I’ve come to accept that my grief triggers are unknowns. For instance, today I was having a relatively great day when one of my grandmother’s doctors knocked on our door explaining that he was here to perform a test on her.
We had to explain to him that that would be impossible because she was dead.
A bit of a backstory here — my grandmother passed away when she was 85 and before being admitted to the hospital in November 2013, doctors came to visit her at home. For the most part, they were amazing. She had incredible at home care, home attendants that became a part of the family and made her laugh.
As a family, we got used to having a stranger at home for 8 hours a day keeping my grandmother company. We also got used to having doctors stop by on weekends for heart tests, blood tests or just a regular checkup.
These last 10 months we also got used to not having these same doctors stop by. It was a shock to open the door and have to tell a doctor, who my grandmother gave absolute hell to and shared laughs with, that she was dead.
The string of words explaining how, when, where, why, were recited. They were rusty. They felt wrong to say out loud. Mostly because it felt wrong that he no longer had a reason to come through the door.
Image: WeHeartIt
