The Many Thoughts of Wanda Kidd

There is a possibility that I have an unusual way of dealing with the grieving process, but then again, maybe not. I have always struggled with delayed grief.  It did not matter whether it was a breakup, an unwanted move, or the death of someone important in my life. I would think I had handled it, sighing with relief, only to have it catch me off guard and bring me to my knees. To add insult to injury, it usually happens at the most inappropriate times.  I watch movies where people receive sad news and, crumple to the ground and sob uncontrollably.  I have always envied those people and their ability to grieve in the moment.

Over the years, I have taken classes about death and dying, and I am familiar with Kubler-Ross’s stages of death. They are outlined as denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance. However, I believe we underestimate the power of delaying grief, PTSD blackouts, mental chaos, and other substitutions for processing the pain.

I have been observing grieving people for years, hoping to get insights into the best way to express that pain.  I do not come from a family of emotive people. Not a lot of hugging or weeping during times of loss. Mostly, we gather, tell stories, and eat. For most of my life, there was very little loss. Five of my grandmother’s sons fought in wars and returned home with no outward injuries.  My grandfather died what seems young now, but he was a stubborn man who chose to face his heart disease with resistance to the doctor’s guidance.. Though his children felt a great loss, they accepted his decision to leave the world his way.

When I was twelve, a distant eighty-year-old relative died in South Carolina, and a delegation of my dad’s siblings decided to make the trek to Cherry Hill Baptist Church.  I petitioned to go with the group because I had never been to a funeral and wanted to experience one that was family but not close family.  The church where the funeral was held differed significantly from my urban North Carolina Baptist church. Much more emotion was expressed, and the preacher chanted rather than speaking in the measured words I was accustomed to. The music was spontaneous rather than rehearsed, and some women were racked with grief and loud sobbing. They threw themselves on the casket and cried out with indistinguishable wailing. I did not think that I would ever be able to express my grief in such a visceral way, but I appreciated their willingness to show that vulnerability.

As a youth and campus minister, there was little opportunity to engage in ministry with families dealing with death. Still, I found myself more and more drawn to moments where families were experiencing loss and brokenness.  Anticipatory grief was something I was drawn to.  As a pragmatist, I knew that death and grief were part of everyone’s life, and if I learned from others what to expect and how they handled it, I might be better prepared when it became personal. (Spoiler alert: That method is primarily successful in delaying the pain and, simultaneously, missing some of the moments that would have been better spent living.)

Years ago, a person I knew only socially, volunteered to chaperone a college service trip I was planning. She had lost her husband to pancreatic cancer about a year before, and this trip was her first effort to move beyond her grief.  Those experiences provided great insights into the lives of virtual strangers.  On that trip, she gave me a window into humans’ coping skills when faced with incalculable loss. I carried one of her expressions of grief for years with little understanding, but I knew one day I would remember and appreciate the wisdom.

She said that she lived about a mile from the local discount store.  There was a sidewalk from her house to the store, and when she needed to get out of the house, she would walk down the hill through town and up the steep incline to the shopping center.  She would walk through the store, buy a bag of multi-colored crew socks, return home, and put them in her drawer.  She continued that ritual for months until she opened the drawer one day and was confused by what she saw. She said, “I remember being mystified about the collection. Where did all of these socks come from?” She, however, accepted it as part of her grieving process. She gave away all the socks and took another step toward healing.

A friend whose mother died last winter called me last week and said, “Wanda, do you remember when you went through that stage of grief where you bought really expensive jewelry?  Yes, I do, why?  She said, “I was in Belk a minute ago and saw some stunning gold and diamond earrings 75% off, and I thought I would call you so you would tell me to buy them.” I, of course, told her to buy them if it was what she wanted to do.   

I used to be critical of people who owed on their house, cars, and student loans and chose to go on a cruise with their inheritance.  That is until I went through my five stages of monetary grief, which included shoes, lovely pajamas, fine jewelry, a timeshare, and a cross-country camping trip alone.

My parents, sister, and brother died within four years, and accept for daddy, it was a lengthy process. One had Parkinson’s, another a brain tumor, and one the final result of a fifty-year-old automobile accident. At the same time, my husband was also in a life-threatening health crisis on the other end of the state. During homebound Hospice, two hundred people came by my parent’s house to say goodbye. It was wonderful but exhausting. In addition, Each family member requested that I officiate their memorial services without the aid of funeral home professionals. It was almost too much. Others saw it but could not help. The  Smithfield Barbecue employee probably retired from public work following our exchange when they called to say they had messed up the order for the after-service meal just as I was heading into the pulpit to do my sister’s eulogy. The expression, “Sorry, not Sorry” seemed harsh to me until that moment.

The overload of emotions, exhaustion, pain, and unresolved issues came very close to sweeping me away, and would have without the ability to triage my grief. However, the manifestation of grief that still blindsides me six years later is the PTSD and loss of whole events and time sequences. There are moments when I doubt my memories because no one is left to call and ask if they remember an event we shared.

Ironically, one of those events is my mother’s burial. I have NO memory of it. The memory of the memorial service is there, but there was a compression of time following her death where I lost blocks of time. My sister moved into my parent’s house, and her battle with cancer started within months. I do not know what I thought happened to my mom’s ashes, but it hovered in my mind that they must be somewhere in the house, and I would find them one day.

Recently, we began the process of cleaning out my parent’s house to rent, and layer after layer of memories has surfaced with the removal of decades of furniture, memorabilia,  letters, and pictures. Yet there was no evidence of her ashes.  I began to ask family members and friends if they attended an internment for her.  Some vague responses but no definitive, “Yes, I was there. Don’t you remember?”  Recently, I was looking at the Find-a-Grave website for another inquiry and found my Dad’s gravesite, and low and behold, my mother’s plague was there with the correct birth and death dates on it.  Unbelievably, it still did not bring up a memory of the service, so much so that I thought my sister had buried her without telling anyone. I was hurt and angry for a few days until I began to get flashes.

As I continued to discern this mystery, I dreamed of Mom’s hospice chaplain standing beside the grave, speaking to a small group.  When I awoke, I emailed the chaplain and asked her if she spoke at my mother’s graveside service, and she responded with a simple, Yes. I wish I could tell you why this memory is so deeply buried, and I wish this did not make me feel like a failure as a daughter, but I do know that grief is complicated, and it plays out in our lives in profound and inexplicable ways.  My counselor has strongly suggested that I go to the site and sit with my pain. I believe I am ready to experience whatever is revealed, even if I cannot control it. During the grieving process, I expected tears and sadness, maybe even macabre humor and postponed grief, but I never expected amnesia.

By sharing this, I hope others will be permitted to be gracious and patient with themselves, regardless of how the grief is manifested.  I am reminded of wisdom from another chaplain friend, Rachel Hill, who told me grief is like standing with your back to the ocean. Sometimes, the water gently laps around your ankles; sometimes, it will clip you at the knees; and other times, it can completely take you under. Survivors learn to breathe and float until, alone or with help, they can stand again. May it be so.