Lessons in Grief:

The Categories and Descriptive Classifications that No One Talk About

Nothing prepares you for loss.

It doesn’t matter what kind. Loss is deeply personal and ostentatiously different for every person. It’s the categories of grief, the descriptive classifications that no one talks about.

Those come out of nowhere.

Maybe it’s because until someone experiences loss and grief, you can’t process that there is such a thing as levels.  Grief is grief.  Horrible and raw. But it’s not linear. It’s multidimensional. Then comes the lesson that your mind processes grief differently than your heart. Almost as if they aren’t connected in the same body.

I lost both my parents within a year of each other.

My mom died unexpectedly in January 2024.  She had been caring for my home bound dad, which was half by choice and half by circumstance. Her and my dad were verbally fighting. This was their (unfortunate) norm. She called 911 on my dad. This led to me getting a call from the police, asking if this was a normal occurrence (especially for 80 year olds) and what did I want them to do. They were going to leave since they felt they de-escalated the situation, so I asked them to do a health check on my mom before doing so.  I could tell by her crying, she was under duress.  When the paramedics arrived, they immediately whisked her to the hospital. The callback from the hospital at 1:32 am broke my heart into a million pieces, along with my mental health.

I was now caring for one. What my heart was shocked to learn was that it was for one –  who didn’t care that the other was gone.

My father couldn’t be left to care for himself. We had a day nurse stay with him for about 12 hours. She would put him to bed and return in the morning. During this time, I fell into the role of inexperienced funeral planner.

The morning that I had “scheduled on my calendar” to say goodbye to my mom in a strange room surrounded by her pictures…my phone rang. The day nurse. My dad didn’t stay in bed that night. He got up. To use his computer. Fell in the hallway, broke his arm in 17 places and she found him there in the morning. 

Off to the hospital they went. I was taking calls with tears streaming down my face, staring at my mother’s urn, making medical decisions for my dad. Then surgery and rehab. At this point, I was suffering from surface grief. The grief of not seeing my mom or being able to call her, but too in shock. Preoccupied in the process that came with closing out one person’s life on earth, while making healthcare decisions about another’s. At least, that’s what my brain went through.  My heart ached. It was a deeper grief. A grief that told me nothing would ever be the same. And that what lay ahead would be even worse. 

Caring for my dad meant selling my childhood home, which was abruptly unoccupied. Rifling through 60 years of possessions and memories. In two months time, the house was a shell of the lives that were lived in it. The family that grew in it. Now another family lives there. This was a shocking level of grief.  A grief that makes someone feel like the rug is pulled out from under their feet, sending them flying into a void. A sorrow so deep, that will never be comforted. Because you know something is missing, but it feels like you can’t put your finger on it. It’s more than just a person. A lot of things are gone. And there is no place left to go to fill that void. No arms and no location.

The next 7 months with my dad in a nursing home, found me with anticipatory grief. With my dad’s growing health problems, bouts of altered mental state and decline, I grieved him piece by piece. Contrary to the experience of my mom’s loss, I watched my father disappear. And every stage was another level of grief. Which reminded me of the fact that I still hadn’t had the proper time to grieve my mom. In turn, bringing another event to grieve.

I put my dad in hospice on Christmas Day of that year. Only a year, almost to the day, of the last time I saw my mom. In January 2025, when he became unrecognizable, I said good-bye to him. He joined my mom on January 30. 

The explosion of snowballing grief hit both my heart and mind at the same time. One couldn’t help the other process it. This is not a feeling you can’t explain to anyone. You feel it in every molecule. And your timeline…it’s forever changed. You are forever changed.

Grief Counseling told me: “Time”.  Time would be the only thing to make it manageable.  In the meantime, find ways to honor who you have lost. In theory, this is true. Time, support, faith…all these things can be like support beams holding a house over the water. Supporting it and not allowing it to flood. 

There are days where those “support beams” completely collapse, and you can’t plan for them or schedule around them.  They appear like a stealth ninja and lay a 1,000 pound weight on your chest and heart. And by the time your mind catches up, logic doesn’t matter.

Your body responds first. The renewed shock, the forgetfulness of absence, the habits that are part of human nature to be in contact with people that were an enormous part of your life – all hit at once.  It’s like your stomach drops out of your body. I call this haunting grief. You never know when it’s coming, how long it will stay or how much of it will flood your body and mind.

“Grief is like the ocean; it comes in waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.”

In the end, you learn to be brave, strong and broken all at once.