Grief is not just sadness. Maybe not even mostly sadness.
It’s everything, often at once.
Self-pity, rage, confusion, disbelief, emptiness, fullness, fatigue, sleeplessness, hatred, love, guilt, loneliness, community, vulnerability, strength, fear.
One of the first questions I asked myself today: Why hasn’t my son called me? Why hasn’t he made sure I’m OK, asked how I am, told me he knows how hard this loss must be for me?
Then, I moved to rage at every thing that dared to be alive and awake as I walked my dog this morning. How is it possible that you are alive when my mom is not?
That’s not just me, right? Nobody deserves to remain when who you love is gone.
I jerked my dog back around when a neighbor pulled his tractor out of his garage, muttering “Just leave me the fuck alone, Lyle,” as I pulled on the leash. He wasn’t even coming my way, I realized, but just the thought of having to make small talk made me want to punch him in the face.
Or, if he asked about the house again, I would have just bloodied him.
Of course that’s all in my mind, like those movies where the protagonist is violently taking someone apart and then the scene cuts to polite conversation and you realize what you’ve just witnessed is only desire.
I took aim at my mom: “I hate you,” I seethed, boiling with anger that had no place to go but the worst most useless place, an emotion void of all reason, just white hot, instantaneous but gratefully short-lived loathing.
I felt acutely isolated. I don’t have the vocabulary to even put words to my feelings. So, I just grumped at my dog and thought about smashing my mom’s favorite dishes while emptying the dishwasher.
Take that, lady.
When Kurt first died my parents brought me home for several weeks.
Every morning I’d wake up and smoke cigarettes. Sometimes I’d walk their driveway and other times I’d just sit midway up the little incline just outside their garages.
I did not have the will to be purposeful about death. My approach was lazier and uncertain. I was tempting death to come and get me, but not too fast. Or fast. I didn’t care.
I just didn’t want to actively hand myself over.
This loss is different. (Or, same, same but different.)
My anchors are more secure. The heartbreak I couldn’t bear to manifest by making a deliberate decision to leave after Kurt died is even more unthinkable now.
But similarly, there is a hazy nothingness about my days. I don’t think I’d name the feeling indifference, but something close, like status quo or complete neutrality. Those still don’t feel quite right either, though.
This feeling is absence, not just the physical absence of my mother, but all her absence means, directly and indirectly, today, tomorrow, the next day. The expanse between was and is seems massive and insurmountable even when bridged by 60 quick seconds: September 21, 6:19 p.m.’s was to September 21, 6:20 p.m.’s is.
I always knew I’d lose my mother. I understood that at 82 there were probably no longer decades stretched out in front of us, but I counted on months. I was banking on years.
Can we just live in September 21, 6:18 p.m. for a few weeks? So instead of cradling your mostly lifeless face I could sit with you and tell you that I’ll never be ready for 6:19 p.m., but at least there’s time to tell you how much I love you and how much I’ll miss you.
Could we laugh one more time about how you spit sweet corn straight out of your mouth one evening at dinner because it wasn’t Fincels? “Yuck!” you grimaced. “Field corn!” Or how you held up that package of brats where they’d made a clever play on “better” to match the spelling of “cheddar” and you shouted across the grocery story: “I don’t know what Beddar is, but these have cheese!”
Could we have one more season of lilacs? How about one more trip to Lowes to get flowers in the spring, you telling me to pick out herbs (basil and rosemary) and telling me to get cilantro, too, even though it always goes to seed. You know I love cilantro.
I’d like to sit on the stoop and chat with you one last time as you water your flowers. Bug you about having the hammock ready and how you need a new umbrella stand because the one you have is shit. Tease you about how you still love Flonase even when your allergy tests years ago showed nothing. Can I tell you one more time that instead of buying a million bottles of water you should get a purifier or fix the refrigerator?
Could you walk with my son hand in hand one last time? Could you tell me, again, that you love me?
I HATE when people talk about a “new normal.”
I HATE when people describe the stages of grief as though they’re biblical and resolute and all I need to do is wind my way through each and then — “Praise JESUS! She’s cured! The demons of grief have been excised!”
Grief is messy and ugly and beautiful, and on bad days I wouldn’t wish honest grief on my worst enemy and on good days I hope we all love someone so much that to lose them feels unbearable.
Grief is personal, truly containing multitudes, and everybody will react and live through loss in their own way.
No wrong way.
Just a string of bad days.
And a string of good day