My Family Crisis Journey
The past eight months have been challenging for me. My mother has been facing a series of health crises and I am her primary support person. With my dad gone and my sisters in distant states, I’m the one who helps her deal with problems, from resetting the modem to sitting at her side in the ER. In the last few months, Mom and I have faced increasingly traumatic issues such as hospital stays and moving her out of her apartment. And now I’m facing the biggest family crisis yet—saying goodbye to her forever.
Some days I have weathered this end-of-life crisis fairly well. Other days not so much. Obviously, it’s been a central issue in my life, but as a wise friend pointed out, I’ve not been sharing this journey with my readers.
That will change today. This post is the first of several where I share the challenges, victories, and lessons learned from my journey through this storm that I wasn’t looking for and wouldn’t have chosen.
The next crisis you face in your family may not involve losing a parent, but the principles I’ll be exploring can help you face whatever sort of unexpected trauma crops up in your life.
Because these storms will come. Our challenge is to weather them as best we can.
A family crisis is a major life detour
A family crisis is not just a pothole you can swerve around. This is a Bridge-Out-Road-Closed kind of detour. The sort that involves many turns on windy back roads you’ve never driven before. You don’t know where it will lead or how long it will take, or where you will end up.
In other words, a crisis in the family causes major changes to life as you know it—even when you’re not the one suffering the illness or set-back. Life has been irrevocably changed for everyone in the family, and the only way forward involves heading off onto unknown territory without a clear roadmap.
It’s not fun. It’s not fair. But it’s here to stay, whether we like it or not.
There is no magic wand that can make the problem and all its repercussions disappear. So, we must face the crisis squarely in the eye and accept that life is no longer the same. And, depending on the crisis, there may not be the option of going back to how things were before. Ever.
My first Lesson from the Storm—Grieve the Losses
I’ve cried more in the last three months than I have at any other time in my life. Sometimes the tears have been cries of desperation when I thought I couldn’t handle another problem. More often, they’ve been tears of grief for one loss after another.
This crisis will ultimately end with the loss of my mother. But before that final loss, Mom and I have faced many other losses. For example:
- Mom’s loss of independence as her orthopedic ailments increased.
- Which led to letting go of her independent living apartment, (with its lovely view and custom kitchen) which my mom had hoped to enjoy for many more years.
- And we’d no sooner gotten her new apartment arranged when a trip to the hospital pulled the rug out from under us. Forget assisted living—we were suddenly facing respiratory failure and the need for full-time nursing care.
- Not only was mom losing the last shreds of independence, but she was facing a terminal diagnosis.
- Throughout all this, I’ve sacrificed hours and hours of my time to take care of all the needs.
- Not to mention the dreams Mom’s terminal diagnosis crushed. Trips that wouldn’t be taken, birthdays, graduations and weddings not celebrated, projects never completed…
As my example illustrates, a crisis brings a cascade of losses of many types that touch everyone in the family. The person at the center of the crisis has lost something big (such as health, self-esteem, security, or income). Other members of the family share that grief and also have losses of their own.
Each loss hurts. Each loss matters. Thus, each loss deserves to be acknowledged and grieved.
Allowing moments of grieving has helped me stay sane while I’ve weathered this ongoing family crisis.
I will freely admit that I hate to cry. My instinct is to push the sadness away instead of allowing it to show. But I’ve learned enough about emotional intelligence to know trying to ignore or snuff out emotions isn’t the right solution. If I’d tried to bottle it all up inside, I’d be a twitching mass of nerves by now.
Instead, whenever possible, I allowed the waves of grief to happen. Often, the grieving came during prayer, when I was being totally honest with God about my fears, frustrations, and hopes. I may not have enjoyed those times of sobbing, but they were necessary. (And often very freeing.)
As one podcast put it recently, crying is like a pressure relief valve. If we don’t want the emotional pressure that comes with a crisis to overwhelm us, we need to let some of the tension go. Allowing tears of grief—even if we don’t know exactly what we’re grieving about—can help us stay sane and weather the storm.
Do you have unprocessed grief in your life?
Grieving is appropriate for any kind of loss, not just the death of a loved one.
Have you given your heart and spirit time to grieve any losses you’ve experienced lately? If not, take time this week to gently admit how the loss or crisis has affected you (physically, emotionally, spiritually, career-wise, financially, etc.).
Grieve your losses. They are real. They affect you. Ask God to comfort you and gently heal you from the pain of what has been lost. This too shall pass but in the meantime, tears are good for your soul.
