It’s been a while since I have sit down and written anything. A lot has been going on in my life, well not a lot, but it feels like a lot because of how heavy the things are.
Early this summer (or late this Spring, 2024) my last grand parent passed away. She was the real matriarch of our family. She was the loving, foundation.
Losing people I love is always difficult for me. I have a long list of loss in my life, so long that I have C-PSTD around grief in general. For those that may not know, “regular” PTSD is usually something that happens to someone who goes through one traumatic event. Complex PTSD is a cumulative build up of repeated traumatic happenings.
Growing up, I knew about death. I was a farm kid enough to have raised our own cows for meat, and chickens for eggs. We had pet rabbits and I learned early what the food chain was. I remember vividly once, as a toddler, comforting my aunt because my rabbit had gotten out and the dogs had killed it. (Now is not the time to discuss deeply, but I am aware now how as a 3-year-old I was somehow responsible for the adult’s feelings), We had dogs and cats too, who we had to send over the rainbow bridge. Early in my life I knew what death was.
Then, one night, I was 19 or 20 years old, at the drive in with some friends. I got a call from my boyfriend at the time and he was frantic. He had gone for a drive with some friends of ours and had gotten in a horrific crash. The car flew off an embankment and immediately killed my two friends on the driver’s side in the car.
We talked enough that I could get some information from him about where they were and who was with them and call 911. He helped the other survivor out of the car, and despite both of their injuries, he pulled the other person up the embankment and to the side of the road where he could flag down help. I was in a panic for a good while, until his family told me which hospital he was taken to and he was stable. I also learned then that the other two people in the car, were in fact, dead.
This was my first brush with death and loss of human loved ones. The first two viewings I ever attended, the first two funerals I went to. They were my friends Lucas (18years old) and Sydney (16 years old). This car wreck changed our lives, my own and everyone in our community. I learned that I never need to attend another viewing, because for me, the last memory I want of my loved ones is them alive.
Editor’s Note:
I wish I hadn’t gone to my mother’s funeral. It was the last image I have of her and it is stuck the deepest. I would have missed the church service, but I was creeped out long before that. I showed up and smiled. I was just intimidated. I turned on the preacher’s kid and muscled through. I will also never be the same.
And I learned how mortal we are. I learned that you always say goodbye before you leave, because it might be the last thing you say. I learned to tell people that matter to me that they matter, because they could be gone tomorrow.
Several years later, my first grandparent died. My sweet old Grandpa “Weird”. The death of an elder is different than the sudden loss of young people. The is all this time to prepare yourself for the loss of our ancestors, watching them slowly fade. And Grandpa had dementia, so he was mentally lost to us years before his body and soul were gone. But I remember his funeral too, and that I had a panic attack most of the drive and before we went into the church.
Then, I worked in biomedical research with primates for 17 years. As an animal lover, I was always so happy to be able to be taking care of those amazing animals. To be there to advocate for them, and spoil them at every opportunity. But they were purpose bred to sacrifice their lives in the name of science. It was my job, for many, many years, to be the person who sedated and carried these animals, some that I had known for their whole lives, to the end of their study and necropsy. So, I just kept stacking losses, on losses. For 17 years I made friends and took care of those monkeys, and for17 years, I compartmentalized the losses.
It seems counter intuitive to say this, but I am going to glance over the 8-month period of time in which my partner at the time and I had to say goodbye to both of our heart dogs, his grandfather, his young cousin, and our friend died young and suddenly too. Needless to say, it was a bad time for us.
Then my first Grandmother passed, she was not the easiest person to love, but she was someone I could always call and tell her in full honesty the worst things I had ever done and she would save me from the shame spiral. (Which seems a little ironic, because I think she is also the one that taught my mother the same spiral who then passed that special skill on to me, but anyway) She would never sugar coat or deceive. She shot that arrow right through you because truth is. But she would never shame me with the truth, just ask the hard questions that allowed me to choose what kind of person I wanted to be.
Two years ago, my other Grandfather left us just before Christmas. I got to go see him not too much before he passed, while he was in the hospital. I got to go be there for my poor Daddy while his father faded.
And now we are here. Where I am I think maybe today even, at the one-year anniversary of sending my deaf and blind dog Duncan over the Rainbow Bridge. And Thanksgiving will be a year since my rock, my best friend, my brother Ben passed away.
Ben, I could always count on. He knew that trust mattered to me. He was the most consistent and loving person in my life since I was in 6th grade and he sat behind me in advanced band, where most 6th graders were not. HE played the baritone sax and I played the flute. And his brother was friends with my brother and I felt so special that I got to be friends with all of them. Our families were so close. Are so close still. I am so blessed to be able to feel so deeply for people, that it destroys me when they are gone.
Then in May, in the airport, on the way home from 2 weeks on the other side of the country to visit my partner’s family and My Leslie, I learned that my grandma was on her way out of this mortal realm. This one was really hard for me, because we got home and the next evening I went to house sit for a fried of mine. Not something I could just drop or call in sick to. So, I got to say goodbye to my grandmother on video chat. She wasn’t really responsive to most input from people in the room, she was barely conscious, but when I told her I loved her and that I would be taking as many of her plants to live with me as I was able. She perked up, she acknowledged me and tried to speak, which didn’t work, but I was so glad to know she knew I was with her too, even if only in spirit.
Now, even more has happened, there is always happenings, and will always be more happening, because I am still here. And I will continue to feel as deeply as I am able. Thanks for reading.
I have so, so much more to say, stay tuned for more.
Stories That Are All True 