Hospice worker talked in Psych class today
It was the best/worst example of "bad timing" ever.
Not to mention that this Thursday and Tuesday we are holding discussions about Tuesdays with Morrie.
I shouldn't have been surprised; after all, it is a Lifespan Developmental Psychology course and we started with conception, birth and infancy. Only fitting we should end it with old age and dying and death. (We aren't looking at terminally ill cases in younger people or people who die young.)
It was horrible. She introduced herself, talked about emotions associated with someone getting ALS, then said she was also the Grief Program Director. She said that their hospice is for people with a prognosis of 6 months or less of life and that's when I had to excuse myself. Dan has been in a hospice for three months before his death. I broke down in the bathroom, on the phone with Matt. It was horrible, horrible timing. I'm glad I didn't have breakfast because otherwise I would have vomited it up from crying so hard. I was on the phone with him for about 8 minutes. We don't have class Wednesday (symposium day) and it made me wish really hard I had a car so I could just drive myself down to visit him tonight and tomorrow. It's kind of unfortunate, this case of timing, that when I do my big crying jags, nobody I'm close to is here.
When I got back, she was talking about grief still. I liked that she said grief is grief, loss is loss, it's all the same. She used the example that a widow/widower of three years of marriage has the same grief as a widow/widower of fifty years of marriage. That person still meant something to you, and affected you and their deaths affected you. I think it's selfish to try and compare grief or closeness of relationships to see who can be "allowed" to grieve. Whenever I see pamphlets talking about trauma, they say people who viewed something horrible can be traumatized as someone who experienced it. (I think they were talking about natural disasters, since this was after the Sri Lanka tsunami in 2005, and my high school was trying to raise money and help/awareness in Romania.) The speaker said that everybody's cup may be a different size, but they're still overflowing with grief.
She also talked about anticipatory grief and the sudden shock of death and the grief that comes after that. With Dan, reading the updates on his website, I'm sure everybody about him experienced anticipatory grief, or grief during the process. Grief of the loss of his physical ease, grief of the loss of his independence, grief of what life would be without him, etc. Then there's the grief of when he died. I know with my maternal grandfather, since he was unconscious for several months leading to his death, his children and grandchildren/extended family experienced anticipatory grief. My mom said she was glad he was at peace, after months of not really living. I'm glad she has religion to help her with the grief. I remember sitting and watching my grandfather's remaining children talk about his will and distributing his goods and potentially opening up a hospice or a care shelter for the elderly in his name. This reminded me of something the speaker said, too, about how they don't even recommend grief counseling until about 3 months after the death, because there are legalities to take care of, children (if there are) and such that you push aside your grief in order to take care of those details and only afterwards could you focus on yourself. (She also recommended widowed parents have someone else help with childcare for a while, so they can balance experiencing their own grief, versus being "strong" and not crying and making their children think Mom/Dad didn't care about the other passed away parents, and also finding a balance so the children don't feel hopeless and lost, too.)
The speaker, Mary Jane or Mary Anne, said nobody can prepare you for death, and I suppose since she works in a hospice with terminally ill patients she would know. That it was still a shock. Dan's death was peaceful, I read, but to me, still a shock. Agata's death was a shock since it was an accident, and she was so young and expected to have a normal life expectancy. She was the first one to mention to me how I walked "weirdly" or "on my tippy toes." That was an interesting conversation. She was one grade below. It was at UNIS in Hanoi. We've been on opposing basketball teams (she was still at UNIS, I had transferred to ISHCMC) and then on the same team when she moved to ISHCMC. She was good, a really good point. Our lifestyles were very different, and our parents' rules, too. She was gorgeous, too. I sometimes commented on her photos on FB; she had this lush wavy hair, thick, really trim athletic body, and she had a lot of photos that friends took of her when they went out. I just hope that accident didn't involve alcohol or drugs. That it was a...substance-free accident.
I guess in both circumstances it's impossible to have anything or anybody to rage against. In Dan's case it was cancer, in Agata's case, I don't know yet... Well, maybe in that case, depending on what happened, who was driving, etc... Somebody could be "blamed" but it does seem so pointless... Rationally I know this, though in my crying moments I go "why? why?" especially with Agata's death. You usually think accidents can be prevented, you know? Even if you can't go back in time, sometimes you fantasize how something could have changed.
When my sister was pregnant, I had a bad nightmare once of her and her husband getting in a car accident and dying. I cried a lot when I woke up from that nightmare. Car accidents are scary in their frequency. I imagined my sister not able to be a mother, the fetus still unborn, her husband and her not having more time to be parents and be wife-and-husband, and my parents not able to be grandparents. All those hopes just shattered. Now, with my sister having given birth to Khalisa and my mom having had the opportunity to see her... I just hope nothing unexpected happens and the "normal" way of life of having parents die of old age (or disease, but not an accident) before children...happen. One of my aunts/two of my cousins had to bury a son/brother 17 or so years ago from leukemia.
Yeah, today's class and yesterday made me wonder what is going to happen to my family. What negative or positive milestones are going to happen. Would things happen "out of order"? My professor also mentioned the disappearance of expectant hopes in her extended family when someone was diagnosed with something that made certain plans/hopes disappear. I have those, too, vague ones, of getting married, growing old together, maybe having kids. There are no accidental deaths or trauma in those fuzzy scenarios, or diagnoses of illnesses or disorders that would radically change the way of living. I would hope, if I live old enough, that I can cope relatively well with the unexpected milestones fate throws.
My prof also talked a bit about successful aging vs. aging with success. The distinction was interesting. I think my textbook talked more about it.
Not to mention that this Thursday and Tuesday we are holding discussions about Tuesdays with Morrie.
I shouldn't have been surprised; after all, it is a Lifespan Developmental Psychology course and we started with conception, birth and infancy. Only fitting we should end it with old age and dying and death. (We aren't looking at terminally ill cases in younger people or people who die young.)
It was horrible. She introduced herself, talked about emotions associated with someone getting ALS, then said she was also the Grief Program Director. She said that their hospice is for people with a prognosis of 6 months or less of life and that's when I had to excuse myself. Dan has been in a hospice for three months before his death. I broke down in the bathroom, on the phone with Matt. It was horrible, horrible timing. I'm glad I didn't have breakfast because otherwise I would have vomited it up from crying so hard. I was on the phone with him for about 8 minutes. We don't have class Wednesday (symposium day) and it made me wish really hard I had a car so I could just drive myself down to visit him tonight and tomorrow. It's kind of unfortunate, this case of timing, that when I do my big crying jags, nobody I'm close to is here.
When I got back, she was talking about grief still. I liked that she said grief is grief, loss is loss, it's all the same. She used the example that a widow/widower of three years of marriage has the same grief as a widow/widower of fifty years of marriage. That person still meant something to you, and affected you and their deaths affected you. I think it's selfish to try and compare grief or closeness of relationships to see who can be "allowed" to grieve. Whenever I see pamphlets talking about trauma, they say people who viewed something horrible can be traumatized as someone who experienced it. (I think they were talking about natural disasters, since this was after the Sri Lanka tsunami in 2005, and my high school was trying to raise money and help/awareness in Romania.) The speaker said that everybody's cup may be a different size, but they're still overflowing with grief.
She also talked about anticipatory grief and the sudden shock of death and the grief that comes after that. With Dan, reading the updates on his website, I'm sure everybody about him experienced anticipatory grief, or grief during the process. Grief of the loss of his physical ease, grief of the loss of his independence, grief of what life would be without him, etc. Then there's the grief of when he died. I know with my maternal grandfather, since he was unconscious for several months leading to his death, his children and grandchildren/extended family experienced anticipatory grief. My mom said she was glad he was at peace, after months of not really living. I'm glad she has religion to help her with the grief. I remember sitting and watching my grandfather's remaining children talk about his will and distributing his goods and potentially opening up a hospice or a care shelter for the elderly in his name. This reminded me of something the speaker said, too, about how they don't even recommend grief counseling until about 3 months after the death, because there are legalities to take care of, children (if there are) and such that you push aside your grief in order to take care of those details and only afterwards could you focus on yourself. (She also recommended widowed parents have someone else help with childcare for a while, so they can balance experiencing their own grief, versus being "strong" and not crying and making their children think Mom/Dad didn't care about the other passed away parents, and also finding a balance so the children don't feel hopeless and lost, too.)
The speaker, Mary Jane or Mary Anne, said nobody can prepare you for death, and I suppose since she works in a hospice with terminally ill patients she would know. That it was still a shock. Dan's death was peaceful, I read, but to me, still a shock. Agata's death was a shock since it was an accident, and she was so young and expected to have a normal life expectancy. She was the first one to mention to me how I walked "weirdly" or "on my tippy toes." That was an interesting conversation. She was one grade below. It was at UNIS in Hanoi. We've been on opposing basketball teams (she was still at UNIS, I had transferred to ISHCMC) and then on the same team when she moved to ISHCMC. She was good, a really good point. Our lifestyles were very different, and our parents' rules, too. She was gorgeous, too. I sometimes commented on her photos on FB; she had this lush wavy hair, thick, really trim athletic body, and she had a lot of photos that friends took of her when they went out. I just hope that accident didn't involve alcohol or drugs. That it was a...substance-free accident.
I guess in both circumstances it's impossible to have anything or anybody to rage against. In Dan's case it was cancer, in Agata's case, I don't know yet... Well, maybe in that case, depending on what happened, who was driving, etc... Somebody could be "blamed" but it does seem so pointless... Rationally I know this, though in my crying moments I go "why? why?" especially with Agata's death. You usually think accidents can be prevented, you know? Even if you can't go back in time, sometimes you fantasize how something could have changed.
When my sister was pregnant, I had a bad nightmare once of her and her husband getting in a car accident and dying. I cried a lot when I woke up from that nightmare. Car accidents are scary in their frequency. I imagined my sister not able to be a mother, the fetus still unborn, her husband and her not having more time to be parents and be wife-and-husband, and my parents not able to be grandparents. All those hopes just shattered. Now, with my sister having given birth to Khalisa and my mom having had the opportunity to see her... I just hope nothing unexpected happens and the "normal" way of life of having parents die of old age (or disease, but not an accident) before children...happen. One of my aunts/two of my cousins had to bury a son/brother 17 or so years ago from leukemia.
Yeah, today's class and yesterday made me wonder what is going to happen to my family. What negative or positive milestones are going to happen. Would things happen "out of order"? My professor also mentioned the disappearance of expectant hopes in her extended family when someone was diagnosed with something that made certain plans/hopes disappear. I have those, too, vague ones, of getting married, growing old together, maybe having kids. There are no accidental deaths or trauma in those fuzzy scenarios, or diagnoses of illnesses or disorders that would radically change the way of living. I would hope, if I live old enough, that I can cope relatively well with the unexpected milestones fate throws.
My prof also talked a bit about successful aging vs. aging with success. The distinction was interesting. I think my textbook talked more about it.