MAZE OF MOURNING

MAZE OF MOURNING
Frieda Voorhorst

Johannes van Kessel Publishing

© Frieda Voorhorst 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or utilized in any form or by any means, electoronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

E-mail: Publishing@jvank.nl

ISBN 978-90-79418-60-2
NUR: 749, Mourning

Original Title: Doolhof van de Rouw
Cover design: Jeroen Arian
Picture Front cover: Feja Voorhorst

Editor: Herman Adèr
Translation: Manette Schönfeld, PhiMa Taalwerk

Layout in LaTeX
Typefont: Gyre Bonum
Website: www.jvank.nl/MazeOfMourning

To begin with

‘This is my youngest daughter,’ that is how he always introduced me. Ahead of me came Janet, Anton and Adriana. I was not the youngest child, after me came another brother, Ernst.

After his cardiac infarct, early February 2013, he would never introduce me again. Without regaining consciousness, he would die one week later.

‘Now I am in mourning,’ I thought when I walked out of the hospital. I did not know how to mourn, but I really wanted to do it right. My own experiences did not agree with most of the theories I found. This changed when I found a theory on a maze. Mourning is like a maze, I read. Immediately I visualized that maze.

This is an account of my quest in the maze of mourning.

Frieda Voorhorst,
Almere, June 2017

The twelfth day after my father’s demise

I am at work when I grab my purse because the phone is ringing. It is always an adventure to find my phone in my grab bag before the voicemail interrupts the ringing. Once I noticed someone else take something from her purse: everything appeared to be in its proper compartment. That way, she never missed anything. For me, however, a purse with compartments didn’t bring the solution: it is not just the number of compartments but also how consistently you put your belongings in the right compartment. That is where I go wrong.

I find my phone while three other objects fall out of my purse. When I pick it up, it is still ringing. It is my mother, I can see her on the display. Immediately I shift into the alarm mode. It is not normal for her to call me at this hour; however, at this time there is not much normality left. I sit down in my office chair, as my heart beats with anxiety.

‘I have to go to the emergency room for an EKG,’ my mother talks on in a neutral voice. I gasp and don’t know what to say. ‘It is probably nothing, maybe stress…. But the family doctor thinks I should go anyway,’ I hear my mother continue.

‘How will you get there?’ I manage to say, while with my other hand I strike a strand of hair back from my face. She really should not be driving now. ‘With the streetcar,’ she says, as casual as she manages. ‘I’ll call the others as well.’ I press the button on my phone to turn it off and put it back in my purse. Around me, everything is quiet. Everyone is at work at his desk. I do not know what to do. My desk is overflowing with papers. I have an appointment and a lot of other things to do as well. I certainly cannot just walk away from it? As my mother said: it is probably nothing. But what if something is the matter? I feel not at ease about it. At least I cannot concentrate. I walk downstairs to get a cup of coffee and to think about it. While my cup is filling, I cry, leaning on the cool counter.

‘Shouldn’t you be going?’ a colleague asks who followed me. That question takes away my hesitation. I quickly drink my coffee at my desk and mail my team leader that I am going to the hospital.

When I arrive at the hospital my brother Ernst and my sister Janet have already arrived and mother is on a bed, hooked to a piece of equipment I watch the indicators on the screen. Her systolic blood pressure is high, but the heartbeat looks beautiful, just as I know it from television, a nice regular heart rhythm. The last time I looked at a similar screen it looked quite different. Smaller highs and lows. My mother’s breathing is a mess, I conclude.

The last time I saw this, there was a regular movement, with an occasional higher peak. It is logical that the heartbeat then was so regular; the breathing was regulated by a breathing machine and the occasional peak was caused by the person measured. He tried to breathe, amidst the artificial breathing.

I try to explain to my mother how to do abdominal respiration. Breathing with the belly, not with the chest. The outbreath longer than the inbreath. I learned this long ago in a yoga class. ‘Is that what you do?’ my mother asks, incredulously.

The emergency doctor comes to my mother’s bed, the EKG is good. My mother tells about pain on the chest and the back, and trembling arms. She is aware, she specifies that it is probably not a heart attack, but that the family doctor thinks that an EKG would make sense. The doctor asks a few questions, he looks a little worried. He looks at her legs, whether she is retaining fluid and the place where it hurts is palpated. Muscles are tense and tense muscles cause pain. We must wait a while for the lab results, but we assume that they’ll turn out all right.

‘Yes, I thought it was nothing. And now you are here again. But if it had turned out to be something, I would have had to call you that all was wrong with me. That would have been bad as well,’ my mother apologizes. Then she tells that she made a sprint to catch the streetcar, else she would have missed it.

‘So, you had to go to the emergency room for an EKG, because you had pain on your chest, the family doctor wants to make sure that the vague signals don’t signify serious trouble and at that moment you decide: “Let me make a sprint or else I miss the streetcar,” while the next streetcar arrives in ten minutes,’ I ask, but it is not really a question.

‘Yes,’ my mother answers proudly. While we wait, Janet — like a professional physical therapist — massages the tense muscles till they relax and finally the lab results arrive. The blood levels are fine. The doctor mentions a small irregularity and wanting to exclude something or other, but right now, there is nothing urgent. To be on the safe side, an appointment with the cardiologist is planned. For now, the diagnosis is stress.

‘Mama, why don’t we just call it mourning? You are mourning.’ Unfortunately, we still do not know how to do it; papa has not even been dead for two weeks. The time is half past one and I do not feel able to go back to work. I need distraction, and I expect mother to welcome that as well. ‘Shall we go into town? Let’s go look for a book “Mourning in five days” or something like that.’

‘Can’t it be done in three days?’ my sister asks.

‘Sure, mourning for dummies,’ my little brother agrees.

Mourning is a verb. Just like digging: you do it in the soil, with a spade or with your hands. Swimming you learn in swimming lessons and writing in school. There is no instruction manual for mourning. There may be some rituals, like paying last respects to the deceased. The funeral, condolences afterwards and then? Sending thank you notes, a stone on the grave and that is that. I believed, mourning had to do with major grief and when you grieve, you weep. When the tears are gone, you should be ready. I grieve, but when I left the hospital after my father died, I went for a walk with my husband without crying. I have no idea how to mourn.

With my mother, I go into town where we first have a cup of coffee before we start our search for something to help us through the mourning process. We are looking for a book to teach us how to mourn, preferably with a step-by-step plan to give structure. A daily ritual would be nice, so that the deepest grief is gone afterwards, or at least has found its place, so my life’s energy can return and I am no longer deadly tired.

These days I sleep like a log. When I wake up, no dream is to be found. However, when I sleep for an hour during the day, I have fitful dreams. In them, everything goes wrong, I am out of control. I keep losing the kids and they ruin everything in a store. I run after them like a headless chicken to get them in line. I am completely powerless in those dreams.

My mother, on the contrary, sleeps badly and keeps waking up. We look for a calming, herbal tea in a drugstore.

‘Would you like one of those wooden rollers for a foot massage, to get the ultimate relaxation experience?’ I ask, holding one up. She looks at it with disgust, definitely not her thing, but we buy the herbal tea.

The bookstore has a section labeled “mourning.” Energetically I start looking for a book with a step-by-step plan. ‘This is the one,’ I tell my mother triumphantly. I have not yet leafed through the book or read the back flap, but the title appeals to me, Your own Mourning. ‘For the ultimate mourning experience,’ I say, as I open the book. The first sentence I read is: ‘Sometimes I wish the mourning process would speed up a little.’¹
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¹Rouw van jou, verlieservaringen van bekende en minder bekende Nederlanders. Margreet Eriks, 2011 Ankh Hermes Publishers, Utrecht. Pp 77: Albert West talking. (Your own Mourning, loss experiences from well-known and not-so-well-known Dutch people)

Indeed: right at first try. We came looking for a book with a solution, because my mother had to go to the hospital on the twelfth day, and therefore possibly did something not completely right in her mourning, and the answer we get is that mourning takes time. The illusion that it can be done in three days perishes. We buy two copies of “Your own Mourning” and my mother decides afterwards to also order the book via internet for my brothers and sisters.

The book “Your own Mourning” describes five stages of mourning.²
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²Pp 12, based on the theory of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression/ Sadness, Acceptance. This provides a guideline for the emotions. Apparently, I should deny at first that papa is dead, then get angry, next start bargaining and after that get depressive. There is no timeline mentioned, although I understand that you cannot feel each of these emotions for five minutes to finish in barely half an hour. I have heard that mourning takes a year, that you must go through all the seasons.

I try to realize what stage I am in. I don’t deny that my father is dead, I am not angry. To understand the concept of Bargaining, I must consider its meaning. It means a kind of haggling, haggling that the deceased isn’t dead, but that there must be some kind of mistake. I am sad all right, so I must be in stage four out of five. Quite some progress in twelve days. A warning has been added that the timeline is not linear, that not everyone goes through all five stages, or in a set order.

I do recognize some emotions out of this mourning theory and I am glad that I can now give them a name. However, Preparation for death is missing, and so is Despair. All those emotions I had already experienced before my father died. Is that the same in mourning? All the emotions tumble around inside me. I can imagine that for my mother there has also been a similar emotional roller coaster ride before my father died.