Adaptation is also known as healing or recovery and it is most simply put as the process of changing your life, emotions, or thoughts in order to handle the loss that the person experiences. This takes many different forms depending on the person and the situation. For myself personally, I will use the most recent occurrence of loss and that was when my grandmother died. She had been declining steadily in her health for a long time so it was not sudden and though I had years to come to terms with it, it seems as if it just came out of nowhere.
In the years previous to her death, she developed and suffered greatly from advanced stages of Alzheimers. It was heartbreaking for me to go see her knowing that she did not recognize me, but the hardest part was trying to remind her of who I was because you could see the war that raged on within her as she tried to remember what everyone told her she already knew. I cannot imagine how difficult that must have been for her. To see her first granddaughter grown up and married with children of her own when all she could remember was the 5 year old that followed her every movement and wanted to be just like her. I guess my grieving really began when she stopped recognizing me. It felt like I had lost a part of my childhood. Sure my grandma drove me nuts sometimes, okay a good deal of the time, but I loved her and being with her was like being a little girl again. It hurt deeply when I could no longer share those memories with her without seeing a look of frustration and pain when she realized she did not remember. I slowly stopped visiting my grandmother because it was just too hard. I look back now and regret doing that to her. It was not her fault and I feel as though I was punishing her for things that were beyond her control. I see now that I was adapting to the situation by trying to lessen my pain, but I never thought about the pain it caused her.
When I got the call that she was very sick and may die, it felt like I was stabbed in the chest. Here I was this little girl all over again scared and afraid of the world outside. Though at the time I was very sick, I went to the hospital to await some news. It’s funny, or not, but almost everything bad that has happened to one of my family members takes place at that hospital. I hate that place. Well, maybe not the entire hospital, but certainly the second floor. It is where people go to die. That is another adaption I have made in my life. If something happens to myself or one of my children that would result in one of us going to the second floor, I will drive out of my way to go to a different hospital. I cannot take the pain of seeing another family member admitted to the second floor. They almost never come back from that place. But on that day, I sat with my family on the second floor and waited. Discussions on what the family wanted took place all around me and medicines were given and then stopped and then given again. The air was thick with hurt and anger and I felt as though I couldn’t breathe. It was a crappy way to spend a birthday that was for sure.
I didn’t think of it until just this second, but that was the second year in a row I spent my birthday in a hospital. The year after that was spent there too. Maybe I will be skipping birthdays from now on as another method of adaptation….The next 2 days were a blur of hospitals and driving back and forth between it and my home. I rarely saw my husband or my children. The stress of the situation made my illness worse and I decided to go home for a couple of hours and rest as my grandmother’s was on the mend. It was a 30 minute drive home. When I walked into my house, my phone was ringing, but I ignored it and went straight into the bedroom and flopped down on the bed. My husband knocked and brought me the phone and said “It’s Jessica….and she’s crying…hard”. I knew what she would say before I even touched the phone. In the 30 minutes I had been gone, grandma took a turn for the worse and died. I immediately grabbed my keys and flew back to the hospital. In no time I was outside of her room with my family. I was angry at myself for leaving and made a change that day that no matter what happened in the future, I would never leave another hospital while a family member was fighting to live. No matter how well they appeared to be doing, I would never leave again.
I have adapted my life in many ways to deal with the pain that event caused me and the grief that came with it. I believe most of these changes will be permanent and deeply rooted inside of me to help protect myself from the same kind of pain again. We cannot change our past, but we can make changes to make our future different and that is exactly what I have done.
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