Gratitude and grief

On raging at the light

1966, Park, Rochester, Indiana

Last night, when I picked out a nightgown, I grabbed one that belonged to my mom. She’s been gone, and I still have three or four of some old Sears mid-length flannel nightgowns. They are looking a little ratty, but I don’t care. Wearing one makes me feel closer to her.

As January creeps into cold February, I’m always aware that this was the time in 2012 when my mother was dying. She missed her eightieth birthday by about six weeks. She had been sick for fifteen years.

She died on February 17, 2012.

Fourteen years later, I am still sometimes overcome with grief. Not often, but once or twice a year, maybe around this time, her birthday, my birthday, and holidays.

During the early part of my life, my mom drove me crazy. Like all of us, she was complicated (and so am I.) We clashed on so many things. My mom suffered from depression from about the time I started high school until about 1990. Interestingly, those years bookended her own empty nest and the arrival of her two grandchildren, four months apart.

As a teenager, I didn’t understand this at all. At 68, I have much more appreciation for her life and the sacrifices she made for her family, especially her children. My mom graduated from Indiana University (in case you didn’t hear, their football team had a perfect season this year and is the current national champion. Gloriana, frangipani.) in elementary education, with additional training in reading instruction.

The day after Mom and Dad married, they moved to West Lafayette so Dad could go to graduate school. Mom taught second grade in the city schools, and they lived in these little, hideous apartments (that are of course still there) next to the football stadium.

It’s difficult not to think about one’s own grief when one is surrounded by grief in a changing world and with health problems of family, friends, and sometimes oneself, and deaths of those you love and their loved ones. In 2025, I lost two very special friends.

Those lucky to survive the first six decades of life now get an orchestra seat to the continuing drama that comes with age. For me, that comes with a huge sense of helplessness as I watch the people I love struggle through the hardest days of their lives.

My friend lost her forty-something son two weeks ago to melanoma. He was a smart, funny, and wonderful person, very loved by his family, and there’s now a huge hole in his mother’s heart that can never be filled.

Losing a parent is the natural order of life, but losing a child, no matter the age, is a cruel tragedy.

The poet Dylan Thomas wrote a famous poem as his father was dying.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning, they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

From The Poems of Dylan Thomas, published by New Directions. Copyright © 1952, 1953 Dylan Thomas.

I do not rage against the dying of the light, but I am aware of it. One cannot help but consider one’s own mortality as evening grows closer.

And then there’s 95-year-old father, who has planned his entire funeral, had his stone up since the last century, and has chosen all the hymns and Bible verses. He has this filed in his filing cabinet under “D” for “Dead.” One problem I can see right away is that most of his pallbearers have died.

Dad is happy almost every day when he wakes up, and enjoys very simple things like college basketball and Cubs MLB games. He is getting forgetful and doesn’t always remember how to answer his cell phone, but you can say the same about me, and I’m 27 years younger than he is.

We’ve had a rough couple of weeks in my house. My husband had surgery; we had a terrible snowstorm,m which left us unable to go anywhere for five days (less than most other people I know, so Ishouldn'td complain). With the turn of each new year, our Medicare plans change the rules, so I’ve been fighting to get each of us the drugs we need for our various health problems. This makes Jack a very dull girl and a lot cranky.

My husband, who is NOT a complainer and who is the one who had the actual wicked dental surgery (five extractions and four bone grafts), reminds me when I complain that “everyone I know” is in Florida, that we’ve been there multiple times, including living there for six years. And he’s right. I went to Clearwater Beach for spring break 1958 when I was less than a year old.

So I was complaining to Dad. There, I said it, I’m a terrible person complaining to a 95-year-old man about how it had been a rough week. And Dad says, “I wish I lived closer so I could come over and help you.” I’m not sure he could find the way to the main front door of the very large senior facility he’s lived in for 21 years, but he’s going to help me. Isn’t that sweet? It makes me want to quitmybitching about my mom being gone, and be grateful that my Dad is still here for a kind word.

There’s an object lesson in my Dad’s life about grief. He has had many, many serious losses in his life, including the death of his father when he was only four.

So, on the anniversary of her death, I will mourn my mother and remember her. Her light, like all of us, went out. But every day I need to be grateful that my father is still with us, and that my husband and I celebrated 41 years of marriage last fall.

-30-

Do you think about death? I appreciate your comments.