My Journey With Grief Through Meta-Coaching - What Was Hidden Inside My Grief (Part 2 of 4)

‍When One Word Meant Everything and Nothing

‍Dear Reader,

‍In Part One, I described the recurring nightmares that returned me to the circumstances surrounding the deaths of my parents. My sleeping mind kept trying to save my mother and resolve my relationship with my father before it was too late.

Unfortunately, waking up did not change the situation. Instead, I woke up carrying the emotional residue of the dreams: distress, anger, frustration and sadness.

I continued calling all of it grief, as though one word could adequately explain everything happening inside me. T’was rather a lot of work to ask from five letters.

‍Waking Up Did Not End the Grief

Grief appeared in ordinary moments. I would see my son, spending time with my husband’s parents and suddenly fall into what I came to think of as a hole of despair:

My parents are not here.

They will never see him grow up. He will not know them directly. My mother will never have a conversation with him. My father will never play with him, even though he loved playing with me when I was young.

‍I could not ask my parents for guidance either.

There were the emotional questions: What do you think? What should I do? What did you mean when you said that all those years ago?

‍There were also the more practical questions. What illnesses run in our family? At what age did this relative develop that condition?

‍Family medical history can be surprisingly difficult to document when key members of the family are no longer here.

‍At other times, the thought was simpler: It is just me now.

‍I was an adult with a husband, a child, friends and a life of my own. Yet that feeling of loneliness was always there. It did not come from the adult woman living that life. It came from somewhere much younger—a small, frightened part of me that was desperately looking for her parents.

‍I also became reluctant to talk about them. Speaking about my parents risked bringing up painful emotions. Painful emotions risked overwhelming me. Feeling overwhelmed risked another night of nightmares.

‍So I avoided the subject.

‍The strategy was understandable. If touching a memory felt like pressing a button labelled EMOTIONAL CHAOS—DO NOT PRESS, rational (borderline stoic) Annabelle did not press the button.

‍But avoiding the pain also meant avoiding the memories. I wanted to tell my son about his grandparents, but my path to the good memories ran directly through fear and distress.

The protection was beginning to cost me something.

“Grief” Was Only the Label

‍For a long time, I treated grief as a single emotion.

‍It was not.

‍“Grief” was the label I had placed over a crowded room containing seven occupants: despair, regret, over-responsibility, loneliness, longing, frustration and fear. Some of these occupants were quietly sitting in corners. Others were moving the furniture and setting off the fire alarm.

‍Coaching eventually forced me to stop standing at the door saying, “This entire room is grief,” and meet its inhabitants individually.

‍Let us look at the meaning I gave to each of these seven occupants and their intentions.

‍1. Despair – The Finality of Death

What it meant

Death was absolute. It was not a difficult problem, a strained relationship or an unfortunate situation that could be improved with persistence. There was nothing I could do to reverse it.

This clashed sharply with the way I naturally approach life. I think of myself as a problem-solver. When something is wrong, I analyse it, identify the difficulty and look for the next action. I may not always find the correct action immediately, but I am comforted by the existence of possibilities to improve the situation.

Death offered no improvement.

There is no fixing, persuading, negotiating, appealing or trying again. It is final and irreversible.

What the despair was trying to do

My mind kept searching for the leverage point at which action might still be possible. In the nightmares, my mother had not yet fully entered the coma. For my father, he was alive again and we could talk through our conflict. The ending had not quite happened.

The despair pushed me to keep looking for an alternative outcome. If the mind kept the story open, perhaps it did not have to accept that nothing more could be done.

2. Regret – The Conversations I Could Not Have and the Mistakes I Could Not Fix

What it meant

Death did not merely end my parents’ lives. It ended the possibility of certain conversations.

There would be no final clarification, apology or moment of mutual understanding. I could not return to past conflicts with the additional insight I had gained since. I could not explain myself more clearly or ask them to explain themselves.

In relation to my father especially, this left me with a sense of unfinished business. Peace appeared to require a different past, and I did not have access to one.

In both cases, I was left with a deep feeling of regret.

What the regret was trying to do

Regret kept the relationship mentally alive. By replaying what had happened and imagining what might have been said differently, my mind preserved the possibility of repair.

The repeated thinking was painful, but it also refused to abandon the hope of a better conversation. It was an attempt to complete something that death had interrupted.

3. Over-Responsibility – The Source of my Guilt

What it meant

I cannot remember exactly when I began taking responsibility for things that were not mine. I was a bossy only-child who was perfectly happy both to give instructions and to appoint herself responsible for ensuring they were followed.

With my mother, I believed it was my responsibility to make sure she attended regular medical check-ups. After she died, I thought that I had failed in that duty because I had not made sure she went to a doctor and I felt guilty.

With my father, the responsibility took a different form. As his dementia progressed, I wanted him to accept that he was unwell, could no longer function safely on his own and needed help. When he refused to accept this, I felt responsible for my inability to make him understand and agree and guilty that I was not able to change him.

In both cases, I judged myself according to an impossible standard, sending me down a spiral of guilt. I could encourage my mother to see a doctor, but I could not force her to go. I could explain my father’s condition, arrange support and make decisions where necessary, but I could not make him accept a reality he did not want to, or perhaps was no longer able to accept.

Nevertheless, I treated their choices as evidence of my failure. The result was guilt: if I had been a sufficiently responsible daughter, perhaps I would have found a way to make them do what I believed was necessary.

What the over-responsibility was trying to do

The over-responsibility came from care. I loved my parents, wanted to protect them and believed I could see dangers they could not, or would not recognise.

Taking responsibility also gave me a role: identify the problem, decide what needed to happen and make it happen. This approach works reasonably well when dealing with tasks. It becomes less reliable when the “task” is another adult with preferences, autonomy and an impressive ability to disregard instructions.

My responsibility was to notice, speak, encourage, support and take reasonable action. It was never my responsibility to control my parents’ choices or make them accept what they were unwilling or unable to accept.

The over-responsibility was trying to keep them safe. Instead, it left me carrying guilt for decisions that were never mine to control.

4. Loneliness

What it meant

The thought It is just me now was not a mathematical assessment of the people remaining in my life. I was not literally alone.

It meant that the two people who had occupied the position of “my parents” were gone. No one else could replace them.

Beneath my adult identity, I had begun representing myself as a small child without the giants who were supposed to stand behind her. From that position, their absence felt not only sad but scary. I found myself alone and vulnerable without my safety nets.

What the loneliness was trying to do

The longing maintained my attachment to them. It expressed my need for belonging, for guidance and the sense that someone older stood beside me as I faced the world.

The childlike part of me was not trying to make my life miserable. She was calling for the people she believed she still needed in order to be safe.

5. Longing – Losing Their Advice, Insight and Family Knowledge

What it meant

My parents’ deaths removed access to information only they possessed.

Some of it was deeply personal: their interpretation of events, their memories and the advice they might have offered as I entered new stages of life.

Some of it was practical, including family medical information that could matter to my son and I.

Their absence therefore did not feel confined to the past. It continued to create gaps in the present.

What the frustration was trying to do

My mind continued reaching for their answers because it was trying to preserve their parental role. Parents are meant to know things. They are meant to remember the family before you arrived and provide information you did not realise you would need until it was too late to ask.

The frustration was an attempt to recover access to knowledge, guidance and the feeling of not having to figure out everything alone.

6. Frustration – Wishing They Could See My Son Grow Up

What it meant

My parents’ absence from my son’s life felt like a double injustice.

They were deprived of knowing him, and he was deprived of knowing them. The birthdays, milestones and ordinary family moments carried an empty outline of the people who should have been there.

Their absence could make happiness feel incomplete. A joyful moment arrived carrying a small footnote: They are missing this.

What the longing was trying to do

The wish kept my parents included in the family.

By imagining what they would have thought, said or done, I maintained a connection between generations. The longing protected the idea that my parents still belonged in my son’s story, even though they could not be physically present in it.

7. Fear – Avoiding the Emotions

What it meant

Thinking or talking about my parents had become dangerous.

The danger was not physical, but my mind-body system was unable to grasp that distinction. A memory could lead to crying. Crying could become overwhelming. Being overwhelmed could follow me into sleep and become another nightmare.

Avoidance appeared to be the safest option.

What the avoidance was trying to do

Avoidance was protecting me from emotional flooding. It allowed me to function and prevented me from deliberately activating pain that I did not know how to regulate.

It was not weakness. It was a strategy.

But it was a strategy with side effects. By blocking the “bad” emotions, I also blocked many of the loving memories attached to them. I could not easily speak about my parents, tell my son about them or remember their lives without being returned to their deaths.

Before the Reframes

I did not yet understand that these reactions were trying to protect connection, responsibility, safety, family and love. I only knew that I missed my parents, that remembering them hurt, and that my mind kept returning me to the moments just before they died.

It would take several coaching conversations to separate these experiences, and to discover that each one could be understood differently.

Those conversations are the subject of Part Three.