The Backbone of Denial | Diary of a Grieving Mother

Note from Mary-Jo:

These entries are not a guide to grief. Not advice. Just a hand reaching out to say, "This is what it has looked like for me." Offering understanding, compassion, and a reminder to those walking a similar path that they are not alone.

I have felt so nauseated lately. Especially at night before bed.

A few times I've tried to pour myself a glass of wine, only to take two sips and feel sick to my stomach.

I've got to say... that's annoying.

It could be stress.

It could be from poisoning myself a few weeks ago. (Poisoned | Diary of a Grieving Mother)

It could be a new health issue, which honestly wouldn't surprise me at all with this body.

Either way, I'm sad that my wine days are on pause.

I started doing real estate again.

I had forgotten how much empathy is required when working with clients. There are so many emotions attached to buying or selling a home, and as a realtor, you either learn to become a therapist and mediator real quick, or you're in the wrong profession.

Calming fears and working hard to keep the process from overwhelming your clients feels like it's about seventy percent of the job. The rest is being an expert in the legal aspects of the process, negotiating like a boss with other parties, analyzing data and the market, multitasking, paperwork, and understanding your clients' needs to ensure they're getting what they need from a major life decision.

A few years ago, I worked a deal with another realtor.

Nice man. Professional.

But early on, he told me this was the first transaction he'd worked since losing his son.

I remember thinking how awful that was.

How hard that must have been for him.

But I couldn't relate.

I had never felt that kind of pain. That kind of loss. And as mothers, it's a fear we keep tucked in the back of our mind, terrified it might someday surface.

Can Not Compute

So like a glitching old arcade game, my brain received the info, then quickly moved to the next topic. As if allowing it to settle fully would be asking for trouble.

I kept moving forward, working the deal like I would any other.

Not realizing how much effort it likely took for him to have conversations with his clients.

With me.

Now I'm him.

Recently, I sat down with a client to discuss everything involved with selling her home. I'd helped her daughter in the past, so she knew me.

At some point, I finally told her about my son. It's not something I generally share outright. Not even sure how it came up, most likely she asked about my own children.

She made the same sad face most people do and said she was sorry.

I could almost see the immediate glitch in her features.

Brain processing.

Then trying to toss the information like a hot potato so as not to put her own child's face in that image.

Within seconds, she began talking about her own personal difficulties. The conversation back on safe ground.

That's when I realized something.

As outsiders, when someone tells us they've lost a child, our brains cannot appropriately process those words.

It's a glitch.

Synapses that simply don't exist because we aren't built to imagine a world where our children die before we do.

Mine worked that way too.

I did that.

The moment we hear those words, our brains fumble with the information before ultimately moving on because we don't know what to do with it.

The words themselves don't hold meaning, because we don't know what they represent.

We may even think:

"I know they lost their child, but they still have a job to do."

And honestly, that's not wrong.

It's true.

Despite our personal lives, we're still expected to show up, be professional, and do our jobs.

But now I understand how that realtor struggled.

Why conversations may have felt impossible.

Why everyday interactions required enormous effort.

Human beings aren't built with the emotional framework to comprehend the loss of a child.

How could we be?

But here I am.

That mother.

Even now, almost forty-three weeks later, not a single day has passed where I've fully believed Aidan isn't here anymore.

Countless times a day, my subconscious mind believes:

Aidan's on a landscaping job right now.

Or:

It's raining. I bet Aidan's still sleeping because he can't work in this weather.

Or any number of thoughts that are anything but the reality that he isn't in this world anymore.

I don't know when it will feel real.

One year?

Five years?

On my deathbed?

People talk about denial as though it's simply one of the stages of grief.

Something you move through.

Something temporary.

But I don't think that's true when you lose a child.

I think denial becomes something else entirely.

Because how else am I supposed to survive every day if part of me doesn't still believe he's coming home?

Denial isn't a stage in grieving the loss of a child.

It's the backbone of it.

—Mary-Jo

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From the pages of Diary of a Grieving Mother