Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
Knots
When my parents died I was 23 and 32 (and pregnant with my first child). My father had been locked in the shell of his body for years, not able to communicate or move himself. It was my first experience with death of a loved one and the raw grief that comes with it. In his case, we had grieved his loss of himself while he was still with us, so some of that work had already been done. After he died I felt what I can only call gratitude grief – gratitude that this part of his long journey was over and grief for all that he had been through.
This was my first experience with grief knots, places in my body where sorrow and love and the great unknown grew together. These are both belly knots and heart knots. Sometimes one would dominate, sometimes they manifested together. I didn’t understand at first that my body was reacting to loss on body, mind, and soul levels. I found that trying to suppress the feelings that came with them wasn’t possible or desirable. These are emotions that have to be felt on many levels because they slowly opened me to the realities of what was happening to my dad.
My mother’s transition was peaceful. I was with her as her light went out and she faded out of this life. The grief knots had been with me for the six weeks that she was so ill and in and out of Intensive Care and on and off a respirator. However, her journey to her transition was not peaceful and I grieved that she had to go through such a long travail.
It is really hard work to witness suffering, to be on the cusp of love and sympathy. It is hard work as well to anticipate what might happen next and how to prepare for it. I am an information seeker, so the more I knew about what was going on with her, the more I began to understand that she had reached the final stages of her COPD. My heart ached for her as she made each decision to be placed back on a respirator and my heart broke when she said “no more”. Her doctor was kind with his words as he told us that her quality of life would not improve, it would only get worse and worse. That answered my mother’s questions and she made her decision. She needed information too.
As a hospice nurse, I have been with hundreds of patients and their family of caregivers. One of the most common questions I got from both was, “How long?”. When someone reaches that point and asks that question time becomes the precious commodity. How long? It’s hard to predict with any accuracy until death is imminent. So, to me, that means “We have today. Let’s make it the best today we can.”
Grief knots serve a purpose. They are hard to unravel, to separate out what each thread means. Each one is a question, and answers are sometimes hard to come by. But the knots exist to remind us that something profound is happening, that extra care needs to be taken, that more will be revealed to us. Sometimes those knots are the only thing holding us together. That’s when they become blessings.