The Taboo: Relief and Grief
For the first time in my adult life, I left the house in joggers. I was finally just too tired to put on jeans.
The Weirdness of Grief: Part One.
When my dad passed away on July 31, 2023, from aggressive cancer he’d been diagnosed with just 2 1/2 months earlier, I was relieved. The pain was over.
Relief after someone dies, in and of itself, is talked about with a hushed sense of taboo — but it is mentioned in various articles. Thematically, guilt often weaves through the articles that mention the relief.
“I felt guilty about being able to breathe again,” I read in confessional-style articles. Others mentioned similar sentiments:“I felt bad that I felt okay about not needing to check on them…”
Many therapy-based articles on relief in grief mention, “It’s normal to feel relief. Try not to feel guilty for feeling this way,” but they don’t address it much beyond that. Just, “don’t feel guilty,” but it feels like the author is implying we should actually be feeling guilty. My personal experience diverged from this pattern; guilt did not accompany my relief. Guilt-free and Relieved.
I didn’t feel guilty for my relief. It was something that I knew I was going to experience when my dad passed away. And when I finally received the call from my mom that he was gone a little after 4 am, I felt my body sinking into the bed. A physical knot of muscles, slightly relaxed. Several hours later, my older sister and I laughed in the home my dad had died in, making jokes about things my dad had said to us as kids. Two days later, I went to dinner with a full face of makeup, something I’d given up on in recent weeks. My sister and I ordered drinks, toasted to my dad, and ate until I felt like I would vomit.
My relief stemmed from my dad having been in horrendous pain for the five days before he departed. Before that, he was in and out of really bad pain for about three months. He’d had multiple ̶s̶u̶r̶g̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶ “procedures” to the point that I lost track of them. Each time, the surgeons (or is it proceduralists?) thought that it was done correctly — and every time, my dad proved them wrong as his bilirubin levels skyrocketed faster and faster. Starting chemotherapy wasn’t possible until his bilirubin dropped due to his body’s inability to handle it. Faced with grim prospects of remission and the potential ordeal of chemotherapy, my dad opted for hospice over another procedure. His comfort level was never really livable, but he tried.
I wanted him to go. I told him it was okay for him and for us and that we’d all be safe. “We are going to be okay,” I told him, “we’re just really going to miss you.” My dad was empty of tears, but the rest of us cried, one of my sisters’ heads in my lap as my mom sat nestled in beside us.
But what I had wanted to say was: please, it’s time to go. You’re killing us with you.
Before I go further — and this may be obvious due to the level of grief you may come across in my writing in future posts — I love my dad. He was (or is??) one of my best friends and always has been. My dad has been there for me for the last 39 years and nine months.
But in the end, I wanted him to go. So much. I couldn’t watch him continue to suffer.
My family and I were drained, a weariness I’d not felt. Not the ‘oh, I ran further than I should have and need to soak in a bathtub and go to bed early type of exhaustion.’
During the last four days, our family formed a vigil by my father’s side. The husky and ethereal voice of Stevie Nicks echoed from my sister’s phone. I traced the bones that protruded from my dad’s back, so lightly that I wasn’t sure he could feel it, but careful not to hurt him. When I sat, I would read Sherman Alexie to myself or the 3rd Harry Potter aloud to my dad. All I wanted was for my dad to find peace, a little comfort, as we cared for him. Every hour or so, we’d provide him liquid morphine along his cheek when he could no longer swallow other pain medications.
The pain of seeing my father dying was a physical force.
The exhaustion was in my back. In my legs. In my lungs. My asthma came back (and has not really left) in full force even though I’ve had it controlled for years with steroid inhalers and biologics. My eczema spread across my face and arms, even though I’m on what I’ve deemed a miracle drug. I can’t begin to tell you the pain in my upper back. I went days without eating at all, and when I did, I often ran to the bathroom to throw up. All from exhaustion. From stress. From holding it in my body.
For the first time in my adult life, I left the house in joggers a day before my dad passed away. I was finally just too tired to put on jeans.
My older sister’s already eastern-European dark circles deepened when I’d see her as we passed for stints at sitting beside my dad’s side. My younger sister’s condition, POTS, wreaked havoc on her. At one point in the weeks leading up to my father’s death, my voice just left with no physical reason.
And that is why I was relieved when my pops passed away.
Last night, after weeks, I pondered whether my fatigue was exaggerated. I thought, “Maybe I wasn’t that tired. Maybe I could have stayed up 24 hours to be with him instead of taking cat naps.”
Illogical, I realized — a stark reminder of the nature of grief.
As the shock waned, so did the relief, leaving behind sadness and the eerie strangeness of grief’s presence. Every day I am reminded of the complexity of emotions when a loved one is gone.
The grief is still here, and yes, the grief is still weird. It evolves, and it remains, and we learn, day by day, how to live with it.
I write about how I’m processing grief here: https://griefisweird.substack.com/
