You couldn’t have. There was no connection to the establishment for which you work — the information was taken by another company instead. Under strict guidance to Never take her to the hospital for any reason whatsoever, the existing record was expunged.
As she passed in the home, no record then exists in the hospital part of the aforementioned company about her death.
It was not your duty to seek out the information. A life of madness would follow, were you to do nothing but check obituaries for last names remotely related to your patients. Similarly, it was not the duty of the company to find and pass along that information.
You would not know.
My Grandma passed back in June.
In all likelihood, the conveyance of what I said was, at best, tonally bizarre. This is not your fault. Social peculiarities elude me still, despite a continuous effort to ‘catch up’ to where I should be.
You may notice it on some level, but you do not know. You wouldn’t.
It was an inoffensive line of questioning, and not particularly harmful to my psyche to state the reality. You don’t need to be sorry, or feel any degree of ‘bad’ or fault or blame for asking what you did. You did not know.
Truth is not always pleasant.
So the honesty follows. Revealing this information was effectively a form of trigger. The day has been spent wallowing, crying, a damnable thing for a body that seems perpetually dehydrated.
In some parts it is a reminder, the loss still hurts tremendously. It would, it will continue to do so. It is the most difficult thing I have had to go through, and the emotional wreckage from most of a year of care to the downward spiral at the end, and finding her that night, sticks with me. There is a particular analogy about a ball in a box with a button of grief, how initially the ball starts out enormous and any jostling of the box will cause it to hit the grief button. Over time, the ball shrinks, and while it still sometimes hits the button, it is infrequent and, more importantly, the ball’s mass is not overwhelming.
Innumerable are the events that are suddenly new — old things have become new again by means of being slightly different this time. The first storm without, memories flood in of a time here or there when the interaction was special. Experiencing something truly new for the first time still brings out some pain, as the mind meanders into a ‘what-if’. How would this play out? What would she say? These events bring about some sadness. They too are triggers, but nothing damning. Like the questioning, and reality.
A major part of the feelings encompass something grander.
The mind brings up four occasions during the eight months of full-time caregiving. Four appointments. While this did not line up with memory earlier, it does add up correctly.
There were words of encouragement, this is a very difficult thing. Perhaps you stated that twice, perhaps I do not remember. A plea on another occasion, “You know you’re doing a very good thing, right?” A plea that was shrugged off. An imposter, unworthy of praise, how could this be a good thing when my body and mind were shutting down of exhaustion? But you were correct.
A point where you stood so fully and completely in my corner that I felt a mountain of support emanating from the comparatively mere form of a human. I had worried about misuse, and potential abuse, of a benzodiazepine. In no uncertain terms, you made clear that you would not allow that to happen — and if I had slipped, you were there.
You couldn’t have known. It is okay that you did not. It means very little in comparison to what you have provided.
You have shown me a compassion immeasurable.
It is a life-changing compassion.
You just did not know. And that is okay.
