The Season of Grieving (And Making Peace with Tragedies You Don’t Understand)

I have been anxiously counting down the days until Christmas since the day Starbucks unveiled this year’s christmas cups. 

However, events in this past week has quickly dampened spirits, and changed plans for my family, as well as others.  

On Saturday evening, my grandmother was diagnosed with Covid-19.  The nursing home at which she resides had a major outbreak.  Her first two tests came back negative, and we thought for a little bit we might be lucky.  However, the third test a day later was that dreaded positive.  Already bed-ridden with advanced Alzheimer’s’ disease, her odds are not good. 

On Tuesday, I left work early after an urgent phone call that she was in her final hours.  Since that call, my family has been stationed outside the window her room at the home, taking shifts to keep vigil.  Its been almost three days now since that phone call, and Nana is still holding on, and we are still holding on with her.  

Also yesterday, while at the nursing home on my own shift by my Nana’s window, I received a call that Isabelle, the little girl in my class with a brain tumour had just passed away.  She too, I knew was palliative, since the first day she bounded into my classroom in September.  Still, the news hit with a dull thud.  It is difficult to put faith in a God to take care of your family when the same God can so callously take the life of a vibrant beautiful four year old girl, days before christmas, leaving her family broken. 

Now I am torn between staying home to be here for my family, and returning to school to be there with my teaching team and my kids and tackle the questions about life and death and cancer that most kids do not face until they are long out of kindergarten. 

But that is the kind of December that this is turning out to be. 

The hardest part is NOT that she is dying.  Sadly, my lovely Nana has had Alzheimers’ since she was the young age of 64.   I was twelve when she started to lose her memory, and since then, my memories have mostly been helping to care for her rather than the other way around.

The hardest part is watching my mother and her sisters cope, and make the daily hard decisions they have to make. 

Do they keep her on oxygen, to help make her more comfortable by assisting her breathing?  Or is that only prolonging the inevitable? She also was diagnosed with pneumonia today.  Do we put her on antibiotics to fight that infection, or hold off and let nature take its course? Or might that result in greater discomfort? 

Its an emotional time.  Tensions run high.  Whenever my mom is not at the window of the nursing home, bundled up in a blanket and holding a candle, she is on the phone in tense discussions with her sisters, each of them struggling to come to terms with their own feeling of the right thing, sometimes saying the wrong thing out of grief, and still forgiving each other for unnecessary harshness.  

Its hard to watch.  Its hard to watch my mother watch her mother. And its even harder when I picture myself standing where she is, however many years from now, and remembering back to this moment when the inevitability of losing her was just starting to hit. 

I walked home from the nursing home last night, passing homes lit up with coloured lights and cheerful festive decorations.  I felt guilty for wanting to partake in the festiveness of it all.  It seems wrong to be attempting to salvage a feeling of Christmas when lives are leaving this world so seemingly unfairly—  Isabelle, leaving to soon, and Nana,  leaving without a final kiss and hug and warm touch from those who love her.  

Still, as much tragedy this month has seen already,  I still have faith that everything happens for a reason, even though that reason remains unbeknownst to us right now. 

All I can do is be there, for my mother, my grandfather, and my family, and keep my Nana and little Isabelle and her family in my thoughts and prayers.  

One silver lining is that I made the decision to come home early for Christmas while I could, meaning I actually had the opportunity to spend this time with my family, and join the window vigil for my Nana. 

Perhaps in that small way, God was shining down on us in this dark moment.  If there is no choice but to say goodbye, at least I was blessed with the opportunity to do it amongst my loved ones.  

Wishing all of you a safe and happy December, whatever it may bring.  And if you are lucky enough to be with family right now, hug them close, and keep those who may not be so lucky in your hearts.  This world needs all the love and prayers it can get right now.  

Xoxo 

Jordan