The Anniversaries of My Parents' Deaths

The days of my parents' deaths came about a month apart, years apart. The grief I feel on the anniversaries of my parents' deaths takes on different forms.

Devastated by the death of my mother

My mother passed away from pancreatic cancer on March 6, 2002. She was diagnosed in December 2001. When she was diagnosed the doctors gave her six months, but she lasted for only three.

She was my best friend, and we did everything together. I spent weekends with her up at her home in Connecticut (to my detriment, because I wasn't making friends of my own). I was with her when she died in the hospital, and I felt empty as I left her there and my brother and I walked down the hospital corridor on the black and white tiled floor.

I was devastated when she died. For months afterward I made the trip up to Connecticut to go to the nail salon we frequented together, the restaurants we often went to for lunch and other places we spent time at together.

The end of my father's life

My father died on April 13, 2013, from sepsis. He'd been declining physically and cognitively. My brother and I had been caring for him for a couple of years. I was working in Queens, New York, close to where I grew up and my father was still living in the apartment in which we grew up. After work, I did his grocery shopping for him and go to his apartment to put the food away. His apartment was disgusting with roaches and ants crawling around, garbage not taken to the incinerator and dirt-encrusted floors.

Eventually he agreed to let us move him up to Connecticut near my brother. We continued caring for him, cleaning the apartment, doing the food shopping, and doing his laundry. One afternoon, I took him to the emergency room because he said he wasn't feeling well, and he never went back home. He had sepsis. He continued to decline and was transferred to a palliative care facility where I visited him, but he didn’t recognize me. He died there after 10 days.

Complicated grief about my father's death

I'd had a conflicted relationship with my father. He'd been an alcoholic when I was growing up and when he got sober he plunged into a deep depression as he had been medicating the depression with his Johnnie Walker Red. He was verbally and emotionally abusive, with a cruel and acerbic tongue when he was intoxicated. He could be sarcastic when he was sober.

When he died, I'd expected to feel relief, but instead I felt rage and resentment. He never said to me you are good enough, and when he passed away, my chance to hear those words come out of his mouth were gone. The rage and resentment fueled a deep depression from which I could not extricate myself and 11 months after he passed away, I made my fourth suicide attempt and spent a week in the psychiatric hospital.

Depression and sadness on anniversaries

Both anniversaries of my parents' deaths spur a great deal of sadness for me, regardless of whether I'm doing well at the time or not.  This last anniversary of my mother's death was the 22nd, and I can't believe how much I still miss her. One of my biggest regrets was that she didn't live to see me recover from my severe mental illness. She passed away 3 weeks after my 41st birthday, and I was still so ill.

I'm not religious, but I do believe she is watching over me. I believe she knows how much I've achieved and is proud of me. There are times when I'm struggling financially, and a check shows up. Sometimes it's a small check and sometimes it’s larger, but it’' something. It may be a check from a writing job I have been waiting for or from a gallery where my brother and I put some artwork we inherited up for sale.

Moving through depression toward healing

I didn't start to come to terms with the fact that my father was human and that he did the best he could with what he had until after his death. A lot of the therapeutic work I did following my suicide attempt in 2014 was around anger in general and my rage at him in particular.

I was able to see that my grandparents, his parents who were Eastern European immigrants and sent him to a boarding school, did not imbue him with the tools he needed to be a stellar parent. At one point, my therapist and I came to the realization that in addition to his depression and alcoholism, he most likely had undiagnosed schizoid personality disorder.

Grieving the deaths of parents is complicated

My sadness around the anniversaries of both parents' deaths is different. For my mother, I feel as though my time with her was cut short as she died at age 67. I wish I had more time with her. With my dad, I feel sad I didn't realize he was trying the best he knew how. He just wasn't given the tools he needed.

I keep both of my parents alive by talking about them with my brother. He and I are only 18 months apart and extremely close. One of my father’s favorite phrases was "top work," He used to say that when a job was well done and, if a job  was done badly, he used to say that with sarcasm dripping from his voice. I recently had a sweatshirt made with "top work" emblazoned across the chest and gave it to my brother. He said it was the best gift he's ever received.