Grieving someone I no longer knew
Note: It has taken me two and a half years to put this into words. It is not my intention or place to tell Rose’s story; this is simply my understanding of how her loss impacted me and my perception of the world around me.
Grief has never directly touched me. Its frozen fingers have never wrapped around mine; Grief has never creeped up behind me and put its arm around my waist. Instead, Grief has always just barely grazed my cheeks as it passed by. This will not always be the case — eventually, it will stand beside me and hold my hand, like it must with everyone else on this planet. But for now, me and Grief have been nothing more than a flirtatious fling.
My most recent interaction with the beast started in August of 2016. I found myself sitting in a chair at my hair salon, feeling the heat of processing bleach radiating off the foils stacked on top of my head.
I scrolled through my Facebook news feed and came across a post from a girl I grew up with. My heart dropped as I scanned the first few words. I don’t recall exactly what they said, but they were along the lines of:
“I can’t believe I’m writing this…”
As I slid my thumb down the screen, I saw photos of Rose.
I couldn’t fathom reading the rest of what our mutual friend had written. I put my phone down and stared at myself in the mirror, trying to regain focus. But I couldn’t. The entire world stopped. My stomach shrank into itself. Suddenly, nothing felt real. I was no long here.
“Cut it all off,” I told my hair stylist. My hair had been the same length for years. He didn’t ask twice, and cut at least four or five inches off. I tried my best to focus on the piles of hair lining the salon floor, but couldn’t.
I didn’t cry that day. I didn’t cry the following day, either. Or the day after that.
I sat in the back of the synagogue at her funeral, paralyzed by a heavy reality of unknowns. I stood, motionless, staring at the wooden box she was placed in. I didn’t cry as I helped shovel dirt into her grave. I didn’t cry when I got in my car and drove home. I didn’t cry for a long, long while.
That state of disillusion washed over me for months.
I can’t tell you where or when Rose and I first met. But what I can tell you is that when I was six, her dad became my very first softball coach.
For many years beyond that, Rose and her family were a constant staple in my life.
At one of her birthday parties, Rose and I wrestled. She won. That same night, she also scared me in front of our friends, causing me to cry and ask to go home. I was embarrassed for a very, very long time.
Rose was the goofball on every softball team she inhabited; she would hike her pants up, grandpa style, and make the weirdest faces. By nature, she was the radiant center of attention. There were times where she made us laugh until we cried. There were also times where she made us laugh until we got sent to run five laps around the field, as a punishment, because we wouldn’t focus.
After years of knowing each other, Rose and I started gravitating toward one another. There’s one summer, in particular, where we traveled the country to play in tournaments. We were throwing partners. We talked a lot of shit together. And we snuck beers together in hotel bathrooms when no one was looking.
I remember her falling asleep with her head in my lap one day on a plane. We were on the way home from one of the last tournaments we’d ever play in together; it’s one of my most vivid recollections of what it feels like to have a strong sense of friendship with someone, the feeling of being comfortable enough to lie your head down and rest.
We didn’t talk much after then.
The longer the loss of Rose settled inside of me, the more confused I became with my sadness over it.
I hadn’t spoken to Rose, or her family, in years. We all were connected through the vapid veil of social media, but it had been a long, long time since any of us saw one another in the flesh.
Life happened. The journey pulled us all in different directions, as it naturally does.
It had been so long since I interacted with her or her family, in fact, that the first time I had seen her father in years, I had to ask if it was him.
I was working at a local restaurant, wiping down tables and vacuuming bread crumbs off the wooden floors. I glanced over and noticed him sitting at the bar, watching a baseball game and periodically checking his phone.
I walked up and said, “Bill? Is that you?”
And of course, it was. I knew it was, but that awkward moment of not knowing if I should say hi or not washed over me.
It subsided. We hugged. We chatted. We laughed.
“And how’s Rose?” I asked.
She was well. Living in another city. Working, at the neighborhood Ale House. Happy.
It was a five minute conversation, and then it was over. The two of us returned to our own worlds, and I wouldn’t see him again until Rose’s funeral.
I think about that random run-in often. In hindsight, it juxtaposes my sadness in an uncomfortable way. That run-in confirmed that I didn’t know Rose, or her family, anymore. Life got busy. I didn’t even know she moved to a different city. I had no idea where she was, or what she was doing. When she died, that was no different. Our worlds were no longer in each other’s orbit.
But her being gone still hit me like a train.
There is so much I have learned about Rose since her death. There are stories, which aren’t my own to tell, that have helped me shape an understanding of who she was, what she was like and what she might have been going through when she left this earth.
But the little bits I run across and consume are just glimmers. I’ve had to accept the fact that they might not be the full truth, and an endless amount of FOIA requests won’t ever tell the whole story.
I’ve had to accept at some point, through my sadness, it’s likely that I have filled in some holes of the story myself; I have been reluctant to write it about it because of so.
The more I learned about Rose, the more an immense sense of guilt washed over me. Who was I to be so gutted over the loss of someone I was no longer close with? Someone I no longer knew? Someone I wasn’t there for?
Grief didn’t meet me directly at the shore. It didn’t grab my hand and lead me to release 22 roses into the sea, letting the wandering waves carry them to peace.
Grief simply walked passed me, again, and lightly touched my cheek. It quietly reminded me of our inevitable endings without saying a word, and then it was gone. But I still felt its presence.
So why did it hurt so bad? I got a rose tattooed on my wrist. I told people about her. I didn’t leave my apartment for a while. When I finally did cry, it was only when I drank, which always made it hurt ten times worse.
For a long time, my grief felt invasive. If I was hurting that bad, I couldn’t imagine how those closest to her felt. And who was I to ever think I could understand?
Although I couldn’t tell you a single name of any of Rose’s friends around the time of her death, I could tell you that her spirit was the same as when we were close. And I know for a fact that other people would, too.
Videos on her Instagram showed her diving off cliffs, head first. Photos were of her smiling in the sun, hair down and no make up on. Most of her pictures were taken on a beach or with a mouth wide open, in laughter, with friends. I know that social media can oftentimes be a facade for many, but in hers, I could still see the same things that made her standout so many years ago.
Rose may have been different on the surface by the time she left, but her core was still the same.
She still ate capers out of the jar. She still loved getting her nails done. She didn’t give a shit about what other people thought of her.
Rose was still very much Rose, even if the years that passed by meant that took a different shape on the surface.
Grief is still a beast that I don’t understand. I have yet to be embraced by it, but the closest we have ever gotten has changed me. Grief has made me question the world around me and the way I perceive it, and it has taught me to be patient with myself while it guides me somewhere new.
Grief has also taught me that even when people seem to have changed, they might very well still be the same.
It doesn’t matter how long you knew someone. What matters is the lasting impression that person left on you, whether that be through a nap on an airplane together or wandering side by side through the city on a hot summer day.
Grief doesn’t discriminate by time spent together nor is defined by time spent apart. What they say is true: what Grief really is, I’ve learned, is that it’s love without anywhere to go.
