Grief and other such emotions

My grandma, who had a huge hand in shaping who I am, passed away on Wednesday. People lose grandparents all the time. You feel sorry for them for a minute and then you go on. You don't really consider the gaping hole that has been left in their lives. I'm as guilty of that as anyone. It isn't until it happens to you that you expect everyone to be as devastated as you are.


I didn't have one of those grandma's who live somewhere else and you only see them on holidays. I've seen her nearly every day of my life. She was an integral part of our family.

It has been a difficult week. Since last Friday, when she started refusing food and water, I started having difficulty sleeping, eating and started getting sick every time I did try and eat. Because I knew we were headed toward the end and I wasn't ready for it. I'm not very good at showing emotion. The control freak inside of me hates to cry in front of people. I stuff it all down, which is probably why I'm having such physical reactions to the grief.

On Wednesday afternoon, I stood by her bedside, held her hand, and watched her take her last breath. It was such an overwhelming experience that it almost feels surreal- like I dreamed it.

But, today is Sunday and I'm starting to come out of that fog. I've just kind of been a robot going through the motions of each day. I try to be as strong as I can during the day when I'm with everyone and then spend all night crying. However, the funeral was yesterday, that was the last stressful event in this horrible process. Now we just start to pick up the pieces.

As I'm coming out of this fog, I'm noticing my devastation and heartbreak are turning to anger. I realize this is a stage of the grieving process, but I'm surprised at how quickly I got there. It is probably because anger is such a comfortable emotion for me. I prefer it to sadness. It puts me back in control. Immediately after the funeral, I was in a rage. We hadn't even left the cemetery yet. It took the car ride from the cemetery to the church for me to work through who exactly I was angry with- people I thought were my friends. At that point everything was over, there were no more chances for these people to come through.

I don't feel as if I expect too much out of people. I don't expect people to treat me any differently than I treat them. When someone I consider a friend suffers such a loss, I do what I can. I always send flowers, cook or show up at the viewing. Sometimes all three. Even if I don't know the person who's gone, I do it for the ones left behind.

There are a handful of people I'm upset with. People I know knew about what had happened to my grandma, people who knew her very well, and also people I assumed were good friends. I think this made it very clear where I stand with these people. Maybe we were not friends the way I thought we were? So, it made it very easy for me to delete two of them- not only from facebook- but from my life overall. Done. I really want to delete the rest of these people, but I'm not. These people I certainly no longer consider a friend, however, I can easily shift them to casual acquaintances- who I probably don't like, but have to see occasionally.

If my grandma felt like someone hurt me, she hated them right along with me. So, I'm done with these people. My emotions are all at the surface right now. I'm raw. So, perhaps, I will regret this at another time. But for now, I'm cutting my circle of friends way down. Two people in particular I have cut out completely and about 10 more have been bumped from someone I consider a friend to just acquaintances.

My cousin, Judy, put it very well. She said you're world has stopped and you can't imagine how there's is still going on. So, I'm resisting the urge to be mad at people who owed me nothing who have gone one as if nothing happened. Because I've noticed the couple times I've gotten on FB since last Friday, I'm irritated with the stupid things people talk about. I recognize that is irrational and I put myself in check immediately. But, being mad at these specific people, referenced above, that is real and valid and I won't apologize for it.

I have my family, my husband and a best friend. That's all I really need. Honestly, that's all I can handle right now. So, if I withdraw from you, even though you really were there for me this past week, I apologize in advance. I just need to escape from life for awhile and try to heal. Life is kind of difficult for me right now. I feel like I'm starting a new chapter in my life, one without someone who had a huge hand in raising me, and I'm not sure what that life will look like. I need to go away, figure it out and find a way to put things back together.