It’s a start
I don’t know how to start this. My mom passed away in 2017 and I feel like I’ve been though hell but also had a really great life. I always feel so guilty for being happy and content with my current life. It’s hard to deal with all these feeling and emotions and feel like I’m alone through it all even with a supportive family and husband.
When she passed I was in my first job right out of college. I had been struggling a lot with my mom’s sickness and her progressively getting worse. My job wasn’t supportive and was very criticizing of me and my mental health. I was crying often in the bathrooms, not doing any work, and getting “talks” every week. I was given many warnings. My mom was my biggest supporter and everything I ever knew was slipping away. When she was sick and stopped her cancer care, I went home to be with her along with my sister and brother. We knew she was dying but wanted to spend as long as we could with her. My job kept bugging me to come back, to get back to work. At that point in my life that job was the most important thing to me, it felt like the world would end if I didn’t have a job.
When she passed, it was several days after we all went back to our homes in different cities. I got a call from my dad at 8 am on Wednesday November 8th 2017. I had just gotten to the office and was getting my desk prepared for the day when the call came. I walked into the glass office room, shutting the door to take it. My dad told me my mom had passed away in her sleep at 6 am. I lost it. I dropped to the ground crying. The woman in HR came to me and offered to drive me home. From there on it was a blur. Her memorial was held on that Monday and over 400 people came. There was a lot of crying and hugging. I hated every second of it. Everyone and their pitting looks. I knew they meant well, no one knows how to act or what to say when something tragic like this happens.
Unfortunately the next day my job called wondering when i would be back. It was mind boggling, like who in their right mind asks an employee to come back the day after their mom’s memorial. Eventually when I did go back, I wasn’t myself, obviously. I didn’t know how to be myself or how to act or even to get work done. Everything was so meaningless. I cried in the bathrooms, the break room, the closed meeting rooms, my desk. I took everything so personally and didn’t know how to be functional. The people that worked with me were the rudest people I’ve ever come in contact with. I got questions like “well were you expecting it or was it sudden?” Like, who expects their mom to die at 23? No one, even if she was battling cancer. Why would it matter?
I talked with the HR woman a lot through the following weeks. She pushed therapy on me in one of the first meetings. My boss took it to heart and made me make an appointment and she wanted to come with me. I didn’t know any better so I agreed. We went to my first ever therapy session with this woman who fell asleep halfway through my explanation. When we left the session, my boss was upset with me that I didn’t mention anything about my work ethic and how I wasn’t doing well at my job. It turns out she wanted me to go to therapy to talk about why I wasn’t being a better employee. When I tried to explain that my mom’s passing was 100% related to it, I was apparently giving her excuses. For context, she was a 40+ year old woman at the time and her parents were still paying for her cell phone bill. The HR woman also still had her mother and complained about taking care of her everyday.
Two coworkers understood. One had lost his dad when he was a teen and the other was just a nice guy being supportive. The one who lost his dad to me to “man up” and get over it because that’s what he had to do to be the “man of the house”. I didn’t appreciate that, it wasn’t me. The other was super helpful and let me cry and talk about things and how I was feeling. He didn’t judge. When I went to HR to talk, I asked why no one was talking to me about my mom, I received condolences and a letter from another coworker but nothing else. She told me that everyone “overheard you talking in the break room and saying you didn’t want anyone to talk to you, you were so loud” Like I said, everything was a blur. I didn’t remember. I was so hurt, she was defensive about it and made me feel horrible.
Eventually I was let go. Due to “lack of work”. It came as a shock, surprisingly. I guess it was expected but I didn’t think it would actually happen to me. I think I cried for two hours while trying to delete my life off the laptop I had to give back. I moved everything to google drive (thank god for that) and packed up my desk. When I left, my boss told me I “needed to heal”.
It’s been stuck with me ever since and makes me really angry at times. There is no healing in grief. There is only slow surgical stitches, that never fully close the wound, that rip open with every thought. Even when you think you’re okay, those stitches pop open and you feel yourself getting ripped apart all over again.