The cluelessness of grief with death as a thief

4 weeks ago yesterday we last mowed my front lawn, Mum had one week to live, and I was absolutely clueless!  That morning, my 9-year-old son helped mow the lawn, but everything changed at 1:43PM as I was writing in my 30-year-old daughter’s birthday card.  Dad called, desperate because Mum was distressed — none of us saw that coming.  Without wasting a moment, I picked up my keys, phone, the half-written card, jumped in the car and drove the hour to be with Mum and Dad at hospital.

The week between Saturday 20 August and Saturday 27 August is still so surreal.  That week will be etched in our family’s memory for some time yet.

As I got down to grass level to take the photo today, I looked at those blades of grass and said to myself, “When these blades were cut, Mum was still alive, and we had idea her death was imminent.”  We’ve just entered Spring here, and you can see, even though we need to cut it, that the grass isn’t that long.  Yet it feels as if we’ve been without Mum for a quick eternity.

I must have talked with Mum about her death dozens of times, even as I recited Psalm 23 dozens of times, and we thought together what it might be like after she had passed — again... dozens of times.  It never felt like an uncomfortable discussion, and Mum was always ready to talk about it.  Yet somehow her death is still such an incredible reality.  A bit like one of Queen Elizabeth II’s grandchildren commenting on the assumption that she would be around forever.  (It really does feel wrong and not quite real that Elizabeth the Great is dead!)  I don’t think any of us really believed that Mum would die, even if we talked about it occasionally, as if to ready ourselves, but that readying is actually revealed as a farce.

As a family, we’re all bravely getting on with our lives and life in general.  But it’s a bizarre experience when I’m facing the constant reality that I neither saw Mum’s death coming nor did I make the very most of those last few months.

Life got very busy for me on the counselling front in June, and by July we had time away in the country for six consecutive weekends, Northam for a close friends’ wedding I conducted and Sarah photographed, a pastor’s conference, two weekends in the north-west of our State on holiday, a weekend in the south-west for a pastor’s retreat, and then finally, a weekend in the Great Southern on Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) business.  The following weekend, we visited with an elderly friend and attended a birthday party for my son’s friend.  So many missed opportunities to spend time with Mum.  But we were still in daily phone contact, and there had been one hospital stay for a week in July for her while we were up north.

The cluelessness of grief with death as a thief is beyond expression.  Even as we toyed with the concept of “palliative care,” it never seemed real.  It’s a concept and our minds work in concepts. Our minds struggle with realities of gravitas.  It wasn’t until there was more mention of palliative care on the Thursday after Mum’s first taste of it on the Monday that we were instantly forced to comprehend an incomprehensible concept.

“Can we get another month for Mum?” I said desperately only a minute or two after others had been ushered out of the hospital common room and the doors closed behind us — six of us family and a doctor and nurse representing Palliative Care.  “That’s too ambitious,” was the doctor’s response.  Wow!  It seemed like only moments later and we were all in Mum’s room with her, as she learned the news — nothing prepares anyone for a moment like that one.  It felt like minutes after that we had an aunt take a photo with Mum, Dad, and us three boys — our last photo with Mum conscious. Less than 48 hours later and Mum is dead.

The cluelessness of grief with death as a thief defies the slow growth of my front lawn grass.  Nobody has told those blades it feels so long ago that Mum passed away, yet it was only 22 days ago.

~ MAKE THE VERY MOST OF YOUR LOVED ONES ~

It’s a harsh lesson to learn that no matter how much you plan for death you can never be prepared for it.