DENVER — I don’t know why I took out my phone and took this picture.
It’s hard to look at it. Even now. A year later.
At this moment, I don’t see the sun and the sky and the shadows and the leaves.
I feel it. All of it. Pain. Loss. Anger. Confusion.
Wow. Just writing those words makes me feel all of it all over again.
If a picture can say at least a thousand words, this picture might just be worthy of a novel.
Less than a half hour before I took it, I watched my mom die.
In a bed, inside the Denver Hospice, with a rosary of blue beads wrapped around her hands.
Mary Ann Vanderveen passed just as the City of Denver awakened on Oct. 26, 2021.
I have approached the anniversary of her death with a kind of anxious resolve. It’s coming. I know it. I don’t feel good about it. But there’s nothing I can really do about that.
Having lost my dad a few years prior, I was at least somewhat prepared for the grief roller coaster that defined the first year.
Roller coaster … hmm … maybe not.
More like a consistent battering of waves along a shoreline.
One moment the water seems calm. The next you're tumbling, over and over and over again, trying to get your bearings as you wait for the next wave of grief to hit.
Grief is indeed a strange thing.
I remember feeling it so deeply that I would surrender to it on my way to the ground. Literally.
I also remember wondering whether the momentary absence of it was a sign that healing was underway.
That was usually followed by a rush of guilt. “It’s too soon,” I would think. Inevitably that feeling would evaporate. Quickly, usually.
Bam.
Another wave.
Yep. Still grieving.
I hate it. Detest it.
And yet, some of it feels a little different today.
Without going into great detail, the final 24 hours of my mom’s life represented the worst and most challenging 24 hours of my life.
I still see those hours.
But the memories feel a little more distant.
I still have that pit in my stomach when I think of all of it. I feel the anger inside me at this very moment as I write this sentence.
Anger. Guilt. Sorrow. Deep, deep sorrow.
All of the emotions those who grieve feel. Sometimes all in a matter of a moment or two.
I just feel it in a different way.
I continue to see the images, but they now arrive in flashes rather than prolonged slideshows.
Maybe that’s what recovery is?
When my dad died, a therapist told me to give myself not just some grace but some time, as well. When my mind came up with a memory of dad during the days that followed his death, I saw the net result of the disease that had consumed him.
He weighed a fraction of what he used to weigh.
He looked sick and tired and worn. Immediately after his death, that’s how I saw him. I worried that’s how I would continue to see him.
Tired and worn and sick and all of the things that happen to someone when disease takes over.
Days went by. That image remained.
Weeks. Same.
A month. Yep. Still there.
And then, on a day that I can’t pinpoint, it happened. I saw my dad again. His more youthful self. The dad who used to argue politics and talk to strangers about random things.
Time did what time tends to do with grief.
It didn’t erase, but it transformed.
I’m not even entirely sure why I’m writing this, although I know I find some comfort in writing.
I hope that maybe, just maybe, those who have found themselves thrashing around on the shoreline of grief can find some comfort in it, too.
We don’t spend nearly enough time in this country talking about grief. We avoid it, even when it involves people we know and love.
It makes us uncomfortable.
We don’t know what to say and worry if we do say something that it’ll be wrong or inappropriate.
So we tend to say very little.
A really remarkable woman who lost her husband in a car crash a few years ago told me something that continues to stick in my mind.
A year after the crash, as the rest of the world moved on, she felt like she was holding a sign that no one could see.
The sign read, essentially, “I’m still grieving. Can’t you see?”
Grief is kind of like that. You feel beaten up on the inside, but on the outside there’s a veneer. A smile. A nod. A “Hey, I’m doing OK” kind of look.
It all feels very isolating. I wish I had that sign sometimes. On the bad days in particular.
So as I write about a picture I snapped with my phone not long after I watched my mom die, I know a lot of you will know exactly what I am talking about.
You’ve been where I have been.
Watching a sunrise and another day dawn as the world you once knew crumbles away.
Let me leave you with this.
I still miss my mom. Every day. I still want to call her when I get in my car and head home from work.
I still hear her laugh. Still hear her say, “Anyways,” when she knew she needed to change the subject. I still feel like I’ll be at her home for her annual Christmas Eve party.
I still want to tell her when something good or bad or awful happens in my life.
I still wish I would have told her more about how much I looked up to her and admired her before she died.
I still wish she was here. Laughing away. Drinking chardonnay. Listening to Frank Sinatra.
It feels different than it did the day she died, yes, but it still stings.
I suppose, in many ways, it will continue to sting.
And, (insert curse word that my Catholic mom would frown upon), maybe that’s OK.
Grief is … I suppose … what it is. A process.
The weird thing is, after writing this, I decided to take one more look at the picture.
A picture of loss and pain and all sorts of emotions I still haven’t come to terms with yet.
I still feel that, but at this very moment, I’m starting to see the things I never could have seen that day.
The leaves. The sun. The warmth of the day. A new start. A new beginning.
It’s there. All of it.
It all reminds me of my father’s face.
Not the one I saw right after he died. The one I see now. More youthful. More robust.
Healing made possible by time.
Time …
Give us enough of it, and it’s bound to change the way we look at things.
Even something as brutal …
… as grief.
We love you, Mom.
SUGGESTED VIDEOS: Mental Health & Wellness
