One of the things they never prepare you for is the responsibility that follows the loss of a family member. It takes different shapes across different losses, and isn’t always a formal death, but there is a familiar sting – one that needles and bristles like an uncut clothing tag on the back of your neck.
I like to think that the bristling doesn’t stem from a lack of compassion. We know that those who left didn’t intentionally leave us with overloaded arms. They may not have even understood the weight of what they left behind in the first place, or anticipated how it would affect you.
Yet, it does.
It is no secret that this life will take from you. That’s a fact. But it also gives to you.
In times of loss, that gift feels more like a bulky box that digs into the creases of your elbows as you haul it up the apartment stairs. It’s more of a burden than something to hungrily open and unpack. That box contains a multitude of things: money, memories, and abandoned mementos. In most cases, it also holds responsibility – for a loved one, a home, a property, or business. Sometimes, all those things at once. You must learn to balance that within the box in your arms, even when it’s overwhelming. And more often than not — it is overwhelming. Primarily because you never thought you’d have to carry that responsibility, especially in cases of unforeseen illnesses and accidents. The trick becomes managing the overwhelm of responsibilities with strong boundaries and self-care.
I know, I know – that sounds like trite bullshit. Boundaries and self-care sound delectable on paper but can taste just like that in practice: bland and prone to cutting your tongue, or alienating the people and things you’re now responsible for. But it’s true – take it from me.
When I lost my dad, I found myself staring down new responsibilities in my life. Admittedly, it was one I was unknowingly preparing for since he was diagnosed with a very rare form of vascular dementia in his early 50s. Slowly, slowly, dad lost more and more of himself. He was no longer the strong, motivated, and thoughtful figure he once was. He didn’t fill my low tires with air anymore; he didn’t properly care for the lawn or clean the house; and he didn’t care for my mother in the way she needed as a wife and disabled person.
When I came home from law school on holidays, I quickly found myself picking up the roles he abandoned: I dusted the hard-to-reach corners of the houses, changed my mother and got her out of bed, and listened to her as she fell apart under the crippling weight of a deceased daughter and demanding job. I lifted heavy things – emotionally and physically – and slowly became the rock the waves crashed against.
Now, let’s be real here: I didn’t always do it well. I always carried a heavy amount of responsibility growing up – it was a given, in a household where you were one of the only non-disabled persons – but this was different. I was stepping into the role of father, friend, daughter, caretaker, and provider for someone who was still there. There, in the sense that he was alive, of course. But my dad wasn’t actually there – not really. Somewhere between his diagnosis and my sister dying, he gave up. On himself, on me, on mom. I was grieving a man still with us while stepping into the role he vacated.
And that made things messy. So, so messy.
Two summers before dad passed, my mother was preparing to move back to her hometown of Greencastle, Pennsylvania. Home at the time was Florida; but I was attending law school in Washington D.C. In 2023, I spent the lion’s share of the summer driving 12 hours back and forth from Florida and D.C. While in Florida, I spent the time packing up a 3,000 square foot house, working a partially remote internship to pay my rent, babysitting dad (who was in a severely weakened mental state), and caretaking.
I was exhausted. The kind of exhaustion that burrows deep between your bones like a tired dog and curls around your soul. Grief from losing my sister the year before was thrown into the mix. I was so undulated with emotional overwhelm that I couldn’t think straight. My thoughts were as foggy as the mist that drifts above the Florida swamp on a balmy May morning.
But I kept showing up, kept making the drive to Florida. Kept intervening at home. I raised my voice, I cursed, I sobbed, I broke things, including the precarious emotional environment I was repeatedly fixing by attending scattered law-school-sponsored therapy sessions and boxing classes.
I had nothing to give. But I was giving anyway. And I was hurting myself and the people around me along the way. I wasn’t sleeping; I wasn’t eating right; and I wasn’t giving myself any down time between travel, work, and the school semester. When I would come home after a Florida visit, I would head to the gym, do legal work, and stare at my basement apartment bedroom wall until mom called again.
“Come, come to Florida again. I need you,” Mom would say.
And so, I went again. And again. And again.
At one point, my therapist said to me: “Lauren, you can’t continue to give from an empty cup. You have to draw the line somewhere.”
I come to you today to say: I didn’t draw that line until after mom finished her move to Pennsylvania. My dad was placed in a facility after he attacked me (he was very ill, and not in his right mind), and mom moved. There were several months of uncertainty: around my mom’s living arrangements and my father’s. Mom was mad at me a long time to starting the argument that led to my father’s hospitalization. She didn’t understand why I was arguing with someone so sick in the first place. But the argument he and got into – over him interrupting my work call and creating preventable messes around the house I was trying to keep clean – was aggregated by a complete lack of self-care and boundaries.
My cup was empty.
But it was also broken.
I would inherit more of my dad’s duties over the years. I helped financially, physically, and emotionally. Other family members helped, too. But in mom’s eyes, I was her rock; the one she relied upon, as she did my father before me. She asked for more and more of my time and energy. She was flailing in the transition, and as emotionally overwhelmed as I was. She just articulated it, rather than kept it inside.
Eventually, I had to pump the brakes. I had to finish law school and rebuild an emotional foundation that was rife with a canyon of cracks. I started saying no, at first in small ways, and then in larger ones. I budgeted my time and energy. I visited her less to work on myself, and my health. I still call and text her multiple times a week. I also spend odd weekends at her home in PA, which feels like a condensed version of the home we once knew. My aunt is paid to be her live-in caretaker. The world spins.
But for a time, I wasn’t sure it would. Because I was so burnt out under the weight of the box my dad hefted in my arms, that I lost myself. I didn’t know how to care for myself beyond visiting the gym or eating fast food on heavy emotional days.
It’s through times like these that you gain a taste of what you’re made of. And who you are? It is not just the responsibility left by those departed; it’s who you want to be. I wanted to be someone who dealt with her emotions in the moment, rather than stowing them away and watching them explode all over the place. I wanted to be someone with a career, and hobbies, and a dog, and a strong body, and an apartment that felt like a home.
And all those things I wanted? They needed time. Time craves boundaries. When time is in short order, you must care for yourself in the small ways that matter: long walks, hot tea, cold coffee sweetened with brown sugar and cinnamon, steamy first-date kisses, and time with friends.
In May, my mother and I had a conversation about Summer 2023. She admitted that she held a shred of resentment toward me. She thought I should’ve been in Florida more; been there for her more. At the time, she thought I was selfish.
I told her, succinctly: “No, I should’ve done less.”
Her eyes went wide as saucers.
I explained that it wasn’t because I didn’t love her – never that. I was just too overwhelmed to see straight, think straight. I made things worse because I couldn’t draw boundaries around my time and energy to take care of myself, in order to take care of her. As the kids say (or did say when I taught): I was lost in the sauce.
Her face softened. Her eyes told me she understood, even if her words didn’t. Because she saw the truth behind what I said.
The Advice:
Draw the boundary around your time and energy, no matter how it chafes you. No matter how wrongly it rubs your loved ones. If they really love you, they’ll forgive you. Your love is not measured by the frequency of your presence, but by how you show up when you do. When your boundaries speak first, you can approach a situation with a steady hand. You can be the rock that takes the late-night phone call or makes the 12-hour drive well-rested and emotionally calm. You can bear the weight of responsibility without it crushing you, and without the weight of the emotional debris pummeling those you love.
Take care of you, for you. And for your family, too.
Whatever your loss, take heart: your responsibility is not your worth. You are more than the rock the waves crash against.
You are the ocean – wide and vast – that deserves to stretch from shore to shore, looking for more.
You merely need to set the boundaries around your time and love to explore.
Soul Reads 
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