28 Nov My Experience with Grief

(This post was imported from my previous blog; this is a compilation of parts 1 to 4 of my experience with grief)

Part 1

Trying to start these posts about grief is a lot tougher than I thought it would be.

There’s so much to write about that I don’t know where to start, how to section it, how much to write… So for this post, I’m just going to give you a general overview of my experience, and why I want to write these posts. Also, as a little disclosure, I don’t want people thinking that just because they didn’t lose their mother or that their situation was completely different, that it doesn’t apply to them. I want these posts to help anyone who has ever lost anyone important in their life, and for those who haven’t, to understand what others are going through, and how you can help them out.

On October 26th, 2013, I lost my mom to breast cancer, which ended up spreading to her lungs and her liver. I had just started my first year of university and never in a million years would I have thought that this terrible thing would happen to my family. Before all of this started it was kind of like “Terrible things happen to other people, but not to me”, but when my mom got diagnosed with breast cancer in October of 2012, my simple little life became a lot more complicated.
It’s almost been a year since my mom passed away, and let me tell you, time is a very funny thing. Sometimes I think back to the last week I spent with my mom and it feels like it happened so recently, but other times I’ll think about her and feel like it’s been years since I’ve last seen her. I think that last point is one of the worst things about losing someone: not being able to see them and feeling like you’re slowly forgetting them. I’ve talked to people about this and one of them said something that really stuck with me: when someone is alive and you don’t expect them to leave anytime soon, you don’t pay attention to the little things, like freckles, a scar, the way they talk, the way they look at you, but when they’re gone, you try to remember all of these things and wish you would’ve paid more attention to them.

When my mom died, I took a week off from school, helped my family organize the funeral, and went back to class. It’s safe to say that the fact that I was never going to see my mom again didn’t hit me until a couple months later. School was a good distraction, and I moved out of my family’s home a couple weeks later, to live in an apartment downtown with a friend. I think that it was only in December when I started going to therapy and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Therapy isn’t for everyone and not all therapists are as amazing as mine, but I find it really useful for me to just talk to someone unrelated to anything that’s going on, but who can give me feedback on what I’m saying or feeling.
In March, my therapist started a grief support group for any students at school who wanted to join. This was also really helpful because I got to talk to other people who lost a parent and understood some of the things that I was feeling. I did this once a week from March to the end of June, and it really helped me with my grieving. I also became close friends with all of the students and even though we don’t go to the group anymore, we still keep in contact with each other.

Oookay, I feel like I’ve touched a lot of topics very vaguely, but don’t worry, I’m going to have separate posts going into detail about these things. Now, let me explain why I decided to write posts about grief. When my mom passed away, I remember googling some things like “losing your mother” or “mom died from breast cancer”, but all I could really find were medical articles telling me the stages of grief. That might be useful for some people, but what I really wanted was someone to tell me their personal experience in hopes to reassure me that what I was feeling was “normal” (quotation marks because there isn’t anything normal about grief), but also to see what there is to come because it’s scary not knowing how someone’s death is going to affect you.

Part 2

Tomorrow will mark the one year anniversary of my mother’s passing and since I’ve been thinking about all of this recently, I thought I would share the next part of my story with you: The Diagnosis.

I was hesitant about telling the truth about when I first found out that my mom had cancer, but it’s a part of my story so I want to be honest when writing this.

At the end of August in 2012 is when I first found out that my mom found a lump in her breast, but it wasn’t from her telling me, I had my way of finding this out. I just remember calling my boyfriend and crying, not wanting to say the dreaded word: cancer. It wasn’t confirmed yet, they were in the middle of testing the lump, but it’s still one of the first things that comes to mind when you hear lump. I tried not to worry, but was also a little angry that my mom hadn’t told us about it yet. School started again, so I didn’t think about it too much and told myself that if it were something bad, she would let my sister and I know. The only issue was that she was constantly getting to work late because of appointments, so I knew that there was something going on.

In early October is when I found out that she had cancer, once again, not from her telling me. Now I was really scared and angry that she still hadn’t told us anything and I kept that bottled in for a couple weeks. It was on Friday, October 19th that I had a huge meltdown in class and was brought to the school’s social worker. She knew what was going on with my mom and reassured me that she was planning on telling me that weekend.

All of Saturday I was on edge; I just wanted her to tell us what was going on. What also didn’t help is that I got dragged to a university’s open house, one that I knew I did not plan on going to, so I was about a billion times more miserable than I already was. When we got home my parents asked my sister and I to come downstairs. We sat in the living room and my mom told us that she found a lump in her breast and that it was triple negative cancer. She started crying, but she told us that it was only because my sister and I were also crying and she didn’t want us to worry. She told us everything would be okay because they found it early and she was going to start treatments soon.

That was basically her mentality during all of it; she was going to be okay.

A week later my parents brought my sister and I to one of the specialists, where she explained that it is an aggressive cancer, but the cure rate was decently high, so she would be okay after going through the treatments.

She took a leave off of work and started chemo in the beginning of November; she would go once every two weeks. Either the chemo wasn’t strong (which I doubt since it was triple negative cancer) or, the more likely option, she was strong, because she never had terrible reactions to the chemo. Obviously she had her mood swings and took it out on me sometimes but she would always apologize and tell me that she was so proud of how my sister and I were dealing with all of it.

She started losing her hair a couple months into the chemo and she decided that she wanted to just shave it all at once. We went to our hairdresser and my mom didn’t shed one tear; this was just something she had to go through and then she’d be okay.

Unless you had met my mom, you wouldn’t understand how amazing she was throughout the whole thing; I didn’t see her cry once during her treatments. She worked at my high school, so she used to send all of the teachers emails letting them know how she was doing and I can guarantee that she was hilarious in the way that she wrote. Since she spent most of her days at home, our dog Milo became her baby and once asked me to take a picture of them so she could send it to a bunch of people to “Let them know that I’m still alive!” Not beating this cancer was never an option for her.

In May, she finished her treatments. We went out for dinner and celebrated because it was over; she was okay.

Part 3

I know, this post is long overdue, but since the last one I’ve kind of tried not to think about my mom. Not in a rude or disrespectful way, but these posts force me to really reflect on one of the worst times of my life and it’s exhausting. But I’ve delayed this enough, so now it’s time to talk about the worst part of this whole ordeal which I’m going to call The Beginning of the End.

The last post finished off with my mom finishing treatment; this one starts with her getting sick again. To be completely honest, I don’t remember much about the time between May 2013 and October 2013, but there are some things that come to mind.

Around the middle of June, my mom started having trouble breathing and ended up having to go to the hospital. I didn’t realize how long she would be staying in there for, but it lasted at least a week. She was in a special quarantined room; it was just like in the movies. But still, I didn’t think it was that serious; she just had fluid in her lungs. I remember worrying about her not being able to make it to my high school graduation but luckily she came out a day or two before.

I’m not really sure when this happened, but my parents ended up telling my sister and me that my mother’s cancer came back. This time, instead of just doing chemo, she continued chemo but also started seeing a naturopath and doing all sorts of alternative medicine. She completely changed her diet and didn’t eat anything that would metabolize into sugar once it entered her system. I felt so bad that she wasn’t able to eat anything that actually tastes good, all because of this stupid disease.

That was one of the hardest parts: seeing her unable to do things that everyone else could. But to be honest, my sister and I were kept in the dark about what was really going on with her because my parents wanted to protect us and have as normal of a life as we could. What they were hiding from us was that during the summer my mom went to Princess Margaret Hospital and the doctor there told her that she only had 8 to 12 months left to live. The cancer had spread to her lungs and her liver.

So during my reading week from October 12th to the 20th, I stayed home and helped her out because her breathing was so bad that she could barely walk. She had to have an oxygen tank when she went out because without it, she couldn’t breathe. One day during that week, my mom and I went downtown with my roommate (before we moved in) to mop the floors and do a little cleaning before moving day. When we got to the apartment, my mom couldn’t find a piece of the oxygen tank that she needed to be able to use it, so the minute long walk to the apartment was like climbing Mount Everest for her. Seeing her frustration and pain was terrible.

Once we got in, we set up a beach chair on the patio and she sat there so happily, just looking out on the city. She loved my apartment and was excited for me to move out. I can clearly see her leaning on the balcony railing looking so happy, that’s how I try to remember her.

On Friday, October 18th, her breathing was really bad and she ended up going to the hospital. I didn’t think much of it, it was just another visit to the hospital and she would be out in less than a week. She got a room and turns out that my grandfather was also in the hospital and was just down the hall from her. I visited her that weekend and started going back to school on the 21st. Monday, after class, my dad picked me up and drove me to the hospital to see my mom. She was still super positive, texting all of her friends to keep them updated, and still in the mindset that she was going to be out of the hospital in a week or so.

On the Wednesday, my dad had picked me up once again and before dropping my sister and I off at the hospital he told us that we had to come to the hospital every day. I remember telling him that I can’t because I was planning on moving out that weekend, but then he said something that made me forget about those plans. He told us that we had to spend as much time with our mom as possible because we didn’t know how long she had left. There it was, the first time anyone ever mentioned anything about my mom dying. Later on, after talking to one of my mom’s friends, I found out that the doctors had given her a new drug and this was her last hope. My mom never discussed her dying; I think it was too painful for her to even think about leaving my sister and I.

Thursday morning I was in a bad mood, it was the first time I started thinking about the possibility of my mom dying. I remember walking into my building and having some friends ask me if I was okay. I answered this with a total meltdown and yelled “My mom is dying” and that was the first time I said it out loud.

I was planning on staying downtown at Tiffany’s apartment that night because there was a Halloween party. It was around 9 PM, we were still all at the apartment, when my boyfriend texted me saying that my sister wanted me to come home. I was so angry and remember telling him not to ruin my night, I just wanted to have fun and forget about everything else. He called me a couple minutes later, telling me that the hospital had called and said that my mom wasn’t doing well, so my dad went to spend the night there, and my sister had gone to stay with my boyfriend’s family. I was in the washroom when he told me this and had a total meltdown. I knew this was bad. Thankfully one of my friends came to see me and talked to me. His mom passed away from breast cancer when he was in high school, so he knew how I was feeling.

Him and Tiffany decided that they would take a cab with me to Finch Station, and my boyfriend’s mom picked me up from there and drove me to the hospital. When I got to her room, the lights were all off, so I decided to go to the nurse to ask her if I could go in, but I could barely get any words out because I started bawling my eyes out. She led me to the room, my mom woke up and told me to lay in the bed with her. I couldn’t stop crying and even in the state in the state that she was in, she managed to comfort me. The only thing I remember her saying was that she was sorry. That’s the last time that she could really make any sense in what she was saying. I left a little after that and ended up going back to my boyfriend’s house, where my sister and I stayed the night.

The next morning my sister insisted on going to school, but my grandma and I had to go pick her up around 10 AM to go to the hospital. When we went into the room, a social worker came to see us and explained to my sister and I that basically there wasn’t anything else the doctors could do. My parents had discussed the options and had decided to put her in a hospice. This was Friday, October 25th; one week after she was first admitted into the hospital. I don’t think I stopped crying for over an hour. Two paramedics came to put her on a gurney and brought her to see my grandfather who was just a couple of rooms down from hers. He was crying and my mom was out of it; that was the last time he saw her. They brought her in an ambulance and I was the only one in the back with her. All I remember was holding her hand, and most likely crying.

The hospice was a little house and my mother was the only patient at that time. They set her up in a room and I could clearly remember her being asked what she wanted to drink and she said Coca-Cola. This was so funny to us because she never drank that, but that’s what she wanted. The rest of that day felt like forever; I was busy messaging people and letting them know where the hospice was. Lots of people came to visit and both my aunt who lives in Germany and my grandparents who live in France had booked flights to see her as quick as possible. Friday night my sister and I stayed over at my boyfriend’s house again and on Saturday morning we went straight to the hospice.

By now her breathing was so bad that every breath was a huge struggle for her. She was barely conscious, but you could still speak to her. There were lots of visitors, but my sister managed to spend some time in the room with her and told her that she didn’t want to be there when she died. The only regret I have about all of this is that I kept on letting people in to see my mom instead of taking the time myself.

It was early on in the afternoon, I was in the living room, and I heard my dad yell for me to come in the room. She had taken her last breath. It was over.

Part 4

After my mom passed away, there wasn’t much time to be emotional; sure, I could cry a little the first day, but there was so much to do that I just didn’t have the time.
My mom had only stayed at the hospice for 2 days, but somehow it felt like I’d been there forever and having to stop going there was so odd to me. There was no reason to go because there was nobody to visit. I’ve told myself this hundreds of times: it’s so weird how somebody can just be gone. You can’t really understand this unless you’ve lost someone who was really close to you. The house felt empty and everything was different, but nobody wanted to face the facts.
I didn’t want to talk about my mom, not because I’d cry, but because I didn’t want to make others cry. My sister and I didn’t really say anything to each other, my grandma was super emotional, and seeing my dad cry was scary to me.

For a week after my mom passed away, we had her parents stay with us and people kept on bringing us food. The funny thing is that since we didn’t really want to feel like we were grieving, we didn’t really eat the food; we just left it in the freezer and cooked our own meals. There are probably still some containers left even after a year and a half. That was how my family dealt with it, it didn’t happen, we don’t need help, we’re okay.

As much as we didn’t want to believe that my mom was gone, we still had to plan her viewing and funeral. I remember that going to pick the flowers for the ceremony caused lots of tension between my grandparents’s on my father’s side, and the ones on my mom’s side. A little background info is that my mom’s parents are from France, so I guess funerals are different there. They didn’t see a point in spending hundreds of dollars on flowers because they’re going to be thrown out anyways; instead, they wanted to donate money to breast cancer research. My grandma here saw the flowers as one last thing that we could give my mom. We ended up getting roses and that’s pretty much all I remember from that.

A couple days before her viewing, my sister and I went through a bunch of old pictures and stuck them on a big board. My sister and I, instead of crying, were laughing and talking about what we remembered from certain pictures. I was glad we weren’t crying but realistically, it hadn’t really hit us that she was gone. My dad, on the other hand, couldn’t even look at the pictures, he just walked away. That, once again, made me feel like I couldn’t talk about my mom without upsetting anyone.

The day of the viewing I saw a lot of people that used to work with my mom, some of my high school teachers, and old Hungarians that only knew my grandparents. It just felt so meaningless. We would stand in a line, people would come up to us, they would ask how we’re doing, tell us to stay strong, and on to the next one. Some people were crying and I just couldn’t. I’m pretty sure I was smiling a lot of the time, but what else could I do. I know my mom wouldn’t have blamed me for that, but it still felt wrong.

The next day was the funeral and just to prove how stressed we were, my sister and I got in a huge fight about shoes. Yes, on the morning of my mother’s funeral, my sister and I yelled at each other because we wanted to wear the same pair of shoes. After the yelling was over, we were out the door and making our way to the funeral home. Our close family was there and we had the chance to see my mom in the open casket viewing but my sister and I had no interest in it at all. I didn’t want to remember her all made up with weird makeup and looking like that. She wouldn’t have wanted that either.

After that, we took the casket to the funeral car and we had our own car to bring us to the church. That was an awkward ride; my grandparents were crying, my dad didn’t say or do anything, and my sister and I had some awkward giggles.

We got to the church and it was a really long mass with 3 priests. I’m not even going to go into detail about the priest drama, but we had a trilingual mass. I only remember certain parts about the mass; one is that I laughed. Yes, I laughed during my mom’s funeral. Some song was playing and my grandfather started singing it while crying and my sister and I just looked at each other and laughed. I tried really had to make it look like I was crying. Then, I remember a family member making a speech and saying how strong my sister and I were being, when really, my mom being dead wasn’t real at that time, so there was no reason for me to be strong, I was just me. And during that speech I wanted to cry so bad, but it was just not happening.

After the ceremony there was a lunch downstairs and I got to see a lot of my high school friends. Recently I’ve gone to a memorial for one of my close friend’s father’s and I noticed the same thing as at my mom’s funeral. Basically, funerals are weird. On one hand, everyone is so glad to see each other because we’re all at different universities and haven’t seen each other in a while, but on the other hand, someone’s dead. And another thing that I noticed at that memorial was that there are going to be some people who try really hard to help but they’re just super annoyAnd I know it’s really rude because they want what’s best, but it’s more annoying than anything. The situation was that I was talking to my friend and some girl came up to her and kept on telling to eat, “You have to eat something…” My friend told her that she was nervous about her speech and she was going to eat after. Then this girl also decided to give her input on my friend’s brother and how he was handling all of his anxiety and my sister and I just looked at each other and left. I was not in the mood to hear this girl talk about a situation that she is completely clueless about.

What I learnt is that it’s better to just let the person know that you’re there for them and let them do their own thing. My friend was going up to all of the different groups and she didn’t really come to see my sister and me. On one hand I was a little annoyed because I came all the way there for her and wasn’t really doing anything, but on the other hand, she knew I understood what she was going through.

After my mom’s ceremony we had some people over at our house and it was just weird. There were kids that I’ve grown up with that were there and we just didn’t know what to talk about. Later my sister, friend, and I went to my boyfriend’s house to watch a movie. Part of me was glad to spend time with people I liked and have a good time, but another part of me felt bad for leaving my dad alone at home on the day of my mom’s funeral.

There are a lot of hard choices that I’ve had to make since my mom died, but as much as I want to help people, I also need to help myself.

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Thank you for reading, don’t hesitate to send me an email if you have any questions or comments