Dealing with Compounded Grief
Rest in Peace, Bonnie Howe
On September 17th, I received a call from my mom’s nursing home that she wasn’t going to live much longer after breaking her hip and was asking for me, so I booked a flight to Missouri.
I’ve written some here before about the complicated relationship I had with my mother.
My mom had Alzheimer’s disease for 10 years so I “lost” her long ago but even before that, she wasn’t a great mom. I know she did the best she could but her best was abusive, manipulative, and especially confusing for me as a child.
She became increasingly kind and much quieter as her dementia progressed. There would be moments where she was kinder and more loving than she had ever been juxtaposed by times in which she wouldn’t speak to me and blamed me for what her life has become. I grieved the loss of the hope that our relationship could ever be different. I felt heartbroken for her because dementia is a horrific disease - her worst nightmare. Because of the work I’ve done in therapy and recovery, I intuitively knew I would feel best if I treated her the way I wish she would have been able to treat me: bathing her, taking her to her favorite mall, buying her new clothes, rubbing her feet, and getting her and my father set up with all of the resources available to them.
Our 13-year-old kiddo met my parents only four times since she was born by my parent’s choice. The first was for an hour when Ruby was a couple of weeks old when they flew out from Missouri to meet her and then immediately got on a plane to return home without telling us. It was a horrific experience for our family especially being so newly postpartum and raw in every way possible. That experience could be a whole chapter of a book. It was wild. After that, I set very firm boundaries that I would protect my child from her even if that meant they could not have a relationship. That boundary was effective in that she changed her behavior for a while.
My parents flew to California once for a vacation when Ruby was around 18 months and stopped to see us very briefly. When they were about three years old, Ruby and I flew out to MO for one of my dad’s many near death experiences. Ruby doesn’t remember that trip - their only real memory of my mom was the trip in late 2023 when my father flew us out so he could spend time with Ruby. My mother’s Alzheimer’s was late stage at that point so there wasn’t much ability left for them to connect.
But she never showed any interest in knowing my child which mirrored how she was with me as a child and an adult. I grieved that long ago and had come to a place of acceptance. My mother moved into a nursing home when my father suddenly became ill at the end of March 2025 before dying on April 12th.
My mom would have hated the life she was living. To have her die just five months after my father feels especially cruel. Complicated and compounded grief is the worst kind.
They say that people need to hear four things for them to die peacefully:
Thank you.
I love you.
I forgive you
Please forgive me.
I said those things to to my mother before she died and I meant them. I forgave her long ago. Not for her but for me. That forgiveness and the healing I’ve gained in recovery and therapy is what allowed me to go to Missouri when she asked me on her death bed. That allowed me to treat her like I would anyone else. With kindness, touch, massage, music, reassurance and love.
She is free of her horrific disease and all of the physical and emotional suffering she struggled with for her whole life. I’m free too. As soon as she died, I started packing up to leave the nursing home. She certainly wasn’t her body and I didn’t need to be with it until the mortuary came. What should I do? Where should I go? There’s not a lot of options in Springfield, MO. But I knew immediately.
The mall.
My mom LOVED the mall.
We went nearly every weekend when I was growing up. She loved to shop and loved to be “lookie-loos” as she called it. I t would be disingenuous for me to pretend our relationship was something it wasn’t but I wanted to honor her and the relationship we did have. So I honored her memory by doing what she loved to do - wandering around the “good” mall. I even got a pretzel.
I have spent the last five months dealing with the grief of losing my dad after we spent the last three years building a new relationship, the never-ending work of navigating his messy estate, and as my mother’s advocate and caregiver from California. Given my professional background, I have had the knowledge and skills to know what she needed and the opportunity to visit to spend time with her. I made her life as good as I possibly could. I find great relief and rest in that knowledge.
Her death has had a surprising impact on my 13 year old. They now only has one remaining biological grandparent. They are far too young for that to happen. They are feeling the complicated grief of losing her grandfather just three years into him showing an interest in her and never receiving that at all from my mother. Ruby knew that interest or relationship would never come because of her dementia but grief rarely makes logical sense.
We are navigating this time as best we can. I am modeling letting all of the feelings come and go - especially the messy one. When someone with dementia dies, there is some relief. I’m heartbroken she lived in a nursing home for the last 5 months of her life. And also had no control over the choices and circumstances my parents made to end up there. When an abusive parent dies, there is also some relief. There is also deep sadness for the struggles my mother experienced in her life that resulted in her being the mom and grandmother she was. It’s all so complicated. The only way out is through. Left foot, right foot, breathe.
That was beautifully written and such an honest accounting of such a difficult relationship. ❤️