WEST SIDE STORIES: On (not) burying the dead

It’s important to bury the dead.

It’s an important part of the death process, to have that ritual, right? To pay respects, to participate in that ceremony, that rite of passage, to say goodbye. With Mom, I didn’t get to do that. The colliding vehicles crushed her body, and snatched her life. I was hurt, too. Unconscious for two days, in the hospital for six weeks. Literally, she was with me one minute, and the next minute she was gone. While others went to the funeral, and the burial, and got to have that experience, and that finality, to “witness,” and to start to grieve, my body was in a hospital room hooked up to tubes and wires and such, hooked up to a breathing machine trying to get my left lung to work again.

I could not attend the funeral, to “witness,” to say goodbye.

So for me, her death was never really real.

For six weeks, my focus was entirely in the moment, trying to understand what was happening to my body. What did all of this mean? Who were all these people, these doctors, nurses, x-ray technicians coming in and out of my room. I don’t remember feeling sad. I didn’t cry. There were too many other things fighting for my attention, while I was laid up at Children’s Hospital.

So it was really weird when I was released, and went to go live with Grandma. And have that first experience of knowing that mom was gone forever. And it was really surreal - because grandma lived right next door to where we used to live - to be looking at my old house, and see new people coming in and out of that door.

“Wait! What? Where’s all my stuff? Where are all my belongings? Where is Mom?”

The whole situation got even stranger for me when I started asking Grandma questions about what happened. She said, the clothes she gave the funeral folks, to dress mom in, were given back to her. She said the casket she picked out was not the casket used at the funeral. And lastly, she said nobody identified mom’s body.

I’m in massive emotional survival mode, okay? So I took these snippets and pieces of information, and I began to craft a story, of how Mom was still alive. I crafted a story in which she somehow did not perish that day. That she somehow walked away from the wreckage.

I had to believe she was out there somewhere. How could she possibly leave us when we were so young, and we needed her? Where was she? Well, I believed she was out there somewhere trying to heal herself, till she felt like it was the right time to come back.

Grandma said all those things. And I didn’t go to the funeral. So this WAS possible. I believed she would someday come back.

So I waited for her.

But she never did.

When I was eighteen, I was still gripped by loads of grief, and I finally one day decided to open up and share this story with a friend. And I was so scared that she would judge me, or think I was crazy, or not want to be my friend anymore.

But she didn’t do any of that.

She just said, “You know what Ann? I don’t think you’re crazy. I think what this means is how much you miss your mom, and wish she was here.”

I absolutely burst into tears, at what I deemed to be a very random act of kindness. That kindness helped me let go of my illusion, and finally start to heal.