That's the way we get by

Illness, death, loss. They get inside of your head and seep into your soul. They bring out levels of raw emotions – anger, sadness, despair, denial – that you didn't think you were capable of feeling. Death shakes you; it turns you inside out. It is ruthless, it is merciless and it wants to wreck you, and rarely do we know exactly when and how.

For those of us living and breathing who experience the death of a loved one, the opposite of loss becomes cope. The way we get by.

I've learned more about cope in the last 48 hours than I thought was possible to know. I've learned it can be synonymous with strength and desperation all in the same day.

Coping...the way we get by. It can be simple: Some people cry too much. Others don't at all. There are those who use humor as a weapon against sadness, and some who use the contents of a bottle of wine.

Sometimes coping goes far deeper. Some of us watch helplessly as everything shatters or begin to self-destruct, putting everything that is good in their life in harm's way.

I used most, if not all, of those coping mechanisms this weekend, but I am not here to blog about my indiscretions right now. Maybe one day I'll come to terms with the way I cope. What happened in the last 48 hours is a story too raw and too real to be ignored. I'll do my best to edit myself out.

With my grandmother's condition rapidly worsening – she had been moved to hospice - our parents, mid-family-barbecue, calmly let my sister and I know they'd be going up to Boston early the following morning. Lauren instantly jumped aboard. It took about an hour for me to realize what Lauren already knew: Mom needed her wolfpack. It wasn't going to be a fun trip, but we could sure as hell make an attempt for it.

Trying to have a last bit of fun, I stayed out far too late, drowned my sorrows in gin, overslept and finally hurried to the house, bewildered, half an hour late. In four hours, thanks to Lauren's superb driving, we arrived. There was no time to wrap my head around how quickly we made it; there was too much to be done.

The visit was harder than I had anticipated. She was waking up from the cocktail of painkillers, so she was completely disoriented. She had wasted away – a plump middle replaced with chicken legs and a wedding ring rattling around her bony finger. A vast departure from our visit in February.

She managed to speak, but it's barely understandable anymore, thanks to the tumor that chokes her voice. Because being in a hospice is apparently not enough of a punishment. All she said was “I don't understand how this could happen to me.”

I have never been filled with more anger and sadness in that moment. I could not give her the answer she deserved. The terminally ill are the terminally condemned. I do not care how often someone tells me that my grandmother wasn't in pain that day. Pain is deeper than the physical hurt. My grandmother, who could hardly move, could hardly speak and barely knew where she was, was in mental agony.

In a not so brilliant move, my sister and I later took our frustration out on gigantic dishes of ice cream at Cabot's. Knock, knock; who's there? Emotional eating, that's who! Coping tastes especially good with peanut butter candy crumbled on top. Still, no amount of dairy could prepare us for the task of emptying out grandma's apartment.

I'd like to think we coped with this task far better than anything else. It became a fun treasure hunt. My mother discovered a thought-to-be-lost wedding ring; I took home a ledger that's filled with grandma's one big legacy - her stories. There was one person who did not take this well: my aunt.

It would later prove to be a hilarious moment on her 4th phone call to my mom. As Leslie, in a total state of denial, begged my mother not to throw anything away, claiming Grandma would come back from this, my father, sister and I had already bagged up 80% of the room. “Maybe I should take pictures before you start,” Leslie offered, and Mom could only awkwardly survey our progress and respond with “Uhhh... well.....”

The rest of the weekend was a strange, surreal blur of laughter, tears, hilarity, drunkenness and angst, all held together by strength. I may not be proud of how I cope, but I am proud of my ability to rise to the occasion and step up to the plate. I learned it from my parents' example. Sometimes, you gotta do what you've gotta do.

And that's the way I get by.