I Loved Her, Too

In July of last year, the worst thing happened to our family. My mother in law died. She died just months after our dog died. It felt like the losses kept coming and pummeled us.

2023 was not the kindest to our family.

Grieving simultaneously alongside my husband has been a unique experience. Our connectivity in grief ebbs and flows. How we handle grief can be different. This blog won’t be about my husband’s personal experience. His grief is private for him to share, or not share. But I think a lot of you are out there, like me. Those who feel they could never compare their grief to their partner’s loss of a parent, but who still have their own grief to tend to, while also trying to be the best support. My husband lost his Mom, and I loved her, too.

I had a really beautiful relationship with my MIL. We would have coffee dates in the early days, before I married her son. We would stay up for hours talking about life, early memories, and all the things. We cooked together, we had family game nights together, and had a lot of similar interests. She inspired my love for a good charcuterie board, and I would joke with her about the cheap wine she would always drink. (Hey, we all have to be bougie on a budget sometimes, right?) She was there waiting after the birth of each of her grandbabies. I had a big love for her and she filled gaps in my life over the years that I didn’t know I needed filled. I hold so much gratitude for that, and so much sorrow that it’s gone.

My husband and I are fortunate to have a solid foundation within our marriage. We generally know what we need to feel regulated and have worked over the years to ask for what we need (it’s always a work in progress!). With two little kids, it became especially important to figure this stuff out. In grief, it can get really hard to ask for what you need. Everyday may feel the same, or could emotionally shift in an instant. It’s a different dynamic that exists when you’re supporting your loved one through one of the worst losses imaginable, while you’re also going through it too.

For a couple short months before she passed, there was a lot of confusion as to what was actually happening with her, a lot of misdiagnosis, and a lot of traveling all over. In and out of hospitals, her moving in with us, witnessing a lot of suffering, and more hospital time. All while both of us were still working and tending to all things parenting related. Because we all know the world doesn’t stop spinning when you’re drowning in it all. This was a an incredibly overwhelming and triggering time. It was hard to be supportive while I was trying to process my own stuff, so I could try and be more present for my MIL and husband and figure out what we needed to do. This is when good family and friends throw you a buoy, and you accept help. This was not the time for pride to get in the way, there was no time for such obstacles. Take the buoy. Accept the help. Ask for the help. No one should have to endure this alone.

We all kept communication as open as possible, while feeling completely helpless to my MIL suffering and struggling. Her last request was seeing a doctor in NYC and within hours of dropping her off, we knew what fate was handing us. The type of news that brings you to your knees and you wonder how the fuck you’re ever going to get back up again. Anguish. Shock. Disbelief. Panic. Anger at how quickly this one doctor diagnosed her within hours, what other doctors had over a month to figure out. As things became more clear that my MIL had cancer, we started having conversations with her about the inevitable. Hard conversations. Gathering of information conversations. Last wishes conversations. Private conversations. Connecting, peaceful conversations. There was a tremendous amount of overwhelming emotions, mixed with the fury of trying to figure out SO many logistical pieces that were changing on the daily based on how she was doing. The possible months the doctors suggested, quickly turned into weeks, which tragically turned into days.

There were (and still are) moments in this grief where I could only go so far with my husband. There is a path where our grief merges together, but eventually there will always be this much larger stretch in my husband’s journey that I cannot access. I could walk him as far as I could in grief, but some moments, some conversations, were meant only for him.

Of course, this is painful to bear witness to. It is painful to watch someone suffer, then die. It is painful to grieve. It is painful to support your partner and know so much helplessness exists in all of it. As we both progressed in our grief, talks turned to silence and to long bouts of isolation. It can feel hard to know what’s too much or not enough, so I did my best to check in, to make myself available, and I also had the big responsibility of tending to my own grief to be a better support to my husband. Did I also mention tending to my young kids grief who had already witnessed so much suffering and loss at such young ages? That’s another blog in itself, y’all. Whew. I leaned on friendships to support me, so I could make space to support my grieving family. It didn’t feel appropriate for my husband or kids to be my primary support. Of course we supported one another, but I created spaces with friends, long walks, and in therapy to carve out the space I needed to grieve. How could I ask my husband for anything more, when grief had already taken so much from him? Sometimes it feels like I don’t have enough permission to fully feel my grief. Perhaps for fear of my grief feeling too big, or taking up too much space. Perhaps it’s knowing we grieve differently and what may comfort me can easily trigger my husband. It’s hard when you need different things when grieving.

It’s been a whole year since she died. While I fully accept this reality, there are still moments when it feels like my whole body sinks in and I think, “Damn, really? For the rest of our lives this is real?” The moments swoop in and then they eventually pass. I don’t bother fighting them away. It’s all a part of me now. It soothes me to hang photos, talk to the kids about her, and try to embody some of my favorite things about her. She was a true, kind hearted person, through and through. Many times over the years there were those who tried to dim her light, tried to take her into their darkness with them, but she always the epitome of the phoenix rising. She didn’t do things perfectly, but I feel honored that my little family got the best, most authentic parts of her. We will always treasure that. And we will always treasure who showed up - for her, for us, and having her for all the years we did.

I could never compare to my husband’s grief of losing his Mom. And… I loved her, too.