At 4:17am on July 9th, my mom became one of us. My dad succumbed to the traumatic brain injury sustained in the wreck on June 30th. They were married for 65 years. They got on each others nerves at points, but stuck it out together till death did they part.

It’s a good thing I’m a natural night owl who can stay up all night as I was able to do that and be with him when he made his exit. My mom couldn’t do it. She did visit him over the week, but as he got worse, she just couldn’t. I don’t blame her. Not everyone is cut out to do it. The whole 8 days he was in the hospital were very surreal. Between the sudden shock of the accident and just how everything played out is just heart wrenching.

So along with tasks that my dad was doing, I’ve also been guiding my mom along with the mountain of things that must be done when one’s spouse passes on. She’s only scratched the surface and has so much more to do. It’s rather unfortunate all of the stuff that’s heaped on widowed people. None of it is easy to navigate when also working through grief.

And I’ve been watching how my mom is handling her grief. It was very similar to me in that she seems to be in that, “I must stay busy” headspace. I actually had to laugh because when I went over there she had every light in the house on. My dad would be flipping out! I think she’s also left the TV on for 2 days straight, not really watching it, but just to have it on in the background and because my dad watched so much TV. It’s like easing that transition from what used to be normal just 2 weeks ago, to her new reality.

And me, well, grief is something I’ve lived with for awhile now. I have my own ways of dealing with it and I’ve been taking time off work to have more down time to recover (and attempt to reset my schedule to more normal hours). I’m reliving a lot of what I went through with Mario in that there are many things I wished I could have said at the very end. Mario was not conscious and neither was my dad. In essence, I lost my dad that Sunday when the accident happened.

I’ve turned to writing as my therapy again. Here is one short thing I wrote the other night …

Grief Returns

Grief is like swimming in the ocean.

There may be unfathomable depths below you and you may tire from swimming and swimming and swimming to keep your head above the water.

Each tear drop adding more volume over time.

There may be days where the sea is calm and you feel buoyant, lifted.

And then there may be a sudden squall, and you are tossed about, trying to cling to anything to right yourself and ride out the storm.

You survive, and the waters calm again. You lean into it, floating.