Tag: grief

Grief Groceries

Hi Hugh,

A friend died, and I want to be helpful to his wife, but I’m not sure what to do. I told her that if she needed anything to let me know. Of course, she thanked me, but it’s been a few days now and she hasn’t asked for anything. I don’t think she will. I feel so helpless. What should I do?

[Redacted]

Hey there, [Redacted]. Thanks for writing. I’m really glad your friend has you in her life.

I get it. Grief is a funny thing. It’s the time in our life when we most need help, and also the time when asking for help is so hard. Not because we are ashamed to ask for help, although that happens sometimes too. But mostly because our brain just sort of shuts down.

When my Dad died, I looked functional. But I wasn’t OK. Not at all. And when the news got out, the ton of people flooding me with calls, texts, and DM’s was overwhelming. I really couldn’t function. I sat on the swing in our yard and just stared into space. People called and asked what they could do to help. I had no idea.

“Well, anything you need at all, let me know, OK?”

“OK”.

They hung up. I stared into space some more.

I had no idea what to do. What I needed. I didn’t even know what to ask for.

Then a friend sent a text. This friend had met Dad once but didn’t really know him. But still, she knew I was hurting. I saw who it was and almost put the phone down without reading the text, but I saw the message and it stopped me:

Will you be home at 8:30 tonight?

What’s weird is this friend lives 12 hours away from me.

Yes, I replied.

“K.”

10 minutes later, she said, “Instacart will be there at 8:30. Open the door for them.”

“What?”

“Grief Groceries.”

When Instacart showed up, they put two large bags of groceries on my porch. Frozen pizzas. Ice cream. Oreo cookies. Tinned soup. Stouffer’s lasagna. A gallon of milk. Like that. Things I could heat up if I needed a meal, or pig out on if I needed fat and sugar. Sometimes, you just need to eat half a box of Oreos.

Notice she didn’t ask if I needed any food. I would have said no. She just asked if I would be home.

Grief groceries.

Another friend, who lives out of town, asked Renee to name a restaurant near our house where we like to eat. There is a local chain near our house that is sort of a deli. When we eat supper there, we spend about $25. Renee told her the name of the place.

An hour later, there was a gift card in my inbox for $250. Yes, that is a lot of money, and I understand not everyone can do that. But the wonderful thing was that because it was enough for multiple meals, we didn’t try to save it for “the right time”. We ate there that night, and take out from there several times a week for the next month on nights when I just didn’t have the spoons to cook.

Both of those gift-givers knew something I didn’t know – that when you are grieving, you don’t want to make decisions. No, that’s not quite it: You can’t make decisions. You hit decision fatigue really fast.

So, I guess what I’m saying is, don’t ask grieving people to make big choices or decisions. “How can I help” is a big choice. But “Can I take the kids this afternoon so you can have some time to yourself” is a much smaller one. “Will you be home tonight?” is a small choice. “What restaurant do you like” is a small decision. Just showing up to cut their grass because you noticed it needed cutting is loads better than asking, “Do you want me to cut the grass?” Or, “I’m going to Target. What can I get you while I’m there?” is better than “Can I run any errands for you?”

It won’t always be like this. If you stick around, eventually they will surface and ways to be helpful will make themselves known. But in the first few days, especially, it helps to remove as many decisions from their plate as possible.

Take care,

HH

Note: I wrote this several years ago now, in the aftermath of my father’s death. I needed to write it – grief shared is always lessened. It means a lot to me that it has resonated with so many people. If you want to thank me, you can buy me a cup of coffee, or share it from this site with a friend from this site. – HH

A Closet Full of Grief

In the Looney Tunes cartoons we watched on Saturday mornings when I was a kid, there was a recurring gag where there was too much stuff in the closet. Someone would open the closet and more things than should fit in a closet that size would fall out, burying the person who opened it.

Grief is like that, sometimes.

It’s overwhelming in the beginning. You give some of it away and learn to live with some of it and the rest you don’t actually deal with right now, but instead, in order to function, you put it in the closet and it won’t really fit so you stuff and punch and contort and finally, you get the door closed so you can keep going with your life because we live in a capitalist society and your mortgage doesn’t go away just because people you love died.

So it’s all stuffed in that closet. And because you stuffed it in there – I mean, it may have taken a few weeks or even months to get it in there, but it was in there, and you had to lean against the door to get it shut – but because it’s stuffed in there, it was hell to get it all to fit. But you did.

And life goes on and most days everything is fine and sometimes you are whistful and sometimes you miss them and sometimes you walk by the closet and see the door and remember what’s in there, but you know it’s going to be a mess if you open that door, so you keep on moving.

But the problem is that we don’t live in a vacuum. Other people are moving around in our life as well, and one day, with no ill intent at all, somebody or something is gonna open that door and it will all fall out, but instead of burying them, it buries you. And when that happens, you have no choice but to sit in the midst of it and pick it all up again, handling each piece, looking at it this way and that, as you put it all back in the closet.

This is why this afternoon I was driving down the Interstate, tears streaming down my face. An old song came on the radio about a child’s love for his father and, without warning, ripped that door off its hinges.

Sitting in The Dark

It was Tuesday morning when I got the call.

It was Nessie, Lena’s daughter.

“Momma died this morning, Hugh. Can you come over to the house? We are waiting for the funeral home.”

It’s never convenient. It’s never easy. It never fits in your plans, and it is always emotional and difficult. It isn’t happy.

That’s why I call it sitting in the dark.

* * *

I met Lena shortly after moving to Raleigh, NC, nearly 15 years ago. I had only been in town a few months, and was just getting to know people.

Lena was short and stocky, a Black woman with a huge grin and a near toothless lisp who acted like a momma to many of the folks on the street.

When we first met, she was only a few weeks sober after a lifetime of drinking. She had woken up in the hospital after a blackout, and the doctor told her if she drank again, she would die. This was complicated by the fact her husband also drank, and refused to quit. So she left. She chose life.

Lena struggled to find employment, and bounced around the shelters for a while, but eventually she got a small duplex apartment and a job at a dollar store. Things were going pretty good.

It was sometime around the end of that first year when she ran into me in the park.

“Hugh, I need some help. I was sick last week, and missed some work. Now I don’t have any money to pay my light bill. Can you give me the money to pay it?”

I had only been in Raleigh a little while. Eventually I would develop a network of agencies, colleagues and friends who could help with a $75 shortfall like this, but back then, I had none of that. I was barely surviving myself, and I just couldn’t do it.

“I’m sorry Lena, but I just can’t do it.”

Lena’s smile turned into a tight-lipped frown, and she put her hands on her hips.

“I thought you were my friend! And now you won’t even help me?”

I got pissed. I was trying, you know? I didn’t know what to do, and felt helpless.

“Dammit, Lena! I am your friend. I don’t have any money, and I can’t keep your lights on. What the hell do you want me to do?”

Lena looked at me with sadness, and resignation, and no doubt, fatigue.

“I want you to come sit with me in the dark.”

Damn.

It would be several weeks before Lena could get her lights turned back on. And nearly daily, we would sit in her cold, dim living room on a couch of questionable provenance and tell stories. She would tell me about her two adult children, about their own drinking problems, about her son’s time in jail, about her ex-husband. She would tell me about the preacher she was convinced was a hustler, and the drug dealer on the corner, and her landlord who she was convinced was also a pimp. I told her about why I had moved there, and about Renee, who I was dating at the time. She wanted to know when we would get married, and why I lived in the “hood”, and what my life had been like growing up.

“I know you grew up poor. I can tell. You aren’t scared of poor people or Black people.”

I would often run into Lena at the Salvation Army’s soup kitchen, and she would introduce me to folks. Lena is one of maybe three people who made it their mission in the early days to show me around, tell me how the streets in Raleigh worked, and gave me credibility among the folks who live outside.

I remember when I told her Renee and I were getting married.

“Hugh, I’m happy for you, but you need to get that girl a good place to live. I know you’re a hood rat, but she’s from Arkansas. You need to move into a good neighborhood. Trust me on this.”

For the next few years, Lena was one of the constants in my life. We were, in every sense of the word, friends. I owed her so much – she had taught me who I was meant to be.

* * *

Eventually, she got her disability approved and got into income-based housing, and I saw a lot less of her. I would visit her apartment, but she didn’t get out as much as she used to; avoiding the riff-raff, she called it.

One day, her daughter called me to tell me her mom was in the hospital with breast cancer and was in a dark place. Could I come visit?

Of course I can. Lena had taught me all about sitting in the dark places.

The next few years was the battle with cancer. First a lumpectomy, then a double mastectomy, then chemo for a while. I probably made 10 hospital visits for various things.

I was stuck at the office a lot in those years, so when she was feeling OK, she would come and see me to catch up. We would talk about her noisy neighbors, and she would ask after Renee, and she would talk about her fears around dying and her regrets about her children not getting along.

Around January of 2017, Lena got the diagnosis that her cancer was not only back, but had spread all over. She had maybe six months to live, at best.

I wish I could tell you I visited her daily during that time, but I didn’t. I would go by periodically, and she would come by, but it wasn’t anywhere near as often as I should.

When I had gotten back from being out of town and the staff told me she had come by looking for me, I meant to call her back, but I forgot, honestly.

So when I got the call from Nessie that fall morning telling me she was gone, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

“Please come, Hugh. The funeral home is coming for her. Sit with us.”

“I will be right there,” I said.

I was feeling regret and sadness and powerless, but sitting is something I know how to do.

* * *

Lena and her son were living in a rooming house on a narrow side street. A house designed to have two bedrooms had been cut up and partitioned into seven rooms, all of which were rented out by the week, with a common bathroom at the end of the hall.

When I arrived, there were a ton of neighbors on the porch. The hospice nurse was on the porch, just finishing a phone call.

“Are you the preacher? They been waiting on you.”

We went in together. The house smelled of sweat and fear and cabbage and desperation, the narrow hallway lined with flake board walls pressing in on us as we moved to the back of the house and entered a crowded 10×8 room.

Lena’s son was there, a huge man with tears running down his face. He grabbed me in a bear hug and thanked me for coming. Nessie’s son was there too, a 14-year-old boy Lena never tired of talking about. And on the bed was my friend, Lena, who had fought a long time for dignity and respect and sobriety and later, her own life, and who had been tired and was now at rest.

The hospice nurse asked me if I would say a prayer, so I did, and then I read from the Bible on Lena’s nightstand:

“See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”

For the next 20 minutes or so, we stood around her bed and told stories, and remembered her boldness, her sassiness, her big smile and her determination.

And then it was time. The funeral home guy showed up, and Nessie, her son and I went for a walk while they took Lena’s body out of the house, because there is no way she should see that.

Then there was paperwork to fill out, and things that needed my signature as a witness, and then the car with Lena’s body in it left and we were left in an empty room that contained nothing but a twin bed, a loveseat, a tv and some memories.

Nessie and her brother and I walk to my car.

“I’m glad you came this morning. You been part of our family for a long time. It was right that you were here.”

Her brother hugs me again, and thanks me for coming.

And I get in the car and drive away, having sat in the dark with Lena for the last time.

Grief (not a poem)

I don’t know how to explain
That it isn’t just that he died.
It’s that the world I lived in died too.
Because I have never lived in a world
That didn’t include him.
I don’t know how to explain
That sometimes the grief washes over me
And then I can’t breathe, I can’t function.
So the report doesn’t get written, the form not filed
And my dreams get deferred.
I don’t know how to explain
That it isn’t your fault I’m distant.
It’s not you – it’s me. It’s very much me.
I am learning how to live in this new world.
And I don’t like it here.
I don’t know how to explain it. So I don’t.

Grief: A metaphor

It’s been a rough week.

A friend died earlier this week, very suddenly. She had overcome a lot, had provided hope to a lot of people, and now she’s gone.

I’m not quite ready to talk about that yet.

But it stirred up some thoughts about Dad’s death last year.

A friend who lost her dad a few years ago and I were talking this morning about Dad’s death, and she asked how I was coping.

I told her that if was as if when he died a piece of glass shattered, with sharp edges and jagged pieces everywhere. And for weeks, these pieces just tumbled around, slicing and stabbing. It was really bad.

But as time went on, they rubbed up against each other, and eventually the edges wore smooth. They are still there, easily observable, but for the most part, they are softer, less abrasive, almost beautiful, like sea glass.

But every once in a while, you find a sharp edge. It catches you by surprise when it happens.

It happens less often than it did. But it still happens.

The week of emotions

I tend to think in terms of weeks. Days are too short, and months are too long. But weeks are just right.

When I lived in North Carolina, my favorite week was the first week of April, as the dogwoods were in bloom and all of nature seemed to be showing out. In the winter I love the week between Christmas and New Year’s, as no work gets done and it seems a time of reflection on the year that is ending and limitless hope for the year ahead.

This week we are currently in, the week between the 17th and 24th of October, will forever be my emotional week.

Today is Tuesday. A year ago this past Sunday, my dad called me to let me know he had tested positive for COVID. He was unsure how he had gotten it, but he was the Emergency Management Director for his county, and was responsible for getting PPE and emergency supplies to all the first responders, so he no doubt got it at work. He never ran a fever, he never lost taste or smell. All of his symptoms were primarily gastrointestinal and trouble breathing. When he tested positive, they got Mom tested.

A year ago today, my mom’s test results came back that she too was positive for COVID. It’s hard to remember now, a year later, but at that stage of the pandemic, three day turnarounds for test results were pretty standard. When they called to let me know, Dad was a little short of breath but otherwise sounded good. In a typical dad move, he was worried about how the county was managing without his doing his job.

A year ago tomorrow, our foster son was unexpectedly sent back to his family against pretty much everyone’s recommendations. After living with us for 9 months, we had less than an hour to pack all his things and to say goodbye.

I will have more to say about our experience with the foster system later, but the short version is that the system all that happened in was horrible for everyone.  If you were to design a system to traumatize children, break the spirit of people who want to help children, and demoralize social workers, it would look a lot like the foster care system in Mississippi.

A year ago this Thursday, my dad died just after lunchtime. My brother called me and told me while standing in the yard with his children, watching them take Dad out of the house, and while watching Mom see Dad leave the house for the last time, with everyone appropriately distanced because the consequences of this virus were obvious and were going down the driveway in the back of an ambulance that had the lights and siren off.

Later that day Mom’s oxygen levels would drop, and the ambulance would take her to the hospital where she would have been admitted except they had patients on gurneys in the hallways because there were no beds. They had a waiting list to get a gurney in the hallway. Instead they pumped her full of oxygen and fluids and then sent her home.

My brother drove her home at 2AM, with her in the backseat and the windows down and everyone wearing masks. She slept that night, or tried to, in the small house I was raised in and that her and Dad lived in for more than 40 years, in the bed they had shared, knowing that if she survived this virus she faced a lifetime without him.

My Dad and I shared many attributes in common, but what tenacity I have, I get from Mom. Her strength amazes me constantly.

A year ago this Friday, I would get up early and drive three hours to drive to my hometown to see my mom and brothers. We were all distanced and Mom moved slowly to sit on the porch. No one could help her, and there may be more compelling definitions of hell, but watching your mother sit on the porch 15 feet from you mourn the death of her husband and your father and not be able to hug her or even physically touch her is as close as I’ve personally come. Driving back home that night, I wept, off and on, for three hours.

And then, 12 years ago this coming Sunday, I married Renee, which has consistently been one of the best decisions of my life. No rational person would have thought us likely to make it, and we were the opposite of “financially stable”. When we woke up the day of our wedding, there was less than $20 in the bank account. I had this vague “ministry” thing I did that paid me less than a thousand dollars a month and Renee was on disability for her heart condition. For our honeymoon, we stayed in a borrowed condo a friend owned at Carolina Beach.

We are, on the surface, an unlikely pair. But it works out more often than not, largely because we decided it will.

And that is how I got through this week last year, and how I will get through it this year and all the years in front of me: I have decided to. I have lightened my commitments and given myself permission to be absent from things and told friends I may need more support than normal. And, importantly, I’m sharing this with you folks.

A paradox of life is that sharing things that make us joyful increases the joy, while sharing our burdens makes them lighter.

I can’t explain why it works that way, but I’m really glad it does.