I Will Remember You

I will remember you
Will you remember me?
Don’t let your life pass you by
Weep not for the memories

(I wrote this on Tuesday the 20th then deleted it because it did not show me in a good light but decided to stop censoring myself. So, I'm reposting...)

I wonder if it is possible to suffer from delayed grief?

Like, decades of delayed grief?

All of my grandparents died while I was fairly young.  I was never really close to any of them.  My dad's parents lived right next door to us and I can't even really remember what they looked like.  I remember that Helen, my dad's mom (she never let us call her anything but Helen) wore men's sneakers, dresses and grew a garden.  She was big on home remedies.  She had a "swap shop" where she bought, sold and traded things.  My brother and I used to play in her store and she'd yell at us.  I was 13 when Grandpa Darnell died.  I remember being in junior high and wearing white to his funeral.  Yeah -- white.  I was in a rebellious stage, I guess.  I don't know. I didn't cry. I didn't go to Helen's funeral.  I was in college.  I didn't cry. My mom's parents died while I was in college or shortly afterwards and I didn't cry for them or go to their funerals either.  My mom's mom was cold and distant.  She was always looking for an excuse to whip us for something.  My mom's dad was a grumpy alcoholic who always smelled like stale beer and who seemed to hate kids. I didn't cry for them either.  I felt "sad" -- mostly because my mom and dad didn't have parents any more, but I didn't feel any personal loss.

I digress.  

In the past year, I've had three people with whom I went to college die unexpectedly.  They were 42 at the time of their deaths.  I felt sadness each time I got the news, with the most recent one just happening this past Saturday.  But, I didn't cry.  I have lost high school friends, former love interests and casual acquaintances to death in the past two decades.  Didn't cry.

Today (Tuesday), however, I felt like crying.   I don't know why.  I wasn't emotionally connected to these people.  I don't even know if the tears I feel like shedding are due to these deaths, past deaths or because of hormones, stress or other recent disappointments in my life.

I don't deal well with death.  In fact, one of my closest female friends dumped me in 2000 because I just could not offer the kind of emotional support she needed when her mother died.  She accused me of being heartless and unfeeling because I just could not offer up the kind of sympathy she needed and wanted.  I didn't know how to console her.  So, I avoided her.  I changed the subject when she wanted to talk about it.  Since then, I've tried to be more empathetic.  I even tried to reach out to her to apologize for being a total ass all those years ago.  But, the rip is too severe.  She still won't talk to me.

I can cry for just about any other reason under the sun, but not death.  I can cry for broken relationships, loss of jobs, war, sickness, relocation, the end of friendships, anything.  I am your rock for just about anything else.  Your pain is my pain.  I've cried for my own self, when I thought I was dying (see blog Every Breath You Take for more on that.) I can cry for "fake" deaths (like when characters on television shows or in movies die.)

The only time I have cried because of death was when I weeped for days after Molly died last May.

How is it that I can mourn and cry for a cat but not for people?

What is wrong with me?

Do I need to have some super close emotional connection in order to cry?  Or do I fear that by crying when I don't have a close personal connection, I'm hijacking someone else's tragedy? 

I remember having a conversation with a male friend years ago about my obsession with sad weepy music and how I like to just let myself be sucked into a bad mood every now and then so that I can have a good cry, cleanse myself of all of my bad feelings and move on.  Usually, the cry happens in the shower.

He asked me why I'd torture myself like that and I just said that it was a dark side of myself that I had to indulge in on occasion.


The conversation evolved to more philosophical things, including death.  I seem to recall that we both agreed that when our untimely end came, neither one of us wanted tears and sadness.  We wanted a celebration.  Music, a roast, if you will, laughter.  People telling jokes and sharing stories.  He wanted to be entombed for future worshipping.  I want to be cremated so that someone gets the job of toting my urn around for the rest of their life -- maybe even have a rotating schedule.  


We discussed why people cry when people die and we seemed to agree that most of the tears come from the person's selfish reasons and not because of the loss itself.  Regrets. Things not said. Things not done. Things that shouldn't have been said or done.  "I wish I had called more."  "I should have checked on her." "We just lost touch." "We had a fight and I told him I hated him."  Selfish stuff.  We should be saying things like "She was so wonderful. She made such an impact and now that is gone." or "She was loved by some many people and loved so many in return.  It's a shame to lose such unconditional love."


So, I *think* my inability to cry is because I have no regrets about the people who died.  Nothing personally staked in them... or at least, not at the time of their deaths.  I cried for Molly because she did bring love to my life and because I was going to miss that.  And, because, to be honest, I had a really dark time around 2002/2003 where I questioned my purpose in life and the only thing that kept me going was knowing that no one would take care of her the way I could take care of her.


Just my two cents.


So, if you start talking to me about death and I change the subject or make a joke, you know why.   We all have that one thing we can't do.


I have two.  I can't say "I love you" to people I love (in the romantic sense, see More Than Words blog) and I can't cry when people die unless there's a selfish reason to do so.