Christmas 2017 was amazing.
We spent it in Scotland, with the boys and Mark’s parents, eating and drinking and living it up.
I made cookies and wassail. With a lot of rum, and orange peels swimming in it like happy eels. Hugh, my father-in-law, drank a good bit of it. “What is that, in the mug?” he asked. “An orange peel, for flavor,” I explained. “Good, good. I thought it was my lips for a minute.” It was a healthy slosh of rum.
He ate a ton of food too; not a usual occurrence since swallowing for him since his cancer treatment was hard. My mac and cheese (southern casserole style with breadcrumbs and mostly solid) was excellent, if I do say so myself, and Hugh broke it up in the butternut squash soup I’d made, and ate two bowls.
So many presents. Christmas crackers and crowns and stupid jokes and cookies and music.
And then I flew home for New Years with the kids. And then five days later, Hugh was gone.
Flu and pneumonia and a stroke.
Just … gone.
To me, who didn’t see him in the hospital, this booming presence simply evaporated. I wasn’t in the hospital. I wasn’t there at the end. He just disappeared. I got on a plane and left him, and then he left me. He left us all.
He fought for a long time. And then he was gone. He had foreshadowed the previous November that it was going to happen. But you don’t believe that kind of thing. But like most stuff, Hugh was right.
I can’t talk about the experience of grief as someone who lost a parent. I can speak about supporting a spouse who has, and importantly, doing it long distance. Because while I flew back on January 8 to help with arrangements and the funeral and all the Things That Needed to Be Done, I couldn’t be there for the heavy grieving that happened in the days following. I was there for the things that needed to be done immediately. I was there for the public stuff. I wasn’t there for the private stuff.
Hugh and his cracker crown
It was, in no uncertain terms, a test of our commitment.
Mark and I have specific times to speak on FaceTime. We text constantly. All those “in stone” contact points became “maybes” because energy levels fluctuated. I had to remind myself constantly I had no idea the pain he was suffering and that I had to follow his lead. I had to tell myself to chill. A lot. I had to let him figure it out as he went along and just be there (there being relative) as much as I could be,
I craved being in Scotland to just be present. Make coffee. Make food. Drive. Sleep. But I could only just remind him I was there for how he needed me… 3500 miles away. And he insists he wouldn’t have needed me even if I had been there because grief like that is individual and a singular experience.
The last thing Hugh said to me, the day before I flew home, resonates with me, especially during these months apart. He had just started getting sick when I spent the afternoon hanging out with him on December 28 — just a cold, he said. He was chilled. It was almost January in Scotland. Everyone was chilled. As I was getting ready to leave and I leaned over to hug him, as he sat in his chair, he grabbed my shirt and said to take care of myself — too many people were relying on me.
We’re still on the rollercoaster of processing grief. Many people rely on me. It all needs time.
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