Paying the Fiddler: Losing a Parent

“Didn’t anybody ever tell you, Annie? When you dance you pay the man who plays the tune?”

Larry Gatlin, 1973

Penny Annie was a Larry Gatlin song from the 1973 album “The Pilgrim.” I remember dancing to it, over and over, both when I was quite new on this earth and later, when I was in early double digits. I was three when it first came out. Three in 73.

This means my Mom must have been 28 when I was born, a number I never actually thought about until recently, because, until quite recently, she wasn’t dead. She died just a minute ago, which is to say, she’s been “gone” for fourteen days. Fourteen days is more than two weeks in human terms, but right now I am not human. Right now, I’m nothing. I know that in the professional world (to which I am, fortunately, no longer bound), “bereavement leave” typically lasts 3-5 days, which is absurd. I didn’t even comprehend that she was dead within five days. I still don’t.

Because I used to be a teacher, when my Dad died eight years ago, I was “lucky” enough that it was July. I was “off” for the summer, so I didn’t have to go back to work right away. Ah, the life of luxury which teachers lead, no? You spend your first week “off” doing grades, your next week sleeping an entire week due to the exhaustion that comes with shaping the minds of 30 munchkins (if you are an elementary or high school teacher, like a few of my friends) or, in my case, 125-130 minds because I was a community college instructor. Then, at last, real summer starts. You may or may not do work over the summer, especially if you have a lot of things to update, changes you want to make, or especially if you are teaching a new class. Summer passes, a glorious eight weeks off in June and July, until the start of August sees a week or two of solid, hard core work: writing syllabi, as well as attending “professional development,” a sometimes mildly interesting period with sometimes mildly interesting topics and/or workshops. At one college I had worked, the professional development classes were actually better than just decent. They were interesting. I even got to see a human cadaver, which was fascinating. (The experience came in handy later, too, when I saw my Mom die: I’d been professionally developed). At another school, however, the most exciting professional opportunity for growth and stimulation included such fabulous topics as “planning for retirement,” and that might have been the best workshop they offered. Jesus. I went anyway even though I was just 30. Snooze.

However, by the time my Mom died fourteen days, as well as one hundred years ago, which is also three days or one thousand in terms of grief, I was no longer a teacher, which means I can now take “off” as much time as I want. Since I am no longer on any time frame other than my own, I can grieve in my own time, my own space, and to my own schedule. Fantastic.

Intermittently, I am furious she’s dead, relieved she’s out of her pain, numb to any of the (intermittent) feelings I am having, and gutted to the very core of me. I am cycling through all of it: broken, strong, broken-hearted, shattered, or even brain-sploded like the Ryan Gosling scene where he stomps life out of someone in an elevator. I am all of it.

What many people don’t realize is what time means (or doesn’t mean) post-death of a loved one. I am not “better” because I’ve had a whopping two weeks to “come to terms with it.” I have come to terms with nothing, yet. I barely even believe it. Two weeks ago, I was holding my Mom’s hand in her hospital bed, and she was squeezing mine so tightly that it almost hurt. I didn’t want to say anything, because it seemed the wrong time, what with her dying and all. I let her squeeze.

So, the old adage “time heals all wounds,” is nonsense. What I’ve learned about grief from previous loss (grandparents, best friend, father, etc.) is that time does not heal per se. It just makes the grief less sharp. I know of no better way to say it. Once, after my father had died, I remember the grief was so hard, so deep, that in my sobbing and my pain, I could not actually do it. Walking from one side of the bedroom to the other, I had to hold onto the doorjamb, just so I wouldn’t collapse. I was heaving, and snotty, and noticing it all at the same time. Another time, I walked by malt powder in a grocery store, and the fact that I would never again have chocolate malts with my Dad hit me in the stomach like a swinging baseball bat. Or was that my brother, and he just described the shopping to me? Doesn’t matter, I remember that grief episode, whether it’s his, mine, or both of ours when we were in the store together. Chocolate malts.

When somebody dies, please, please don’t tell the person that “Grief comes in waves.” Yeah, mother fucker, I know that, and if you catch me in the “anger phase,” may God help you. Or, if you say that to me and I’ve already had my flicker of acceptance that day, I will be more serene and smile politely; I’ll say, “Yes, I know, I’ll get through it.” I’ll mean it, too. It’s true, of course, because we all do. We must; that’s what life is. It just sucks.

The grief with my Dad was the worst grief I had ever felt until that point. I was not sure I would live through it, to be honest. I don’t know exactly how people could actually die from grief, other than suicide, but I didn’t want to do that. I just didn’t want to feel the agony anymore. However, “that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” and all that. I am so very, very strong now, thanks to that suffering as well as so many other losses. It’s horrible. I still grieve my Dad, only now it’s not so sharp, not so constant, and it’s not all the damn time anymore. “We go on.”

However, this loss is my MOM for Pete’s sake, and I cannot even fathom how to go on. Conversations we had, talking almost every day since Covid, even if it was just a quick check in. “Nothing new today, either,” we’d say, or something more meaningful. Or not. Weather. Politics. Covid. My health. Her health. Any of it, all of it, which I will never get back, and I would give anything just to talk about nothing with her again.

There was always so much music in my house, and now it is all changed. Every song we ever danced together, every song we ever sang. I will grieve (and have been grieving) the songs she had never taught me yet, the recipes she shared. The times I would call her and say, “Hey, Mom, I don’t have xyz ingredient, do you think I can use corn starch instead?” and she would say yes, or no, or whatever she would say. All that: gone. Forever.

With Mom dead now, there are no answers to the questions I didn’t ask. I remember once how I spent a wonderful, rich conversation learning things I had always wanted to know: my Grandmother’s maiden name (Bunel), Mom’s favorite song (she couldn’t choose), that kind of stuff. I had read an article about thoughtful, prompting questions you can ask older people about their past, and I remember trying to do that more in her later years, but there was so much more to learn. I will never learn. There will be more doorjamb moments, I am sure.