of the parts of the wounds I could heal…but those damn scars just kept reminding me they were there.
And of course now there’s that layer of grief on everything…which is just another permanent scar to add to all of the others.
Then there’s the scars left by hurt from relationships that did damage to my heart and required boundaries to be set to prevent further injury. Once the boundaries were set there were not as many opportunities to re-open the old wounds or to add new ones, but as they heal I know they will leave behind permanent scars. That’s actually part of why you have to set boundaries, because those wounds will never heal if they keep getting reopened. But because of the repeated injury, it takes awhile, and those scars will definitely be there forever. There’s always reminders of things a loved one said or did before the boundaries were set…and if the wounds haven’t healed yet…sometimes it delays the healing process. But eventually, if you hold your boundaries strong…they will eventually scar up. But they never go away.
Lately…maybe it’s been the stress of the pandemic or the anxiety from a tumultuous election season…or the last year of caregiving for my Mom ending in a traumatic dying process…but I just can’t stop finding myself in these moments where all of my scars hurt at once. It will start with one trigger…like Facebook memory. I’ll suddenly think about my Mom and how I wish her demons had not been so bad that we couldn’t have had a normal relationship or that her end of life could have been easier. And then I’ll think about how I miss her so much…demons and all. And missing her will remind me about relationships I used to depend on but can’t anymore because of the aforementioned boundaries and those scars will twinge. And then it always comes back to how much I miss my Dad who was the person I turned to so often in my life as I worked through the pain of other wounds.
And suddenly…there I am…just wallowing in all of the grief from all of the wounds from all of the hurts from all of the loss.
I have said a few times since Mom died, “I don’t think my heart is big enough to hold all of this sadness.” Because some days it’s so fucking overwhelming. The scars from death. The scars from hurt. I don’t seem to ever be reminded of just one…something about the current state of my soul means that when I’m reminded of one…I’m reminded of them all. And it feels like I can’t contain it some days. Like the sadness will just rip me open.
I guess all of this is for me to remind you: It’s okay to have a heart covered in scars. And I’ll tell you: The scars from someone you love dying are no more painful than the scars of someone alive breaking your heart. It all fucking hurts and sometimes it all hurts at once and do not try to dismiss that pain. Hold space for it, if you can. Allow it to wash over you and then allow it to move on until the next time.
Because there will always be a next time.
I was reading the book How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones when my Mom decided to start hospice care and stop dialysis. I picked it up again after she finally passed…just as his Mom died in his memoir. He wrote this about his grief: “Tears don't always just fall; sometimes they rip through you, like storm-painted gusts instead of mere raindrops.” It brings me peace to have the words to describe the pain sometimes. Maybe it will you too.
This resonates with me too. I have to admit that I'm in envy of your ability to be in touch with your emotions, as painful as they might be. I learned from an early age to compartmentalize mine to survive. This was effective in surviving an emotionally tumultuous home life but it has made it extremely difficult for me to maintain friendships. In some ways, I learned to act like a grown-up before I was one because I had to. There were times when my parents could be emotionally supportive but this was wildly inconsistent so I learned not to expect it. I can understand, intellectually what happened and why but I cannot, for the life of me, go deep enough emotionally, to fully heal.
This really resonates with me. I'm coming up to the one year anniversary of my mom's death, which set off a year of different awful things happening and grief put upon grief.
I don't know if I already have commented and recommended "The griefcast", a pod that has helped me both before and during this year. Really thoughtful (and sometimes even funny) talks about death and grieving.
A metafor that I think I heard there that I like is that your grief is like a ball in a box. (Sorry, this comment maybe should have gone under your post about balls the other day, but here we are. More balls)
Through time the ball doesn't get smaller, it stays the same, but the box grows and gets filled with other stuff aswell, so the ball isn't the only thing you notice in the box. But every now and again the ball resurfaces, or you grab it when you meant to take something else in the box and then there it is. Same size, same weight. And maybe all of a sudden all your grief balls (ahem) resurface. And then there they are. Again.