Grief is like the waves.

One washes over you, and in an instant, you’re drenched, and after this happens over and over and over again, you start to wonder: “Why am I still standing here?”

The mind is frustrating. We all just want to survive and so we’re always searching for answers to “Why?”. Why. Why. Why.

We’re just like children, asking why. Parents hate this and try to shut it down, but in the end, we’re all children. We want to know. We just want everything to make sense, so that we know how to move on and survive.

But the world is too big, too complex, and too mysterious, to make sense. Answers beget more questions.

We run around the beach trying to get as far away from the waves as possible, and to a limit, we can control whether the waves reach us or not.

But the ocean is living, it itself has ebbs and flows of tide, depth, ferocity. And eventually, it reaches you, no matter what.

And because you can’t control it, because you can’t answer “Why did the ocean still reach me?”, you go to the one answer that at least answers the question, even if it doesn’t make any sense, even if it might be the wrong answer.

It’s your fault.

If you’re not careful, that answer can drown you. But like grief, if you’re willing to let it wash over you and leave you uncomfortable, it will fade away, even if it has to come over, and over, and over again.

Because guilt, is also like the waves.

I frequent some forums and communities about caregiving (because millennials do millennial things), and it’s interesting how often people ask variations on similar questions. Everyone experiences different expressions of what are usually the same things.

How to deal with this type of person, how to handle this weird event, what legal choices do you have when that dreaded thing happens.

But there’s this question that I see recently, that I don’t recall seeing before, and once I see it, I wonder why I haven’t seen it more.

The question is this: If you knew then what you know now, would you still be a caregiver to your parents?

It’s morning. I walk to the backdoor of the master bedroom; normally I’d tiptoe, but if it’s just my dad, I don’t mind waking him up—in fact, that's my goal.

I tug on the strings that control the blinds, and with each tug, the blinds twist, letting in a wider and wider ray of light. One ray splays perfectly across my dad’s eyelids, which flutter open for the briefest of moments.

I’ve learned that when possible, always use nature to my advantage.

“Dad,” I call out, “it’s time to get up.”

I repeat myself a few times, getting louder and louder each time.

“Why so early?” he finally mumbles.

“We need to go to the hospital,” I say. It’s a sort of lie.

It’s the story I’ve been selling to him: He got sick, came home from the hospital, and now he needs to go back to do some tests for a while.

“Hi, how can I help you?”

“I’m calling for my mom,” I say. “I need to cancel her appointment.”

“Okay. What’s her name?”

I tell them. I give them her birthdate. I say the time of the upcoming appointment.

“Okay. Would you like to reschedule it?

I pause. We all follow scripts in our lives; it makes things easier. But it also makes little things like this, harder. I don’t think there are any scripts for what I have to say, and if there are, no one told me about them.

A memory I thought I’d share.

It’s a standard hospital recovery room. It's quiet, and with the shades pulled over the one large window, it's pretty dark, even in the brightness of the mid-day sun. There's this weird elevator music of the hopefully variety playing from a nearby TV.

We thought that by now, she would be gone, but somehow she has another day with us. She's been in and out of consciousness, occasionally opening her eyes, and even making small, faint noises.

I wondered if this was one of those flashes of life I've read about, those quick moments that appear, right before the end.

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.

This is one of my last moments with my mom.

She’s in pain. Her head is lightly thrashing from side to side. It seems automatic, and when me and my brother try to talk to her, she doesn’t really respond.

A nurse comes to administer some pain medication, but it will take some time before it takes effect.

I decide to jump in. I lean in and speak into my mom’s ear.

“Do you want me to read the Bible?”