Grieving Before the Loss - Day 48

Grieving Before the Loss
Day 48

When a person you love is sick or suffering, you begin to grieve before the actual loss. In some cases you may think that most of your grieving is already done. But despite your preparations, the grief that occurs after a person's death goes beyond all your expectations.

Dr. Jim Conway lost his wife after a long battle with cancer. He says, "Sally got sick in 1990, and we talked frankly. She went through repeated surgeries, radiation, and chemo over the next seven years. I thought that because we had talked so much that there would be no grief. I really thought that I had resolved all that.

"But it is not like that at all. It was like looking at a video about jumping out of an airplane, free-falling, and finally your parachute opens. All of the previous stuff was just preparatory information, but it was not actually going out of the plane; it was not experiencing grief.

"When Sally died, it was as if somebody pushed me out of the plane, and now I am free-falling -- that is what grief is like. You are in a free fall. You wonder if the parachute is ever going to open. You wonder if you're going to hit the ground at 120 miles per hour."

Only You, Almighty God, can keep me from falling. I turn to You, believing Your promise: "To him who is able to keep [me] from falling and to present [me] before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy -- to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen" (Jude 24-25).

~ I did this too. My mom had been sick and struggling for years. I think that I thought that since I had almost lost her several times that I had grieved all along. It was exhausting and when I had to make the decision to take her off life support, I didn't know what to do with myself. I was her caregiver and suddenly I wasn't. I lost my sister so I went from being the middle child to being the oldest. I lost my mom and so I went from being the daughter to picking up that slack for my younger sister. While my younger sister is 23, she still has a lot of growing up to do. She has lived a very sheltered life and just got her first real paying job. I am so proud of her and she really is like my daughter since I was 12 when she was born.  I think that my mom being sick for so long might have changed the way that I viewed her death. I felt remorseful that I agreed to take her off life support. I knew that the machines weren't sustaining her. I knew that the next step was very aggressive and might not work. I, sometimes, think that I should have fought for her a little harder. I miss her smile and her laugh and her rubbing my hair when I would ask her to because I didn't feel good. I miss the way she loved my us and my child. I miss the smile that she put on my child's face. I miss that she isn't here for all of us.