Grief fucks you up

My mother-in-law passed away of pancreatic cancer in August of this year. She was diagnosed 11 months before she died and to be honest, she really did put up a great fight. She was just fighting the biggest opponent.

As a side note, she died two weeks to the day after my grandfather, who I had just reconnected with, also died.  But no one really noticed that.

My husband and I were there, not in the room with her because she died quite early in the morning, but in the town, in the apartment she'd been sharing with her husband of 50 years, my husband's father. In fact, the day of her passing was the morning of their 50th wedding anniversary. She really wanted to make it to their party. She was a very stubborn woman.

I didn't always get along with my mother-in-law. To be honest she was as crazy as I am, in differing ways though, so we were often at loggerheads. We had very divergent views of what is "art" and how to parent and diets. For instance I was told once that father-in-law is allergic to corn and never forgot it. It took ten years for her to remember that I'm allergic to walnuts and bananas. Crazy. Also smart. And driven. Oh my gods you never saw a woman so driven by her passions. She campaigned for Obama in 2008. She supported LGBT equality. She thought sexism was stupid and outdated. She was a grant writer for years and had run a county wide help line in NJ for a very long time. She was a remarkable woman. Still crazy, but that's okay.

I miss her. I wish that our daughter would have had a chance to know her better. To make her own decisions about how crazy Grandma is. She misses her. Keeps asking about her and why the doctors couldn't make her better and why she had to die. How do you explain death to a three-year-old? I keep trying. I don't know if I'm doing a good job or scarring her for life, but I'm trying the best I can.

My husband misses his mother so much. He is an only child and she adored him and he her. He had been afraid from the moment of her diagnosis what would happen when she died between him and his father. She was the buffer, the fixer, the controller. She kept his father reasonable. Ish.

When my husband was a little boy, one day his mother packed him up and put him in a car and drove off, away from the brute his father was at the time. He never knew why, but at some point she turned around and drove back. I can't remember at this point if that was the day his father had beat him for no discernible reason, or if it was inspired by another event. The beating by the way was never discussed. Ever.

My father-in-law is a minister. A man of "faith." They were "church people." So much so that they only lived in either graduate school or church provided housing until 1998 when they bought their first house. They would trot my husband out as the Preacher's Son while he was growing up, and tried to do the same thing to me when I joined the family, but I very quickly found other things to do than go to church with them. I am not christian, never was, don't have any interest. I am very spiritual, but you know, that is simply not the same.

We didn't leave my father-in-law's side for almost a week after her death. My husband went with him to the funeral parlor, watched as he threw away money on having them run the obituary for her ($309.00) when the local paper would have done it for free, go for the more expensive casket, pay extra for them to dress her even though there was no viewing. He said nothing because this was his father's grief. Meanwhile I had lost a job two weeks prior and was unaware that my unemployment application was being challenged by my previous employer, so I was not receiving unemployment during this time. My husband wasn't working while we were away. And we were having to spend money every day on gas and supplies we hadn't known we needed when we went out there because we weren't expecting to stay longer than two and a half days. This was a very bad week for us financially. And emotionally, but I have to think practically about things because sometimes I'm the only one who does.

By the time we got home we were effectively two months behind on the mortgage due to a bad July. We tried to make a payment of one month to get ourselves closer to caught up. We even thought it went through, but it was kicked back by the mortgage company for being insufficient. There was no budging them, all or nothing. No partial payments. We believed that my husband's father would help us out with some money from the life insurance settlement on his mother. That never came to pass. In fact his father blew through over $18,000.00 in two months paying back taxes and going to baseball games and getting $800.00 in clothing and traveling. We applied for mortgage modification, again. When his father came to visit us in September, we were three months behind on the mortgage and he said to us "would losing the house be the worst thing that happened?"

Are you kidding me? You have a three-year-old grandchild you are willing to let become homeless?

He did give us a bit of money at that point, but of course the mortgage company wouldn't let us use it to pay down the delinquency, so we paid bills. And kept trying for the modification. At one point in this visit he also grabbed my face and lectured me from less than 6" away. Don't. Ever. Touch. Me. Like. That. Again. My husband did nothing.

His father is becoming less and less the man he was with my mother-in-law. He is more and more dogmatic and biblical and less supportive and more critical. He is selfish and mean and continuously reminds my husband that "God loves you" even as we are suffering. My husband still hasn't processed the loss of his mother. The events in Newtown, CT yesterday rocked my husband as much as they rocked me and I think he wanted to call his mother. Instead he texted his father that we were struggling and hurting, and today his father reminded him at the end of their phone call, "remember, God loves you." My husband was furious.

And in an instant, he turned into his father.

I had made some admittedly not terribly sensitive comments about his lounging on the daybed for dinner. I told him to sit up, if we can't eat at the dining room table, at least sit up! The rest of the night went downhill from there. He accused me of not giving him room on the daybed, which I hadn't the last couple of days, but I've also been laid low with killer cramps. But I always move over if he makes moves to sit with me, he didn't even budge. I tried to clear my plate and he yelled at me to come back and sit with him. I averted my gaze because he said I was looking at him meanly so he said "I guess it is not in your nature" meaning I can't be comforting. All I had been trying to do all day was being comforting. Asking what was wrong, what I could do to help. He finally snapped that he was going to lay down for a while. I said "okay." What was I supposed to say? My daughter spent some time tickling us with cat toys and we tried to hide whatever the fuck was going on from her. Then he said again, rather harshly, "If I nap would that be okay?" I tried to smile and said "whatever you need to do, is fine!" But that made him angry. I know he's grieving for his mother and angry with his father but it all came out on me. And he thrust himself up from the daybed and I got scared. He has never hit me, never, but he does have a temper and my anxiety level is so high right now, I ran.

I ran outside to my deck and I broke down. Gut wrenching wailing sobs that I could only curl around with my forehead on the deck railing. Feeling the cold dampness of the wood through my slippers and wondering if the neighbors could hear, but I couldn't stop. I didn't think I would ever stop.

I have done nothing but support my husband through all of this shit. Through the chemo, through the death, through the mortgage modification, through the visits with his father. I support him, I honor his right to grieve, his right to be angry. I cry in the middle of the night alone. I make lists of the cats I might be able to keep if we lose the house and the ones that will either go to the shelter or be euthanized. I hide my fear from our daughter as best I can. I get naked for strangers at night to make extra money in case we can save our home.

He came out and said "Kir...Come inside." like I was throwing a hissy fit or being particularly exasperating. I ended up sobbing out "I don't know what to do! I just wanted to help! I just wanted to help! I don't know what to do!" and he enveloped me in his arms as I flinched away and fought him because in that moment I was so afraid, of him, of his father, of all the men who have hated me... In that moment all that fear and rage and hurt and terror was embodied in him and his frustrated voice. He just held me. Eventually I could breathe and he said "come inside." and left me there on the deck to compose myself I suppose. I don't know. He just went inside and shut the door.

And I followed.


No comments:

Post a Comment