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Grieving…it’s a work in progress

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When my Mama passed away in January, yes, I was upset - devastated even. Throw in a ton of shock while you’re at it. One day she was doing well and making improvements each day and then all of a sudden we were on the phone making an appointment with the hospice team to say our goodbyes. Not to sound morbid or anything, but before my Mama passed away, I’d never watched anyone die…Ten out of 10 would not recommend it. A root canal would be more fun than going through watching someone you love take their last breath…

After the tubes were removed, the nurse told us it could take minutes, hours or even days before she passed away. I don’t like to admit it, but I knew it wouldn’t take days or even minutes because her health had already deteriorated to the point where she wasn’t responding at all. An hour and 15 minutes was all it took. I watched my dad put his hand on her chest and say ‘I don’t think I feel anything.’ To be honest, I don’t think it really hit us that she was gone until the nurse came in and put the stethoscope to her chest to confirm she had, in fact, passed away.

I can’t even begin to count how many times I cried the first couple of weeks – in the car, in the shower, reading a card that came in the mail, running into someone she knew in Walmart, reading a book (something she LOVED to do). Shortly after she passed away, someone asked me how many weeks I was going to take off from work. Weeks? There was no way I was staying out of work for more than a week. Well, that was the plan until I found myself in the emergency room the morning after the funeral (Jan. 20). Diagnosis? A 2.2 millimeter kidney stone. The doctor put me out of work the rest of the week. For the record, prior to this I’d never had a kidney stone. I guess staying out that extra time was a blessing in disguise because I was crazy to think I was even close to going back to work literally the very next day. But even though the idea of going back to work so soon was crazy, I was ready. I didn’t want to sit at home and I knew my Mama wouldn’t want me out of work any longer than I needed to be. I’d only been with The Chronicle for about four months at the time of her passing and I didn’t like the idea of taking more than a week off of work since I was still pretty new. In my mind, I had a job to do and I wanted to be at work regardless of how I was feeling – just like my Mama…And to be honest, I’d waited a long 6-7 months to find this job. In fact, my Mama was the first person I told when I received the offer to work at The Chronicle. I wasn’t even out of the parking lot before I was on the phone with her.

You know, grief is a weird thing… I’m handling everything a lot better than I thought I would. Granted, some days are harder than others. We just had our first Mother’s Day without her - the first of many things she won’t be here for.

Next will be the first birthday without her in October, Thanksgiving, her and my Daddy’s anniversary and Christmas. You know how I said some days are harder than others? Well, there are four days that I know will be tough.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing over the last couple months, for work (obviously) and personally. I’ve always been the kind of person to sit down and write if something was on my mind and boy have I been doing a lot of it lately. By the time this is published, I will probably have filled up an entire journal of thoughts from the last few months.

I didn’t think grieving would be like this. I haven’t experienced - dare I say the d-word – depression and I haven’t taken out my anger on anybody (that I’m aware of, at least). I’ve actually been keeping really quiet about how I'm feeling/doing unless I’m talking to my sister, best friend or I’m writing in a journal. And when I visit Mama at the cemetery, which is often unless it’s raining, I tell her how we’re doing. I know she’s listening to all that I have to tell her even if I bounce from one subject to the next. She would always pick on me for that.

I know my Mama is in a much better place, but it doesn’t mean I don’t wish she was here, because I do. I wish she were here so we could go to 2nd and Charles, go to El Pablanos for lunch, listen to music together and just talk. But it was her time to go and as I’ve told myself and so many people, we’re just taking everything one day at a time and that things will get better. I guess you could say it’s a work in progress.

Kelly Duncan