On dying & grief (Part 3)

My parents’ deaths were 15 years apart and each occurred within the context of such a dysfunctional family dynamic that it’s difficult (and unnecessary, for the purposes of this piece) to describe it all. Extended periods of estrangement from my father poisoned the environment in both cases but, at least with my mother, I had an extremely fulfilling and proper good-bye in Winnipeg about two weeks before she finally succumbed to breast cancer at age 77 in 1999, when I was 40. The parting left nothing unsaid, as she was fully lucid and capable when I sat at her hospital bedside that day. Interestingly, my daughter was not yet three at that time, but sat with me throughout the whole conversation. My mother loved her so much – it’s fitting that this bedside visit is one of my daughter’s earliest conscious memories.

I didn’t cry when I heard she had died, though – maybe because it was expected but more probably because her parting didn’t leave a gaping emotional hole in my day-to-day life. There were no daily or weekly conversations of the type that some children have with their parents and certainly no regular visits. My parents were in Manitoba, while my family and I were in Alberta and, any time there was estrangement from my father (which was often), my mother was inevitably and unfortunately collateral damage. Her passing simply was not going to create a profound sense of immediate loss for me and therefore not create any of the grief that so many feel when a parent dies.

Hers was, as per Ukrainian ritual (even though she wasn’t herself actually Ukrainian), an open-casket funeral as well. The day before the service, I was able to spend some time with her remains alone in the funeral chapel. It was a post-mortem conversation of the kind that might be expected, but no tears – solemnity, but little actual sadness – as I felt I’d said and heard everything that needed to be said and heard at her bedside the two weeks prior (not everyone is so fortunate). The same was true for the funeral mass and the short graveside service at the end of it all. The day I’d dreaded as a child and young adult had finally come to pass, but without any of the tears and anguish that would undoubtedly have been present, had she died 20 years sooner or been more a part of my quotidian existence.

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The events and people surrounding my father’s death at age 90 in 2014 can best be described as a circus – but not the fun kind. Once again, the reader can be spared the details but suffice it to say that grief wasn’t one of the emotions I experienced when I got the phone call informing me that he’d gone to his eternal reward. 

In both his death and my mother’s, I was essentially shut out from having anything to do with the planning and preparation for the funeral – in my mother’s case because of my father and, in my father’s case, because of other people that had become involved in his life. In my mother’s case in particular, having some say in the process would have been helpful as part of the grieving process, such as it was, but, for my father’s funeral, it didn’t matter anyway, as I was just glad to see him gone. More than anything, I just wanted to get it out of the way and get on with my life.

As was the case when my mother died, there were no tears to be shed at any point in the process, from the evening prayers at the outset, to the funeral mass, to the graveside service, but this time for different reasons entirely. They say that you’re not really a grown-up until you’ve buried both your parents; that time had finally arrived and, at this point, I definitely welcomed the transition.