Your Notes On Living #1 - When Grief Meets Guilt by Michelle Gately
Notes on grief and how everyone's story is different
Hi everyone,
Today I'm sharing the first guest post for Notes On Living by my incredible friend Michelle Gately. Michelle also writes the Substack publication The Unfinished Bookshelf, which I canāt recommend enough, especially if youāre a book lover!
This week's post by Michelle has been written with so much care and heart, and I'm truly grateful to Michelle for sharing these words with us.Ā TW: A quick note before you read on, this post discusses the death of a parent, so please go gently and take care of yourself however you need to.
If youād like to write a guest post for Notes On Living, then you can find out more about how to do so here.
With Love,
Alicia x
Iām driving back to work when I see him. I inch the car to a stop. He has white hair, combed over. Or maybe Iām imagining that because the image of this man shuffling across the painted white lines, leaning heavily on a walker, is so similar.Ā
In the few seconds this takes my face flushes and hot tears well in my eyes. My stomach clenches. Iām used to this split-second pang of grief now ā it usually happens when I see an elderly man or woman who would have been around his age.Ā
But this time, as I wipe away the tears thereās a flash of something else. Relief.Ā
Relief because this reaction means Iām not a monster.Ā
Iām not a monster because sometimes I do actually cry when I think about my dead dad.Ā
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I grew up knowing ā dreading ā that my dad would die while I was young. The only child of a late second marriage, I got used to batting back questions about āa day out with your grandpaā before I started school.Ā
I always thought when it happened I would break down, experience the kind of gut-churning panic and retching sobs that make you feel out of control.Ā
Thatās what happened the first time he was in hospital. Iād come home from work one night to find him passed out on the floor. He told the paramedics he wouldnāt go to the hospital. Two days later, he collapsed while we were out somewhere and I drove him to the ED.Ā
I remember the panic, sobbing on the floor in my bedroom during the days he spent recovering from sepsis.Ā
This pattern continued with hospital admissions every few years ā the slow decline weāre all told to expect with the elderly.Ā
I had a feeling before my husband and I moved overseas that I wouldnāt see my dad again. I almost didnāt; he was admitted to the hospital a few days after we flew out of Australia.Ā
This time, he wouldnāt live independently again. In some ways that was a relief because I didnāt have to worry about him dying alone at home anymore.Ā
He was in the nursing home while we lived overseas, but he stopped eating almost as soon as we moved back to Australia. In his own way, heād made it clear that he didnāt want to live much longer.Ā
My dadās death wasnāt a shock, it was planned and managed by a team of palliative care nurses. We stopped his medication and then waited. I said goodbye while he was conscious, but it felt like the person I was speaking to was nothing like the dad I grew up idolising.Ā
Each day I woke up and checked my phone, waiting to see the missed call that told me heād passed.Ā
But when the nursing home carers called, I was in the library. It was poetic, really, because I used to beg him to drive me there after school once or twice a week. Even though he only read a handful of books in his life, heād drive me and sit in the non-fiction section where the newspapers were stacked while I borrowed more books than I could read.Ā
I didnāt cry when they told me. I hadnāt really the whole week.
I felt guilty in so many ways: that I couldnāt stomach being there any more now he was unconscious, that so many friends were checking in on me daily, that I wasnāt distraught.Ā
I felt angry that I had to think about any of this when other people my age still had parents who hadnāt even hit their mid-fifties. Who wouldnāt see the slow decline of ageing so intimately for decades.Ā
I was relieved because he was so ready to die. Relieved I didnāt have to see him like that anymore.Ā
Which is where we circle back to guilt.Ā
The truth is our relationship had shifted years before my dadās death. Everyone has moments where they start to see their parents not just as parents but as flawed and fallible people.Ā
But thereās another shift too, where you start being more parent than child. Are they taking their medication? Are they eating properly? Can they cope with driving? Can they live alone?Ā
The thing is, usually, you donāt have to deal with that in your twenties, when everything still feels messy and you often find yourself looking for the actual adult in the room.Ā
I know the guilt wonāt easily be assuaged. Being too hard on myself is my toxic trait ā one I am slowly untangling, but at a snailās pace.Ā
But perhaps I also need to remind myself that time softens grief and, if Iām honest, I lost my dad years before he died ā the one who danced under the water pouring from the guttering of our courtyard, who took me for hot doughnuts after school, who told me crazy stories from his days as a copper and watched every episode of Heartbeat with me.Ā
I know the splinters of grief will dig in when I see someone who looks like him, or hear a voice thatās almost the same. Yet I can also enjoy the freedom of not worrying about his health anymore and instead use those moments to keep the memory of him ā as the loving dad of my childhood ā alive.Ā
I guess the point in sharing all this is to say that grief is not always like the movies. It doesnāt mean you loved them any less, just that your story is a little different.