User Post: Mother Loss: Does the Grief Ever End?
Twenty-five years ago this week my mother passed away after a long, harrowing illness. I was in college, it was the week of mid-term exams, and I was just arriving back to my dormitory when I was greeted at the double doors by two older ladies from my neighborhood. I knew their presence couldn’t mean good news. I lit up a cigarette, my latest act of new freedom, and sat cautiously on one of the barrel chairs in the dorm’s lobby. They told me my mom had been taken to the hospital, and I needed to gather my things because they were taking me home. I’m quite intuitive. I knew she was already dead. The next week passed in a blur. It was my first funeral; the first one I’d ever helped plan, and the first I’d ever attended. I smoked a lot, and didn’t care if my father saw me. His alcoholism, his abusiveness, and his affair during my mother’s illness had pretty much made me finished with him. I picked out my mom’s burial clothes, and taught my dad how to write checks. Mom had always been the
