Screaming

My husband's grandpa passed away this Sunday.

He got a call at 6:00 that morning--it was his mom: "Come quick, Grandpa's had an aneurysm."

We jumped out of bed, got dressed in a hurry, somehow arranged for wonderful people to take care of our kids, then drove the four hours it took us to get to the hospital Grandpa was located in (it's nothing short of a miracle that I didn't get a ticket--I didn't drive less than 20 mph above the speed limit the entire way down), and then, the trauma started.

From the moment my husband answered the phone, he locked down.  

Put up a wall.  

Shut down completely.  

Went into his survival mode where the only person he can even think about is himself and all of the crazy emotions he was going through as the man who helped raise him, the one responsible for the most positive experiences he had in his childhood, passed away in front of our eyes.

Only it wasn't that fast.  We got there at nine that morning and Grandpa didn't pass till 11:00 that night.

And for that entire day, I was completely, absolutely, infinitely alone, surrounded by a family who "just doesn't talk about things" and sitting next to a man who was so wrapped up in his own pain that he couldn't even begin to recognize, much less respond to mine.

Have you ever seen someone die?  

It's nothing like in the movies--in fact, I've heard it described as similar to going through labor.  It takes work and pain to bring life into the world, and it takes work and pain to leave it.

And as a family, we sat and watched that experience together, only we weren't really together.  Not really.

I kept trying to reach out to the husband--take his hand, put my arm around him, hug him, talk to him, and every. single. time I reached out, he shut me down.

Rejected me.

Ignored me.

Pulled away.

The wall--a wall made of  ice, thick, cold, and completely impenetrable--was up.  And although I was screaming on the other side of that wall, beating the wall with my fists until they were raw and bleeding, begging him to let me in, he couldn't--wouldn't--hear me or let me in.

After all, he was in survival mode.

Finally, after hours of sitting in a room where the air was thick with the feeling of death next to a man who couldn't care less whether I was there or not, I left.  I didn't say a word, I just got up and walked outside and found a place to sit where I let myself FEEL.  I screamed, I cried, I called my sponsor and left a completely incoherent message on her voice mail, and then I prayed.

I told God how angry I was with my husband, the guilt I felt about making his grandpa's death all about me, the shame I felt for feeling so much pain at the loss of my husband's support, and I asked Him to take all of the selfish things I was feeling away from me.

I tried to surrender, I really did.  I tried to use the Atonement, and I really did feel a little peace.

But then I walked back into the building only to find out that grandpa had passed while I was outside feeling sorry for myself, and then I lost it.  I stormily broke down in a corner of the room, wishing I could somehow hide, sobbing and crying as my shoulders shook with the pain of losing another grandparent (one I had considered as good as my own from the time we met 8 years ago), the guilt for being so selfish as to not be there for the actual passing, and the shame of crying so violently in front of a family who just doesn't do that kind of thing.  Grandma came and awkwardly patted my shoulder, then asked my husband to pray that we could all get through this with dignity as I tried to subtly wipe my snotty nose and swollen eyes with the completely saturated handful of Kleenex I was gripping with all my might.

I hate the fact that I'm an ugly crier.

And my husband sat across the room, completely oblivious to my pain, so wrapped up in his own that he couldn't think of trying to share his burden with me or even recognizing that I needed him to need me.  As I glanced around the room and saw his brother weeping into his wife's arms and my father-in-law gripping my mother-in-law's hand, I realized that something was very wrong with the fact that my husband and I were across the room from each other and he didn't even seem to care whether I was there or not.

Am I crazy to be so hurt by this?

When I brought it up to him on the four-hour drive home yesterday, he listened, apologized, then defended himself.  "I was just doing what worked.  I had to get through it, and I did.  Just because it's different than how you want me to deal with it, doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong.  It's just different, and it worked for me--I didn't completely fall apart."

But I did.

I completely fell apart.

And I have no idea how to get myself put back together enough to deal with the funeral this Friday.

No idea.