Panic in the Parking Lot:

When Grief is Too Long Garaged

February 8, 2025

I’m not one to panic or have anxiety attacks. Yes, I’ve felt dread walking into the hospital ahead of a difficult work situation. But panic attacks were new and frightening when my first came in mid-February 2024.

A friend asked me to describe what I felt and how I knew it was a panic attack. It wasn’t as though I said to myself, “Oh, well now. I’m having a panic attack. How … fascinating.”

But the gathering storm clouds were clear enough. Feb. 15 marked the fourth anniversary of my father’s death. He had suffered from dementia and in terrible pain when he entered hospice care in late December. His death, while imminent, still took me by surprise. I was hoping to drive from Chicago to Grand Rapids to see him that weekend but my son, then 18, was diagnosed with double pneumonia so I stayed home to care for him.

I planned to drive soon after his recovery but Dad died before I could get there – a month before the world shut down for the 2020 pandemic.

Thus, my grief was truncated as I put my full focus on the deaths in the hospital. Staff care also stretched me to the limit. Though the world has largely forgotten COVID, it’s stunning to think how the everything shut down – we assumed for a few weeks, maybe. Little did we know.

Fast forward to Feb. 15, 2024. I woke with “the dreads.” My heart pounded as I walked the dog that morning but I thought, “Just keep walking. It will get better.” This attitude comes from my very Dutch mother, who declared when I was sick: “Get up and wash your face!” Off to the bathroom I trudged. “You’re up! Now you can go to school.” So, the idea of illness allowing me a moment’s rest was a non-starter, no thanks to my Dutch-American upbringing.

Driving to work, I felt as though I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t listen to the radio, couldn’t concentrate. My sole thought was, “Get your butt to work.” Short of breath, I pulled into my usual parking space and stared at the hospital across the street. “How can I go in and pretend to do my work when I feel like this?” My heart pounded against my chest wall like a bass drum and I thought, “I can’t be having a heart attack, I’m too young.” True, I had just turned 57. But that Dutch inner voice insisted that I couldn’t drop dead because… I just couldn’t, dammit!

Pastor as panicked patient

I wanted to call my husband Lou but he had just started a new job under a taskmaster boss who had revealed herself as a micro-managing, maniacal … bi--ch. He had too much on his plate. I tried a few friends. None of them picked up. Finally, I reached an ER nurse and good friend: “I think I’m having a heart attack or a panic attack – what’s the difference?”

I love nurses. They are so direct. “Come to my office NOW,” she commanded. “Stay on the phone so I know you don’t fall before you get here.”

Sitting in her office, I calmed down as she took my blood pressure, heart rate and temperature. I shared a torrent of feelings: concerns over the family finances, the anniversary of my father’s death and the ninth anniversary of my mom’s passing the next week. She listened. I trusted her and confided in her. “I don’t think I can do this work as a chaplain anymore. I feel like I’m too full to listen to others.”

In speaking that sentence – “I’m too full to listen to others” – I realized I might need help.

I’d like to tell you I got right into counseling that next day. I did not. That same month my husband’s job, the one we hoped would stabilize our finances, was no more as the micromanaging, maniacal boss drove him to resign before she could fire him. In my mind, therapy would break the bank and I convinced myself I could “think through” this anxiety.

I’d deal with it on my own. Well … with a little help from my friend red wine.

In early April, I woke after a full night of the dreads. I felt frustrated that I couldn’t fall asleep yet anxious over getting out of bed to start the day: “wired tired,” Lou calls it. I laid in bed as the familiar feeling returned: My chest hurt and I couldn’t breathe. Next to me my spouse was fast asleep. I began to gasp. He woke with a start.

“Are you O.K.?”

“NO… I… can’t…. brea…the….” My chest constricted and I feared that if I stood up I’d pass out. Heart attack? Panic attack?

My hubby breathed with me, slowly, and I calmed down. That’s when I finally told him I’d had at least four panic attacks prior to this one. Keeping feelings to yourself is a great trait for a chaplain in the trenches but not ideal for self-care. He implored me to seek counseling, call our psychiatrist and friend and schedule time off from work.

The many facets of complicated grief

Why haven’t I written in my blog for the past few months? Once again, fear enters the picture. I’ve ruminated over whether I lost the ability to tell stories about my work – and share meaningful episodes of my unconventional ministry. When you’re supposed to be the calming presence in the patient’s room, pastor panic is not a good face to own and easier to hide.

It’s taken me the past few months to find a place of calm waters and right the ship that is Amy.

You’d think in a world where chaos reins at the moment that panic would be my default. But it’s not and here is why:

I started to turn over my multi-faceted grief through meditation, prayer and journaling. Death had taken on powerful forms in the persons of my mother and father. But the omnipresent death in the hospital during COVID plunged me further into the abyss and at such a speed that there wasn’t time to grieve … anyone. It was as close to battlefield medical care as I’ve ever experienced only we were fighting an unprecedented, mysterious enemy that no one knew how to defeat.

To say I never processed any grief after losing my dad would be an exaggeration. I have journaled on my guilt over missing his final moments. But in 2024, the grief morphed into a visitation and exasperation of sorts. I hadn’t dealt with my anger at both my parents for not taking better care of themselves in their older years.

Yes, my parents died in their 80s. I should be grateful for this. But I often think about what might’ve been had they’d lived another 10 years. My kids were 10 and 13 when Mom died, severing the grandmother relationship. Then my Dad’s dementia created even more distance. My loss of relationships with them and my siblings, who fumbled through their own brokenness, only added layers to the complicated grief. Having a loved one die is harrowing enough; watching those close to you come apart as a result – even as you struggle to keep it together – is a weight some find too difficult to bear.

Grief’s ‘multi-tonal chord’

So why did the grief anniversary of 2024 knock me on my ass? Perhaps because it oscillated rather than stilled itself. As Bornstein and Clayton write: “Bereavement isn’t a one-note experience that passes in sequence from one pitch to another like a scale played on piano. It’s more like a multi-tonal chord, when several tones occur simultaneously”(1)

Many grief experts write about the first-year anniversary being the most difficult. But grief can revisit at birthdays, graduations, weddings, or other meaningful events loved ones miss. It can also be delayed, as I experienced.

Dr. Bryan Bruno, psychiatrist and medical director at Mid City TMS in New York, observes that “grief is not a linear process.” Rather, delayed grief can affect everyone – including people who first processed it at the time of a death. In fact, it can ride in on a wave of panic as though the incipient event happened yesterday.

As I cope with my grief, I have started grief support groups in my work as a hospital chaplain. How do I listen to other’s stories and experiences? In upcoming blogs, I will explore my grief walk and how I seek peace amidst the chaos and weathering the winds. These may continue to blow, perhaps for some time. But they are no match for the breath of the Holy Spirit. And so at least for today they don’t knock me down.

Bornstein, P.E. & Clayton, P.J. (1972). The anniversary reaction. Diseases of the Nervous System. 33 (7), 470-472.