Dear highlanddancermom40,
I am truly sorry for your loss. Your story brought back memories of a very difficult year I lived a long time ago and I would like to share my story with you.
It has now been 23 years since I lost my 62 years old mother, three months later, my 66 years old father, 5 weeks after that, my father-in-law and after 4 months from the third loss, a pregnancy. I adored my parents and I was close to my father-in-law even though he lived in a different city. I lost both my parents and my father in law all to cancer.
The part of your loss that brought back my memories is when you hugged your sister goodbye, knowing it would be the last time.
After my mom's passing, my dad found the empty house unbearable and after a short stay with me and my family, he decided to go back to Italy to spend some time with relatives he was still very close to, in spite of the distance. He wanted to go back so badly, not to confront his empty house, that his oncologist agreed to prescribe his chemo ahead of time and made arrangements for him to have it administered there, so that he could fulfill his wish.
The day he left, it was my birthday and my daughter's kinder garden’s graduation, so he booked a late flight, to spend that day with us. He left for the airport from the kinder garden, but because the ceremony wasn't quite over yet, I could not go with him. I said my goodbyes at the door of the school, and even though he seemed ok at the time, I had a strong feeling that it was the last time I was seeing him and hugging him. He passed away 6 weeks later, in Italy, and I, too, felt I lost him again, for a second time.
After these four devastating losses I found myself "functioning quite well" having a great deal of "things" to tend to, and I refocused my attention on my daughter and husband who, I felt, I had neglected to tend to my parents and their needs. Very soon after the miscarriage, I got pregnant again, had a somewhat stressful pregnancy but with the happy outcome of a healthy beautiful second daughter, and all seemed to be going back to normal and quite smoothly.
Several months went by and one morning, close to Mother's day, reading in the paper the “post-mortem”letter of a daughter who never had a chance to tell her mother how much she loved her, before her untimely death, I found myself crying and sobbing like I never did before, and nothing I could do or think, could stop this ocean of tears, grief and emotion that was pouring out of me. I didn't, on the spot, quite understand why that letter triggered such a response. I, in fact, felt that I had plenty of time to tell my mother how I felt, I had time to give her and show her all my love, and had the same with both my father and father in law; yet, here I was, a couple of years later, crying for all of them at once, missing all three of them all over again, and filled with tremendous sadness, wishing they were all still there with me.
I was caught totally off guard and unaware of what was going on. It took a while for me to understand that I had never really grieved for any of them, trying to grieve for all of them. The losses, at the time they happened, were just too much for me, so I had just delayed the entire grieving process by keeping "busy" and my "functioning well" was just my own defence mechanism.
Maybe the similarities between our stories end at the hug we gave our loved ones knowing it would be the last, but maybe reading my story, you will realize that there are no set rules for grief and that we all live losses in different ways and at different times, and that grieving, whenever we are ready for it, is a very big part of the healing process.
The sadness does change, and one day all that you will remeber, when thinking of your sister will be the happy moments you shared and the happy memories you built together. Until that time comes, I hope you will continue to write on this forum. I look forward to sharing with you, Serena