I have no energy to keep up with the everyday tasks that are expected of me. I have no desire to do anything I used to enjoy. I find myself standing in my kitchen while I wait for the kettle to boil. But I forgot to turn it on. My grief has seemingly overtaken me.

I am consumed by the choices and actions of my family, none to which I have any control of. I found myself trying to explain to my therapist that this is what a mother does.  She worries, she frets, she uses her power to ensure that all factors are aligned to the best interest of her family. To which my therapist gently asked, “where do you fit in?” I don’t.

Apparently, what I want for everyone, including me does not fit with the reality of our family dynamics. I am torn between do I bring everyone together for a huge pow-wow. Do I take each one aside to scream WTF? Or do I just ask myself what I want and move toward those answers. I might get a gold star in therapy if the latter is the path I choose. So, why can’t I? That is my assigned homework.

I left my therapists office to go sit in a park. Instead, I drove by it. I thought I’d wash my car. I drove into the bay and drove out without washing it. I ended up just driving on the highway thinking and did not miss the irony that I was behaving like Zane did when he needed to clear his head. I chuckled.

The problem is in my need that only when all my family is ok, am I ok. So, when I analyzed each member, most of them are fine.  The members who are experiencing hardship, their battles are self-inflicted. They have made choices that they rushed into or that they had hoped would have an outcome to which did not happen.  Their choices, not mine, and nothing I can fix.

When Zane was killed our family was blown up and left with the task to put a billion tiny broken pieces back together. I knew it would never be the same. What I have strived for was a mosaic of the love, the memories, the beauty of all that each of us had with him. To create a unified family of blood and friendship that honored and remembered Zane collectively.

What I am angry about is the apparent blindness to the consequence that certain actions have changed our family dynamics to a point of no return. The selfishness, the inability to look past one’s own needs, not giving any thought to if this will affect all of us. And it has. BIG time.

Grief gives us the freedom to try different means of coping, of surviving. And it gives us the grace to make mistakes as we move forward with our loss. What it doesn’t give us is a one plan fits all. As each of my family manoeuvres in their own grief, there was bound to be misunderstandings, confusion and disagreeable choices. I had never envisioned the depth of this possibility.  Or the outcomes such may cause. I find myself at ground zero with the desire to run away and hibernate.

What I tried to do eight years ago, was recreate ‘la familia’ for all the right reasons. It is what I needed for my grief. It was what everyone needed then. I rested naively in the thought it would always be this way. I am now faced with the cutting truth that it is changing. Through this painful awareness, I have discovered the reason for my new and immobilizing anguish. I am grieving the family I had, that I will never have. Again.