Grief impacts our brains

One time in the store I had packed up all the groceries and I'm checking out and then something in the store reminded me of him. I went to check out, they bagged everything up, I could not remember my pin to save my life. They're looking at me and I'm trying to share with her, I just lost my husband, you know? I'm in a crisis, I need help. Let me find my pin and I don't know it. So they moved my food to the side and then I had to go get a non-pin credit card, come back and buy the food. And, that experience happens more than you would thing to widows.

My brain, it was just exhausted. I felt tired and I couldn't think clearly. You could tell me something as easy as just, "Go upstairs and make your bed." and I'd hear something completely different, or I wouldn't hear it.

The early days, um, the early days are all of the things you might think they are. You're upset, you're visibly emotional. You have waves of emotion that you can't stop. Anywhere, supermarket, in the car or at work, right?

Um, but grief is, is different when you get into it. Like, really different. You lose track of time. You have no sense of time. Um, and I mean weeks and months, you have no sense. Um, you're confused, like it's just confusing. You don't understand even, even take the grief out of it, you don't understand why other things are happening. Like, you're confused like you have brain fog all the time.

Your ability to hold intention, and attention, for someone is tiny. It really is. And then just the emotional nature of the fact that you never feel like you're moving forward. You always feel like you're treading water. With me, when I was grieving I wanted to feel like I was passing through a phase or a stage, and it took me a long time to accept that I wasn't. I wasn't passing through phases, I'd always be re-visiting phases, it just really depended on how long or how deep I'd be in that phase for. And even now, like sometimes I'll look at my phone and I'll see a picture of her and it still brings tears to my eyes now. But, the tears don't last very long now. It still, it still - in the moments where I think I've forgotten it, it reminds me, and that always bring out a response.

The very initial part was just the true feeling of inwardly being knocked over. Those words of, "Nate is dead", was absolutely a shock.

I think cognitively, now I look back, I find it kind of interesting, there's a little bit of humor in it in the fact that when people would be coming over to me and telling me, "Okay, Steve. Here's what's going to happen. We've got the viewing on this day. We're going to be having the burial at this time, and then Nate's service is going to be here." It would all make sense to me but it was as if my memory was just not in gear. I was remembering none of it. Then they would go to leave, and I would say, "I know you were giving me a bunch of times and dates, but I don't know anything." Then they'd say, "Don't worry about it."

I would see my Mondays turned into Thursdays. Days would pass and I would not know - "I think it's Thursday already and I haven't done this yet" - like that. So, time would move a lot slower than um, than before. So I wouldn't be conscious of Monday, Tuesday, Wed-I would say, "Dang it's Thursday already?" - like that. And I would have to scramble and get some things done, which I had planned to do on Monday. But I'm moving that slow, in time. And things, um, I would say, it's a good thing you mentioned that, time slows down. And I wanted it to slow down. You know? Um, and let's just uh, deal with what had to be. What I couldn't get done, well fine.

It's harder for me to remember names. I totally know my students faces, but even now, ask me their name after ... it's very sad. I hope they don't watch this. Now I don't remember always their names. Um, it's sort of the, it must be a left brain thing. After a certain time of the day I don't, it's hard to do those kind ... It has, it's hard to do math. It's hard to do names. Remembering words or names. It just takes a little longer. Uh, I think to, just in general, certain things just take longer to process and to make decisions and to see all of the other factors that go into something.