When You Don't Get to Say Goodbye

Complicated Grief

We have all seen the way death is often dealt with in movies and literature— the loved ones gathered, the deep conversations, the last words.

But that is seldom the case in real life.

I have lost bunches of those close to me. And I don’t believe I have ever had the opportunity to say goodbye properly.

We understand that there is no goodbye in cases of accident or swiftly killing heart attacks and other medical emergencies. There is no way to prepare and no goodbye. This is one of the things that makes such exits so gut-wrenching.

But this is often the case even when there is plenty of warning.

Around Christmas of 1999 I realized my mother was dying. Emphysema. Over the winter and spring of 2000 she was bedridden but sharp as ever.

During these months she was surrounded by all of us. The sushi place in town would send big trays and we would eat in her room because she couldn’t go any farther.

She had good days and bad. This continued until May or June. I would make the 15 minute trip from Santa Rosa to Sebastopol as often as possible.

But in all that time I was never alone with her. My out of town sisters were staying in the house. I wasn’t.

In early June they put her on morphine. It improved her mood. The sound of her laughter filled the house again. More of a guffaw really.

When I mentioned my concern, that the appearance of morphine meant the end was near, my fears were dismissed.

But I was right. In the last days of June she took a turn. Only then was I alone with her for any length of time. She never woke up.

I said goodbye but she could not hear me or respond. By July 1st she was gone.

The same situation was repeated to some extent with my father. He was living in assisted living in Texas by then.

He had gone blind nearly a decade earlier. And suffered from hallucinations, possibly dementia as well.

We used to talk on the phone fairly often but the frequency fell off as the cognitive issues got worse. I went to Texas a week before he died, but he was already in a coma from which he never awakened.

They call it the long goodbye. The slow slipping away of the ability to recognize or remember one’s own life. The body remains but everything that makes a person who they are goes away.

They call it a goodbye but it isn’t really. Not in the sense of getting closure. Not in the sense of sharing a last summation of an entire relationship. Of saying words that mean something and having those words received and responded to.

With my sister, she lived 1000 miles north of me. We communicated regularly but she was not forthcoming about her health. I knew she had issues but not how serious.

When she began to speak of getting her affairs in order I thought it was in the general way that people in our age bracket do. Not that it was hurried and under some duress. When she died shortly thereafter it was a shock.

When death is sudden and unexpected it creates a host of problems including lack of closure. But in that case we all understand that there can be no closure.

In the other case, when there had been a protracted illness lasting months, maybe even years, there is a general belief that we should get closure. That we should be able to say goodbye in a formal way.

That we should be able to say all that needs to be said. And hear all that the one dying has to say to us.

But it doesn’t always work that way.

I have had a long time to think about this. And come to some conclusions.

When the time comes that I get a bad diagnosis, if there is anyone left that I know still cares, I won’t hide it. I will give everyone the opportunity to say goodbye.

Because that is what I wish for myself. The pain of not saying goodbye sticks around for a long time. And can never be resolved.