The World Keeps Going When Yours Has Stopped

What losing my mom taught me about grief, being the one who holds everything together, and giving yourself permission not to be okay.

For weeks, I was afraid of my phone.

It sounds strange to say that now, but somewhere along the way, a phone ringing at 4 or 5 in the morning stopped being just a phone call.

It meant something had changed.

My family was on the East Coast. I was on the West Coast. And before I even answered, my entire body would brace itself for whatever I was about to hear.

She’s doing better.

She’s not doing well.

They think she’ll be okay.

Something changed overnight.

For weeks, that was our life.

And the weird thing is, my body apparently still hasn’t gotten the memo that those calls are over.

My brother will call me now just to talk. It’ll be seven or eight o’clock his time, he’ll have some free time and think, I’ll call my sister.

And sometimes when I see his name pop up on my phone, my stomach still drops.

For a split second, I’m right back there.

What’s wrong?

What happened?

And then I answer and he’s just calling to chat.

I’m still learning that a phone call from my brother can just be a phone call again.

The Waiting Was Its Own Kind of Hell

My mom’s illness seemingly came out of nowhere.

For six or seven weeks, she thought she had the flu. Eventually she ended up in the hospital, and we learned she was dealing with diverticulitis and an infection.

What followed was weeks of not knowing.

One minute she seemed to be getting better. The next, she wasn’t.

For about a week, my brother would call me and say, “You need to come.”

Then the next day it would be, “No, don’t come yet. She’s doing better.”

Then, “I think you need to get here.”

My dad would tell me, “Don’t come yet. I’m going to need you more when she comes home for rehab.”

So, I waited.

And I hated waiting.

Because how do you know when it’s time to get on that plane?

How do you decide that from thousands of miles away when everyone is still hoping she’ll get better?

And maybe there’s a part of you that knows getting on that plane means admitting this might be worse than everyone desperately wants to believe.

Eventually, there wasn’t a decision left to make.

I got on the plane.

I left my home, my work and my life behind without knowing when I’d be coming back.

I just knew I needed to be with my mom.

When You Become the Ones Who Handle Everything

For a while, we still had hope.

There were good days and terrible days. Doctors and decisions. Hospital rooms. Rehab facilities. 911 calls. Things that were missed. Times we were told she could leave even though she couldn’t walk and couldn’t eat.

There were moments when we had to fight because something didn’t feel right.

And through all of it, my brother and I became a team in a way I don’t think either of us ever expected to have to be. It changed us forever but in a good way and our bond is unbreakable.

We talked to doctors. We asked questions. We made decisions. We communicated with family. We tried to protect our dad.

And sometimes I think we were just looking at each other thinking:

What the hell are we supposed to do now?

Because no matter how old you are, when something happens to your mom, you’re still her kid.

And that’s really what we were.

Two kids trying to take care of our mom and our dad while slowly realizing our family might never be the same again.

My parents had been together for 60 years.

Sixty years.

How do you prepare your dad to lose the person he’s spent almost his entire life with?

You don’t.

You just do the next thing.

I Kept Telling My Husband to Wait

There was another person going through all of this from thousands of miles away.

My husband.

For most of it, I kept telling him not to come yet.

Wait.

I’m okay.

Stay there.

My husband is a firefighter and was away working with a wildland team. He was worried about me, worried about my mom, and trying to do a job that required him to stay focused and safe.

And I didn’t want him to leave until I knew I really needed him.

Because that’s what I do.

I don’t ask for help very often.

Actually, that’s probably putting it mildly.

My mom raised me to be strong and independent. She taught me to handle things. Figure it out. Keep going.

And I will never, ever be anything but grateful to her for that.

But there are moments in life when being the strong one really fucking sucks.

And then came the moment when I knew.

I wasn’t telling my husband to wait anymore.

I was trying to get ahold of him.

“You need to come home.”

Thank God he worked with a team that loved him enough to basically say, “Get the hell out of here. Go.”

And he did.

He made it just in time.

That entire weekend, my mom kept asking about him.

She wanted him there.

And he got there.

I will be grateful for that for the rest of my life.

Because he loved my mom too.

They were incredibly close.

And he was losing her too.

I think that’s something we sometimes forget about grief.

When one person dies, so many different relationships disappear with them.

I lost my mom and my best friend.

My dad lost his wife of 60 years.

All of the kids lost their grandma — a grandma they were incredibly close to.

My brother lost his mom.

My sister-in law lost her person.

Also a huge shout out to the other Woman you handled everything and kept shit in line with the business, and feeding everyone, not sleeping and just being an amazing badass. Cass, we are forever grateful for you. Love you sis.

My husband lost someone he loved deeply.

We were all losing the same woman.

But we weren’t losing the same relationship.

There Was Always Something That Needed to Be Done

I spent 16 or 17 hours some days at the hospital.

And then I’d go back to my parents’ house.

Except my mom wasn’t there.

I wasn’t prepared for how hard that would be.

I’d spent my entire life walking into that house and she was there.

Suddenly, I was walking into her home without her in it while she was still alive.

Those nights were some of the loneliest.

And thank God for her friends.

They checked on me. They showed up. There were nights when someone would appear at midnight with wine and just sit with me.

No fixing it.

No perfect words.

Just, I’m here.

Sometimes that’s the greatest gift you can give someone who’s grieving.

Just be there. And you know who you are.

Eventually, after weeks of hoping and fighting and trying to believe there was still another outcome, we got the news we had desperately hoped we wouldn’t get.

My mom was coming home on hospice.

And somehow, while trying to understand that my mom was going to die, there were still things that needed to be done.

A hospice bed needed to be set up.

The house needed to be prepared.

People needed phone calls.

Decisions needed to be made.

Life doesn’t stop and say, She’s her daughter or He's her son. Give them a minute.

You just keep doing.

And I remember looking around my parents’ house and thinking about all the normal life that had happened there.

I was setting up a hospice bed for my mom in a house where, not that long before, we were just being a family.

And I remember wondering:

How do you someday put a Christmas tree in this same spot for my dad?

How does this room ever just become a room again?

I still don’t know.

And Then I Came Home

During all of this, I "survived."

That’s what I do.

And I think that’s what so many women do.

We answer the phone.

We make the appointment.

We talk to the doctor.

We check on our kids.

We worry about our husbands.

We take care of our parents.

We answer the texts.

We handle the work thing.

We figure out what needs to happen next.

And somehow, because we’re functioning, everyone assumes we’re okay.

Sometimes we even convince ourselves we’re okay.

I wasn’t okay.

I just didn’t have time not to be.

There was always someone who needed something.

There was always another decision.

There was always a next thing.

Until eventually there wasn’t.

After my mom died, there were still things to do.

There was family. There were arrangements. There was the funeral home. There were people to call and things to take care of.

My dad dealt with his grief differently.

He needed to stay busy. He needed to get things done. He needed to feel like everything had been handled so maybe he could finally breathe.

We all survived it differently.

But eventually, I had to come home.

And that’s when something happened that I wasn’t prepared for.

The world had kept going.

That’s one of the strangest things about losing someone you love.

Your entire world has been rocked.

And everyone else’s Tuesday is still Tuesday.

People go to work.

They make dinner.

They complain about traffic.

They make plans.

They go on vacation.

They worry about all the things they were worried about yesterday.

And you’re standing there thinking:

Wait.

My mom just died.

How is everything still happening?

My family was still back East.

My husband had to leave again for work.

And I came home.

Thank God my son hadn’t moved out yet. I don’t think he’ll ever completely understand how grateful I am that he was still there.

Because suddenly, for the first time in weeks, there wasn’t an emergency for me to manage.

There was just grief.

And in some ways, that was harder.

Who Takes Care of the Woman Who Takes Care of Everyone?

I think women are incredibly good at functioning while we’re falling apart.

We’re taught to keep going.

Take care of the family.

Keep everything moving.

I’ve been that woman most of my life.

I’m the one who holds things together.

And there’s a part of me that’s proud of that.

My mom helped make me that woman.

But after she died, there were days I couldn’t work.

There were days I couldn’t put my face on social media.

I didn’t have something inspirational to say.

I didn’t want to educate anyone.

I didn’t want to put makeup on, turn on a camera and pretend everything was fine.

I was a wreck.

And I started realizing something I wish we talked about more.

It’s okay.

It really is.

It’s okay if the rest of the world has moved on and you haven’t caught up yet.

It's okay if you’re strong on Monday and can’t get your shit together on Tuesday.

It’s okay if you’re laughing with your friends and crying an hour later.

It’s okay if you’re usually the person everyone else leans on and suddenly you don’t have anything left to give.

It’s okay if you don’t feel productive.

It’s okay if you don’t know what you need.

And it’s okay if you’re usually the strong one and, for once, you just can’t be.

Grief Doesn’t Follow a Schedule

We eventually threw my mom a huge celebration of life and birthday celebration on her birthday in July.

It was exactly what we wanted for her and what she wanted!!

There was family. Love. Stories. Laughter. And lots of cocktails. We all know Char loved a cocktail.

We celebrated her.

And in some ways, it felt like our final goodbye.

Then I came home again.

And that was hard.

Because grief doesn’t end when the celebration of life is over.

It doesn’t end when everyone goes home.

It doesn’t care how much time has passed.

It doesn’t care that you’re trying to get back to work.

It doesn’t care that you’re having a good day.

And apparently, it doesn’t care that you’re just trying to book a damn vacation.

Recently, I was booking an international trip with my husband.

Something happy.

Something I’m genuinely excited about.

And then a question popped up asking whether I still wanted my mom listed as my emergency contact.

That’s it.

A stupid little box on a screen.

And it knocked the wind out of me.

Because of course she was my emergency contact.

She was my person.

And for one tiny second, I had to acknowledge all over again that she isn’t here anymore.

That’s grief.

Sometimes it’s the big things.

And sometimes it’s an emergency-contact box.

Sometimes it’s reaching for the phone because there’s something you need to tell her.

Sometimes it’s seeing your brother’s name light up on your phone and your stomach dropping before you remember those calls are over.

Sometimes it’s anger.

Sometimes it’s sadness.

Sometimes it’s laughing so hard you forget for a minute.

And then remembering.

It comes in waves.

I’m learning I don’t get to decide when they show up.

I wish someone had told me how incredibly hard this would be.

I’m not sure it would have changed anything.

How do you prepare someone for losing the person they’ve talked to every day?

You can’t.

And I wouldn’t change what I did.

Not one second of it.

I would get on that plane again.

I would sit in that hospital for 17 hours.

I would fight when something didn’t feel right.

I would stand beside my brother always.

I would take care of my dad.

I would have the hard conversations with my kids.

I would set up that hospice bed.

I would do every exhausting, painful, heartbreaking part of it again.

In a heartbeat.

Because that’s what you do for the people you love.

But I wish we talked more about what happens to the person doing all of that afterward.

Especially women.

The ones who are so used to holding everyone else together that sometimes we don’t even know how to say, “I can’t do this today.”

Being strong doesn’t mean you never fall apart.

And grief isn’t something you finish.

I don’t think I’m going to “move on” from my mom.

And I don’t want to.

She was my mom.

She was my best friend.

She was the person I talked to every single day, usually multiple times a day.

There isn’t a version of my life where losing her becomes insignificant.

So maybe moving on isn’t the goal.

Maybe I’m learning how to carry her differently.

It’s kind of ironic when I think about it.

The woman who taught me how to be strong, how to be independent, how to handle things and keep going…is the person I’m now having to learn how to keep going without.

And that may be one of the hardest things she’s ever taught me.

The rest of the world kept going when mine stopped.

Eventually, I started going again too but not like before.

Not because I’m over it.

Not because everything is back to normal.

And definitely not because every day is okay.

I’m just learning how to live in a world where my mom isn’t at the other end of the phone.

Some days I carry that just fine.

And some days it knocks me on my ass.

I’m finally allowing both to be okay.

One Last Thing…

If you’re reading this because you’re grieving someone you love, I wish I had some perfect words that could make it hurt less.

I don’t.

But I can tell you what I’m learning.

You don’t have to grieve on anyone else’s timeline. You don’t have to be the strong one every day. And you don’t have to pretend you’re okay because everyone around you has gone back to their normal lives.

Let the wave come when it comes.
Cry. Laugh. Be angry. Talk about them. Say their name. Have the glass of wine with the friend who shows up at midnight.

And on the days when you actually feel good, let yourself feel good without feeling guilty about that either.

Because I think this may be the part I understand now more than anything:

And if today happens to be one of the days that knocks you on your ass…

Let it.

Tomorrow is another day.

~ Lori ❤️

"Loving them didn’t end when their life did. Maybe that’s why grief doesn’t either."