When Grief Strikes

I picked up my fourteen year old from school last Monday and she looked unsettled as she got into the car.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It hit me. In fourth period,” she replied with a deep sigh, hoisting her backpack onto her lap, eyes welling up.

I had been waiting for this. The immediate relief that my girls and I felt after Chris’s death was starting to fade. My heart sank.

“Oh, honey,” I said quietly while taking her hand, “I’m so, so sorry. I’ve been having moments like this too lately and it’s hard, but it gets better, I promise. Let’s go home and get you in some cozies on the couch, okay?”

So that’s exactly what we did, but really, it wasn’t okay. Unfortunately for this kiddo, grief isn’t the only issue on the table. She’s been struggling with extreme fatigue, body aches and nausea for weeks, she’s anemic, she’s clinically depressed and has anxiety, she’s dealing with all of the pandemic associated stress, and oh, she’s fourteen. The grief was just the icing on the s*it cake.

I was already in the process of rallying the professionals, starting with a visit to the pediatrician. She agreed with my concerns about what was cause/effect in this case and decided to cast a very wide net with bloodwork, urine samples, x-rays. I haven’t gotten any results yet from LabCorp, but I am really hoping something shows up. Nothing serious, but give me a little mono, or severe anemia, or a thyroid issue. Give me something I might be able to fix with modern medicine.

Next my daughter had an already scheduled zoom with her therapist, where she revealed the extent of her depression. I knew she was down, but getting a call from the therapist after your child’s session is never a good thing. It seems my daughter had said the right combination of words to sound the alarm and declare her to be “in crisis”. It wasn’t anything immediate or dangerous, the therapist assured me, but I was advised to get next-level help.

I scheduled an evaluation with the local mental health hospital the next day and I’m waiting to hear when Ella can start their outpatient program. She will miss at least a full week of school or more, which stinks given how much she’s already missed this year but the teachers are supportive. Ella did the program last spring via zoom and found the group therapy sessions to be helpful. I think she’s relieved to be going back.

Physical health support? Check. Mental health support? Check. But then there’s the grief. What the hell do I do about that?

When I lost my dad at fifteen it was sudden and shocking. One day I was a happy teen serving pizza on Point Pleasant boardwalk, and the next I felt my soul being shredded. It took me months to stop crying and years to come to peace with the sadness. It’s a very different experience for my kids.

For starters, we’ve all be grieving for years. When you face a terminal illness like this, you let yourself “go down that road” on occasion, and do your ugly crying, but then you come back to the present. You can’t stay in that awful sad place and still be a functional human. I would “go there” just often enough to prepare myself and my family. To iron out the gory details and plan for the “what ifs”. And when the end of life is as traumatic as my husband’s was, you welcome the journey finally ending.

But here we are, two months later, and there’s a slow reckoning with reality happening. When it hits me, I just lean into it. Listen to the sad song. Look at the photos on my phone. Sit in the den where he spent his last days. I cry if I need to, sleep if I need to and generally ignore everything (and everyone) outside my house until the wave passes.

Ignoring grief does not make it go away. In fact, I think it just makes it worse because it will most certainly manifest itself in other ways. Mood swings, headaches, and stomach issues can all come from grief trying to reach the surface.

Which brings me back to my daughter. I’m not sure if it’s the grief causing her physical issues, or the depression, or an actual health problem. But treating the grief, acknowledging the grief, and letting her soak in the sadness for a little while (in a healthy way) is the only way to begin to recover. And when she makes it through this first wave, and she will, she will not fear the next one, or the one after that. Bobbing the waves is the way to reach calmer waters.