Don’t Ask About My Spring Break.
Don’t ask what I did for spring break.
Don’t ask unless you want to hear the truth.
I wasn’t in Cancun. I wasn’t in Barcelona. I wasn’t on a service trip or a retreat. I didn’t go visit family friends, or New York City, or a Californian beach. I didn’t go to a concert or a museum or a film festival, and I certainly wasn’t lying in a hammock by some idyllic lake.
I went home.
I went home, and I grieved.
I washed the floors because it hadn’t been done since Christmas. I did the laundry because my brother asked me to. I walked the dog, and I fed the fish, and I cooked dinner. I waited until I was alone and played my music on the speaker in the kitchen, but the emptiness of the house was too eerie so I shut it off again.
I reminded my father to buy vegetables at the grocery store. He hadn’t bought any since I last visited. I convinced him to buy a pineapple and some broccoli because I worry about him. I loaded them onto the belt, unpacked them at home, and peeled the potatoes and the carrots for dinner.
I curled up in bed with the books friends had lent or given me over the past months. I didn’t read them. I couldn’t find the focus in my scattered mind. I put them back on the floor, sighed, and pulled the blankets over shivering shoulders.
I laid in bed and felt the house shake in the wind.
I held a baby for the first time in many years — the neighbor’s family had come to visit. My brother politely declined. She served us asparagus steamed with salmon, and I ate it even though I don’t eat fish, because what else could I do?
I weighed myself to see if I had put back on the weight I lost after the funeral yet.
I became my mother.
No, I became a mother.
I thought of motherly things and I did them, because it breaks my heart to think that my family no longer has one.
I didn’t become a mother. I became a daughter.
I became the daughter my mother had always wanted me to be.
My brothers joked that I would make them look bad when their spring breaks came. So I waited until everyone had gone out, double-checked that the doors were locked, and then wiped down the counters and washed out the sink.
I sat with my brother while he did his homework. Not out of obligation or coercion. I did it because I don’t know how else to make him feel loved anymore.
My aching body begged me to call it a night. I didn’t cry when he told me that my coursework is so easy compared to his. I didn’t cry when he told me that my chronic illness is no big deal. I didn’t cry when he told me that I shouldn’t be tired.
I woke up at all hours of the night to deal with my illness. My father woke me up several times when I slept through the alarms. Too many years of interrupted sleep take their toll on a tired body.
In the kitchen, I sliced my finger with a knife by accident. Terror struck me in that moment, when I realized how fragile my own fingers are. My father told me the bandaids would last longer if I stopped getting them wet, but there were pans to scrub and the bird’s cage to clean.
I washed the dishes. I ran warm water over my wrists until I stopped shivering.
I shovelled snow by myself for the first time.
I’m no saint, I’m no suffering servant, and I’m no Cinderella. I didn’t do everything. Some days I did nothing.
I made new connections. I laughed despite the pain. I slept in my own bed. I tried.
I tried to make things right. I messed things up. I tried to be honest. I hurt the people I tried to love, because I’m not very good at not hurting people, no matter how hard I try.
I listened to old songs I haven’t heard in years, pulled my hat down low, and sat cross-legged on my bed playing online video games so I could feel like a kid again.
I chewed mint gum even though I hate mint gum because I was meeting someone and I wanted to impress them.
I laid down to listen to a favorite album and instead fell asleep at 8pm because I could no longer keep my eyes open.
The organist in church played “Amazing Grace” and I silently, invisibly, turned to stone.
We stopped holding hands during the Our Father about a month ago.
For the first time in three years, I get a text during the service.
I didn’t cry when I got home.
I swore I wouldn’t let this week evaporate like they all seem to, and then I did.
They dropped me off at school again, and the sky refused to get dark fast enough. I laid on the floor, my bedrock.
And I cried.
This is what my grief looks like now.
So don’t ask me what I did for spring break.
I don’t have an exciting adventure to tell you about. I don’t have photos to show. I don’t have funny stories or a new tan. So don’t ask.
Let me take that back.
Ask what I did for spring break. Please ask and want to hear the answer.
Ask even though you know it won’t be happy.
Ask and let me tell you.
