The Longest Week Ever

Mom has been gone just over a week now. I'm still coming to grips with what happened. I held it together for the week we had to clean out the house. I got home on Sunday night, unpacked, went to bed and completely lost it.

I cried for 30 minutes straight. I miss her so much.

I know that the next year will be hard and I'll want to rage, and scream, and cry on a regular basis. I've already had some moments of realizing I can't call Mom for answers on things. I can't call her and tell her what goofy thing Linus did. I can't call and argue with her about politics. I can't call her on Thanksgiving and tell her the Bird is in and the Clam dip is done. I can't do any of that and that breaks my heart.

Much like when BigBro died I spent a good chunk of time being in denial - the first stage of grieving.

The say it helps us survive the loss, we become numb, we wonder how we can go on with out the person we lost. In this phase you take one day at a time and learn to cope with the hole in your heart. "Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief." They say it's "nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle." At some point you will start asking questions, then is when you start the healing process. And it's at THIS point that all the feelings you were denying begin to surface.

Oh great!

I think I am very much still in the denial phase. I really felt denial in the hospital and think I went through all 5 phases of grieving that week in the hospital. Denial - Anger - Bargaining - Depression - Acceptance. The week in the hospital was hard and all those emotions did surface in that short time frame. I knew she wasn't coming back to us. When the reality set in, and she passed, there was relief. Then there was work that needed to be done.

The next week was cleaning out the house. I compartmentalized my feelings for that week to "get it done." The sadness of throwing or giving away someone's life was overwhelming. All I could do was tuck those emotions neatly inside to be dealt with another day.

Now I'm home. Alone. Two cats who missed me horribly and no mom to call to tell how much the cats missed me.