The Grieving Journey of a Loved One’s Loss
Posted on Jan 17, 2024 by Luke Carr
I find it hard to believe that 2024 is already here. We all experience that feeling when we lose a loved one. Do you ever think about how that may change your life? We all change emotionally, but we also change mentally, as well.
I have had experience with this when I lost my grandfather, Jack Ussery. I remember how I found out my grandpa died. Not in very much detail, but I think my brain blocked most of the information out as I dealt with grief. I remember what my mom said to me as I sat in my bedroom, and I do remember how I felt. I felt heartbroken, empty, in denial, and numbness in my body. I felt like my life was crumbling and I did not know what to do.
I don’t think I really understood the concepts of grieving mostly until then. What I found was that grief and the experience of grief are not always very right in line with what we are taught to believe they will be like, even sitting here today, marking almost 2 1/2 years since his passing.
Anyone who knew my grandpa Jack knew he was a real catch and a “hooligan” with a very funny sense of humor that made a difference in everyone's life that he came across. His favorite saying was “let's go to bed so these people can go home,” and he never missed a chance to brighten anyone's day with who he was as a person inside and out. His nickname for me was Fat Albert because, according to him, I reminded him of some character from a TV show that I knew nothing about. It was his name that he called me every day. When my grandpa loved, he loved deeply and hard. He’d give the shirt off his back to help others in any way possible. Not once did he complain about taking in family or friends when they needed a place to stay, just as he did for my family and I for four years.
Most of all, Grandpa was resilient and compassionate. In the couple of years leading up to his passing, he was dealt awful cards. Nevertheless, he faced every challenge with his typical jokes and that smile that would brighten up any room. When I say he was dealt awful cards,
I mean that his life was not as great as ours leading up to his death. When my grandma and grandpa moved into their independent living facility after selling their home in Shawnee, it wasn't even a whole year that he then was hospitalized and needed to be in a rehab facility. During this time, the pandemic was at its peak and we took time to see him all the time, even in not-so-good weather, because we loved him a lot and he needed us there. My sister would bring him a Kit Kat and sweet tea every time she would see him, which always made his day. We always knew that he suffered from some sort of dementia, but we didn't know that it was as much as we found out when he passed away. In the last few weeks of his life, his dementia got progressively worse, which hurt me inside and out.
A couple of weeks before he died, he ended up in the hospital again. He made a joke about me growing into a man and me caring about his hair, which cracked me up. I knew that this time would probably be one of the last times I’d hear him say something like that, and to this day, I can still hear him saying it in my head, because that was one of the last times I had with him. “Of course, you care about my hair, but maybe you need to care for yours as much as you do for mine.”
For weeks, rational thought had no home inside my brain, as I felt like I failed because I didn't get to say goodbye before he passed and I felt that I should have spent more time with him. This has to be a mistake, I thought, he can’t really be gone. How can he be? He survived so many things that should have killed him before but he pushed through. It didn’t make any sense to me. I actively denied my own reality.
When I found out he passed, my mom told me that she got the call at about 8:00 a.m., and by the time she got there he was already gone. That afternoon, my family came over and we made calls and plans for his services, and I was asked if I wanted to speak at his funeral. Then I was asked to be a pallbearer. Of course I said yes. As I sat and wrote my speech, I reflected on the times I had with him. I wrote many different things down as I combined it into a story. I cracked jokes sitting at the kitchen table as I wrote everything down too.
You’d think the simple action of writing this would make everything more real, but it didn’t.
I cried alone for the most part. Instead, I took on the consolation role. I shut my own emotions out and comforted everyone but myself when I should have comforted myself. I hated the feeling of being comforted at the time. Reality set in as I told the funeral director it was time and I closed his casket. Along with his body were photos of our family to be with him in his casket in his favorite clothing, which was Chiefs. Depression, anger, and bargaining occurred almost every day, mixing together all of the boiling emotions I finally let myself feel. I cried a lot in the kitchen as my mom held me tight and told me that she loved him too and that we all had each other. Some days, I wanted to do nothing. I wanted to feel nothing. If I wasn’t in a position to think about anything else, I thought about my grandpa and listened to his favorite songs on my Alexa. I wished I could just shut my brain off.
Eventually, on some days sitting on the ground and looking up at the sky at his grave, I’d ask him, “Why did you have to leave? Why’d you leave me alone?”
I wished it had been me. I hated being made to live a life without my grandpa, and I would have exchanged so many things to get even just one more minute with him. I hated being made to continue my day-to-day knowing a big piece of my heart was no longer, that it had been ripped from me. I hated the world.
As months went on life got easier, and somewhere between the sixth and seventh-month mark, around the end of March and beginning of May, I accepted my reality for the second time. An added sense of contentment emerged that I didn’t have before: I would be okay. Also, as I earned my Eagle Scout rank, I mentioned him a lot in my speech along with his American Legion post playing "Taps.”
With all this in mind, grief is not always going to be in a straight line, nor will it be easy, but once reality kicks in it will come to reality that you can continue and move on in life.
Luke Carr
Salem Nursery Coordinator