Almost a month after her mother’s death, Aubrey Ness still hasn’t experienced a moment of overpowering grief for the loss of the woman who gave birth to her.

“Still no aha moment,” said the 34-year-old Crown Point woman. “It’s an odd feeling. I kind of feel guilty that I’m not overwhelmed with grief. People who don’t understand, think I should be.”

Her mother, Charmaine Ness, died Dec. 3 in a Milwaukee hospital after suffering from multiple health problems throughout her life. She was 57.

“She struggled with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and diabetes, among other things,” said her daughter, an ICU nurse at University of Chicago Medical Center. “The nurse who took care of my mother said my mom kept taking off her oxygen and saying she was tired of taking so much medicine and injecting insulin all the time. I think she just had enough.”

Ness and her mother, who lived in Hobart for much of her life, had a complicated relationship.

“The life choices my mother made and the imbalance of priorities put me through hell in my life. But in the end it made me who I am and I am thankful that she gave me up to my aunt when she did. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had the opportunities I was afforded,” Ness said.

“In a way I’m thankful she gave me up to do better, but at the same time I’m sad she gave up on me,” Ness said.

One of Ness’s friends told her something that has rattled around in her head since her mother’s death: “She will never ever be that mom you deserved.” This may be another lost piece to a puzzle that will never get put together.

“I was warned that grief would come to hit me out of nowhere,” Ness said. “I have the awkward feelings of both relief that the gaslighting is over, and the frustration that I have to deal with all of this as the eldest child. I was told that at some point it will hit me.”

It still hasn’t hit her. It may never hit her. Or it could blindside her when she least expects it through a common gesture or an old joke or a mundane task in her home.

“I think I’ve maybe had more of a sense of relief than anything,” Ness said.

I understand this peculiar emotion after a loved one’s death. Experiencing conflicted feelings at a traumatic time can confuse your senses, revealing the difference between how you feel and how you are supposed to feel.

“I seemed to be the only one she had a complicated relationship with,” Ness said.

Their complex relationship shattered into stillness when her mother died. Loose ends will never be tied together neatly with gestures of closure and loving goodbyes. This has nothing to do with the COVID-19 situation. This is about the human condition.

When my father died on Christmas Eve 1987, I immediately felt a sense of relief that I misinterpreted as grief. I was only 25. What did I know? (Yes, we also had a complicated relationship.) My grief snuck up on me later in life as I grew into my own fatherhood.

As all of us look back on 2020, it’s easy to focus on the obvious crises — the pandemic, the presidential race, economic collapse and the social isolation that continues to separate us. It’s a tradition to look back at the loved ones we have lost in a year, personally and collectively.

But what about those loved ones who died and left behind a wake of mixed feelings with survivors who feel sadness, but … who feel grief, but … who feel loss, but …

A friend of mine who lost her mother this year is going through this experience. When I asked how she dealt with the first Christmas in her life without her mom, her answer surprised me.

“It was really good,” she replied. “It’s funny the things that spark sadness, or wishing to talk to my mom again, but Christmas was not one of them. Sometimes the busyness of the holiday is good. Not much time to dwell.”

“As weird as it sounds, I don’t miss my sick and dying mother. I miss my mom from five years ago,” she said. “It’s weird what has triggered the tears for me. But mostly I’m fine. I’m glad she’s at peace. I really have no regrets or things left unsaid.”

Such lingering regrets can haunt us after a loved one’s death. Society preaches to us how to deal with this kind of loss. So does religion. Our innermost feelings tell us something differently. We struggle to find reconciliation between these two emotions.

“My mother had a very difficult life and it’s good that she’s at peace,” Ness concluded.

After someone’s death, we attempt to merge their best deeds with our best memories of them. Eulogies are often the product of this process. Death is rarely the final word in our mind. This is especially true when it comes to differing feelings of grief and relief.

“It’s such a shock,” Ness said. “I didn’t even know she was in the hospital. It’s so frustrating, especially as an ICU nurse, that I didn’t know.”

Ness later spoke with the ICU nurse who cared for her mother. They spoke the same medical language about end-of-life care.

“For me, that’s another reason why I’m not emotional about it. I understand what happened,” Ness said.

Still, she’s still processing the emotional aspects of her mother’s death, and her life.

“The finality is that she will never be able to redeem herself as a mother,” she said.

jdavich@post-trib.com