Delayed Grief

I don't have time for this

My dad died just over five years ago, but Alzheimer’s had been stealing pieces of him for years. In November of 2019, he began a rapid decline, went into hospice, and died about 10 days later. It was a relief. Anyone who has seen Alzheimer’s up close would agree.

I had trouble grieving him in the days and weeks that followed. I had worried about losing him for so long I didn’t know what to do when it happened.

I had other things to focus on: there had been heavy rains in Los Angeles while we were with my dad on hospice. The boys and Andy an I returned to a house that needed the roof patched and interior walls knocked down to the studs and repaired. And we were in the second year of what would be a three-year legal battle with our neighbor.

And then Covid hit, and since Andy had an autoimmune disease, he was at high risk. Six months before my dad died, Andy had been admitted to Cedars Sinai in LA with a mystery infection, gone into septic shock and almost died. So our doctor urged extra caution once Covid emerged.

It was hard to grieve my dad with so much chaos. I had to focus on getting through each day.

It wasn’t until we moved to Vermont in February of 2021 that I really started to miss my dad, probably because I finally had time for it, and because I spent a lot of time driving past farms and cattle, just like I did with my dad when I was a kid. I wanted to talk to him about the different breeds of cattle out here: Galloways (a Scottish breed with thick fur), Belted Galloways (Galloways with belts – that is, a white band around their torso); Randalls (a white base with black patches and speckles over it); and a few Angus.

When my dad was in the middle of his Alzheimer’s battle, he had a box of old photographs - square ones with a white border, some black and white and some color. The subjects were about evenly split between people and animals. Most of the animals were pets (dogs, cats) or horses, but there were a handful of random cattle shots, including a black and white photo of a Hereford cow and a calf. There were creases in teh photo and the edges were worn, as if it had been handled a lot. My dad liked to sort through the photos. I think he was hoping they would help him remember something or make sense of the world, and for whatever reason, the wear on that photo tells me he looked at that one a lot. I keep it over my desk.

I’m trying to grieve again but this time it’s my husband instead of my dad.

Andy’s death was not expected. I’m still struggling to accept it and to deal with how traumatic those last days were.

But I have other things to focus on.

Death entails a lot of paperwork and phone calls and scanning and sending and mailing things, and sorting through belongings and figuring out what to keep and what to sell and what to give away. That’s just the house. I haven’t started on the storage spaces yet.

And there are the boys. My sweet, kind, funny boys who have lost their dad.

And I am reeling from Trump rolling back climate protections, ending USAID, halting trans care, and basically dismantling the government.

Five years later, and here I am again, without the space to mourn.

I keep moving ahead, one step at a time. Some days I am blindsided by grief but most days I can focus on all the things that must be done and keep trudging ahead. The grief will catch up eventually, like it did with my dad.