Caring

I'm not sure when I stopped caring about, well, a lot of things. I only realized it when another grieving parent in a support group mentioned that she just didn't care about anything any more. The house was not clean? So what? She was late for an appointment? Big deal. I, too, find myself feeling the same way.


Not that I don't care, intensely, about other things. The oil spill, endangered species, my friends. But the fact that my tomato garden has weeds has no meaning for me anymore. My counselors say this lack of caring is another side of grief.

Studies at the University of Western Sydney in Australia show that the grief of parents after the loss of a child is more intense and prolonged than that of any other loss, and follow-up studies show that anxiety and depression may last four to nine years after the loss of a child. When a child dies suddenly, as Colby did, parental grief may become complicated by post traumatic stress reactions, so that the parent has to deal with the interplay of both trauma and grief. There is just not room in the human brain for all the thoughts, feelings, and emotion so some of them have to go. Like caring.

Maybe someday I will once again be bothered by weeds or the fact that I am late. Maybe I will once again care about the dust bunnies under the couch. Maybe someday I will wake up and realize that it no longer hurts to breathe and the hollowness that permeates my insides is gone. Maybe. Someday.