December is the saddest month
April might be the cruelest month, but December is the saddest, at least to me.
Almost two years ago to the day, my youngest cousin died unexpectedly. It was just days before Christmas, and I was in Pennsylvania with my parents, getting ready for the holiday. A Florida girl, I’d never been good at layering clothes in the winter, and my mother and I were about to go to Marshall’s to buy a coat. And then we got the call.
To say it was devastating would be an understatement. I’d understood death only in the way you when you see grandparents pass as a child. Painful, but you know it will happen. But a young person’s death? That’s not supposed to happen. The fountain of youth isn’t supposed to go dry all of a sudden.
My mother and I flew down to Charleston the next morning. Disoriented, we picked up several Publix sub sandwiches to bring to the family, a thoughtful but futile gesture. We picked up my grandmother, who was crying. I’d never seen her cry before.
I did what I could do keep the family afloat over the next couple weeks, only because I didn’t have the capacity to do anything else. I collapsed into my dad’s arms when it hit me during a gathering we had to celebrate her life.
What I remember from those weeks is fleeting. I remember writing her obituary, and showing up at the local newspaper out of desperation to get it published. A kind man assured me it would be. I remember crying and eating an entire Hershey’s gold bar in the back of my parents’ car after buying a frame for photos of her; Someone told me it was the first new Hershey’s bar since Cookies N’ Creme. I felt like a child.
On top of this I felt guilt. I’m not allowed to feel this sad, I thought. I still think. I was just a cousin. My cousins and aunt and uncle deserved the pain. Even my parents. But I didn’t. I still don’t think I am allowed to feel it.
I came back to work at some point, and I cried most days in the bathroom. My eyes would well up when I tried to explain the situation to my team. One coworker, a designer, asked me regularly how I was doing. I’m okay today, I said. Few others asked. When you’re talking to someone grieving, ask how they’re doing that day. It’s easier.
Despite this, I’d come back to work with an unexpected purpose and strange sense of calm. I knew I wanted to start my magazine. And I knew I wanted to leave D.C. I talked to my aunt on the phone while sitting on the ratty couch in my house. I feel calm. Why?
It wouldn’t last very long. Early one morning soon after, I got a text from my dad. Your uncle Karl passed away this morning.
I started laughing. I guess that’s what you do when your mind isn’t right. Humor really is the only solution sometimes.
Somehow I made it back up to Pennsylvania, where that side of the family was. My aunt was crushed; They’d been together forever. The absence rung out through the house. He was a dentist, and he’d learned how to paint, and he loved it. We divvied up his paintings–I took one, a somber one, depicting a ship under a dark sky.
I don’t remember much of that time either. But when I came back to D.C., the strange sense of calm I felt after coming back from Charleston was gone and replaced with sadness and anger. I was mad because deep down I knew it wasn’t as easy as carrying on. I realized how complicated it was. And I realized that I wouldn’t ever be the same.
And I never really was. I never found that calm again, even though I feel it in certain moments. When I have a nice conversation with a friend. When I have a nice meal. When someone offers me a ride, or a roof over my head. When I felt like I could fall in love again.
Grief is a cyclone that upends the houses and roads and telephone poles in your head and leaves you with rubble that you have to make sense of alongside your neighbors. Grief is a tantrum-throwing child who you can’t control and who you can’t escape. Grief is the weird dream you can’t get rid of. Grief becomes you and begets you. Grief knows you more than you do.
I recently moved away from D.C. back to Florida, my home state. When people ask why I left, I‘ve said different things. It’s expensive. It’s stressful. People only care about themselves. I couldn’t advance.
And these are all true. But the real reason I left was because I lost myself, and I kept looking, searching, wanting to be the person I was before it all, or even a new person who knew how to deal with it better. I can’t blame D.C. for that.
It’s a few days away from the second anniversary that I wish didn’t exist and that affects me even when I don’t know it. I feel a sadness that’s persistent, quiet, familiar. Like the rainstorm that you’re sure you heard last night, or the shadow you swear you see outside your window. It’s unshakeable and yet easy to suppress.
It’s almost Christmas and it’s uncharacteristically cold here. I’m still not very good at layering clothes. I don’t have any plans to buy a coat. I don’t want one. So, my jean jacket will have to do for now.
A.W. Geiger is a writer, journalist and founder of The Second Sun Project, an experiment in storytelling. She is also a full-time freelance journalist and can be reached at geigeraw@gmail.com.
