Trauma, Panic, Anxiety, and Stress

Death is stressful. It's sad. We grieve. But we stress too. Losing a loved one makes us anxious. It makes us think about what ifs. It makes us panic about things happening to other family members, to use, to our homes, to our lives. And, sometimes, death can be traumatic. My dad's death was traumatic. There is trauma involved in seeing your loved one's broken body in a hospital bed. In seeing blood stains on concrete. In listening to your mother scream and scream and scream. In drawing over photos of the house where your dad fell and how he was found, and sending them to a coroner's office for the autopsy. 

And then there is the response after all of it. Often involuntary. Yesterday my husband's mom had what we believe is a "mini stroke". She was watching TV and her cheek went numb. Her face drooped. She lost control of her arm. Her speech slurred. She called my husband who tore off and drove her to the ER. When he called me to tell me what was going on, he had to hang up pretty quickly. When he did so my teeth began chattering, as if I were cold. 

I wasn't cold.

It was a trauma response to losing too many loved ones, too quickly. My brother-in-law's dad. My dad. The priest who did my sister's funeral. Heck even my sister four years ago and my mother-in-law's sister. 

The counselor I have started to see said there are layers of trauma here. Complex layers of trauma, probably C-PTSD. It's all so messy. And stressful. It's all too much sometimes.

I just want my dad back. Instead he's been gone three weeks.