It's been nearly a year and a half since my daughter suddenly died from clots in her lungs. Her death certificate indicates that they originated in her legs, a common sequence of events medically. Research also indicates that there is a 33 per cent chance that such clots will occur even several months following a mild case of Covid. So I implore you all, young and old (she was 43) to learn the symptoms of clotting anywhere in the body, pay attention, and get prompt medical care regardless of your status as insured/not insured. Please guard your lives!
I have lost a number of people over the years, being in my mid-sixties. Grandparents, parents (at 21 and 31), half sister, aunts, and many friends. I've even outlived an abusive ex-husband. (Yes that was deeply satisfying, given that he tried to kill me.)
No death so far has equaled the sheer impact of losing my daughter. Society often imagines the death of a child and its impact as occurring when that child is young. Yes losing a young child is especially painful because they didn't get their chance to have an adult life. I can't say my daughter didn't get at least that much. She found love, had children and even, near the end, had a mortgaged property to work on her live off the land dream. She saw her first two children to adulthood.
News of her death still hit me like a literal body-blow. I felt the physical pain for weeks before it settled into my body and subsided. I felt the same exhaustion one would after a severe injury. I was inconsolable. Images of my daughter on her first day, first weeks, first few years haunted me. My body had worked to create the building blocks of her body, my breasts had nourished her following her birth, I saw her first steps and heard her first words, her first laughter, her delight in learning about this world. I saw her babies and heard about their firsts. I knew her dreams and supported her as best I could, having barely crawled out of poverty. All of that and now she was no more and her children were robbed of having her meet their future dates, potential children or other joys, her support in hard times, all of the things you turn to your mom for. All gone. All stolen suddenly and cruelly.
I got to talk to my granddaughter about that night her mom went to the ER. She thought it was a respiratory infection and she tried to treat it at home. But she was feeling so bad, having so much trouble breathing, that she worried about even getting TO the hospital from their rural property. She promised to text when she arrived at the hospital and she did so. My poor granddaughter, the next she knew police were knocking on the door to tell her that her mom had died in the early morning hours. She immediately had to pack her things, talk to her oldest brother by phone for advice, and meet up with social services. Her younger brother was 8; she was 13.
Fate snatched the middle generation out of our family, just like that. Suddenly we were fundraising for cremation. My husband Dave is the stepfather and step-grandfather and together we tried to support our grandchildren while grieving ourselves. I've had a number of difficult years but that was in the top two most brutal. (Vying with my son's traumatic brain injury that nearly killed him at 13 in 1991.)
I had grief books from other deaths, going back to my mom's. But they weren't enough for this shocking, sudden death. I found a great book, just for that:
I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye: Surviving, Coping and Healing After the Sudden Death of a Loved One (A Compassionate Grief Recovery Book) by Brook Noel and Pamela Blair
Now it's an election year and the consequences of losing this particular one is dire. I am trying to regain my stamina and gear up to help in whatever way a chronically ill grandmother can. My grandchildren are depending on me to guard our democracy. The Supreme Court picks next term alone are reason enough and climate change is also already serious and we can't afford to stop fighting it now.
Check your voting registration a few times as we draw close to November. The other side is trying to purge the voter rolls.
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