Grief, I think, is more of a state; a weight of mood, an anchor that colours your otherwise normal emotional range, alternately flattening, deadening, and enlivening otherwise standard feelings. For instance, what I would normally rage at becomes merely annoying; what I would normally chuckle at becomes hysterically funny.
What is more interesting, I suspect, is how grief changes from person to person. The grief of losing my mother is different from the shock and absence of my brother’s young death. Instead of the sudden tearing and open loss, this loss is slower. This grief is different from what you might expect from grief because my mother was so noticeably absent from my life in so many ways for a long time.
I’d guess I began to lose my mother about five years ago, when her illness slowed her so much she couldn’t help me with my young boys. Her inability to take care of her little grandsons, even for three hours, was the first way she exited my life. As losses go, this wasn’t huge (I can pay a sitter!), but I felt her sadness at her body’s disability. So, she tried to help me, a working Mom, by cooking meals for me when I was too busy to prep dinner or was about to have a baby. Her gifts of food were her way of being Mom and Grandma.
Then, over time, her ability to do even that disintegrated, and I began to cook for her, not that she liked much of it. Alas, we are very different kinds of cooks. She liked her spaghetti mushy and salty, okay? I’d try, but I could never get it mushy or salty enough for her taste. Her frustration at being increasingly housebound and chairbound, with only the TV for company for much of her day, made her less and less interested in the world around her. This was compounded by her fear of her oxygen tank losing power and her increasing reliance on anxiety meds. She’d come to my house four times since we moved in 2 ½ years ago, and she’d never been in the lower level. She only sat in the kitchen or attached living room.

She left me again when she lacked the ability to even join family dinners. The past year, she’d only know in the hour or two before the dinner whether or not she had the energy to participate in it, whether it was planned at her house or ours. We’d go there; I’d pack up a giant turkey and all the fixings my Dad didn’t want to make, and we’d truck it all over there. And this was just fine with me. She felt guilty about it, though. I could tell, and she did eventually tell me as much. The worst part of this last stage of leaving was that she found the kids overwhelming, too. Long periods with all of us were too much for her, so even when I had time to visit during the day (when it was just me and a boy or two), I couldn’t visit: if they had a cold or were too loud, they’d get her sick or disrupt her daily routine. She was scared of them getting her sicker, and she knew they were growing timid of her frail frame and bony hugs.

A few weeks before she died, at Thanksgiving, she lacked enough breath to speak more than a few words, and her eyes hurt if she kept them open too long. I sat next to her as she concentrated on breathing. I tried to talk a lot, telling her as much as I could, so she didn’t feel like she had to make conversation. She could only talk enough to give me the essentials: The “How Are the Boy?”s. The “I love You”s.
When she died, it was a surprise, and it wasn’t a surprise. Still sudden, but she was deliberately oblique about how she felt in her body during the last week leading to her soul’s departure. She was independent that way; she always had been, and the hospital was not a place she wanted to be. In the days following her death, there was a lot of peace, a lot of quiet. And I’m grateful for it.
I’ve witnessed large families deal with death. Everyone gathers. Last spring, my friend’s grandfather passed away, and I stopped by with cookies and to give her a hug. There were so many cars parked in the yard, I had to park half a block away. There was so much noise coming through the closed windows that I could clearly hear it from the porch. This hubbub is foreign to me. To illustrate, one of my friend’s (also from a large family) came to my house to bring us a meal the week my Mom died, and when she arrived, my entire house was silent. I was the only one home. (The boys had gone out to play with Ben.) And she seemed visibly shaken by the total lack of people, of family, of flower baskets, of fruit trays, of sandwiches, of inappropriately raucous kids and sullen-faced adults. She didn't understand it, and she was sad for me. I can see why, but I don’t really know any other way. I have no living siblings. My extended family lives far away, and I had no wish to play hostess to people who I love, but that I only sort-of know. My grief is too personal.
So, yes, it was just me. Me and my very loving Dad. I don’t know any other way to do it. The day of my wedding reception, I set up the décor in the venue by myself, alone. The two dear friends I asked to help me out were dealing with their own emergencies and couldn’t be there early. The caterer thought I was the Mother of the Bride. (That stung on a few levels, I admit.) On another occasion, a friend had planned a birthday party for me at a local restaurant, and when I showed up, I sat there alone at a table set for 12 for over 15 minutes before I finally left. I later returned when three people showed up late. These incidences taught me an important lesson about relying on people to show up for you: that is, it taught me not to count on anyone. People don’t gather for me; despite my genuine love of people, I’m not extroverted enough, I think. So, as you see, even on happy days, I am quite often alone. And this doesn’t make me sad, and it shouldn’t make you sad, either; it is just the way it is, and it has been this way for a long time. I am alone.
And I am not alone. I’m startled and amazed by the affection given to me by friends and acquaintances in the community that know me and knew my mom. People who I don’t see on a regular basis who have randomly hugged me in the middle of the street and told me how sorry they are that she passed away. And then they usually share with me the story of their own recent loss; their own relief at the end of long illness or the ways they remember their own mothers. I’d have to ask my husband, who has lost both his parents and one sibling, but I suspect that the loss of one’s own mother is probably one of the deeper losses (if grief can ever be compared that way).
More importantly, I am not alone because I had a wonderful mother who is always with me in my heart and in the beautiful spirit world where she now dwells. And for all this, I am extremely grateful.