Some thoughts on grief
Or as I call it, The Sad.
I have been writing this post for 3 years. Today is the 3 year anniversary of my grandmother’s death. People lose people every day. I am not special. My grandmother was. She was important to me.
I was new to grief, and this is how I experienced it. I hope it is a good while before I have to do it again.
Grief should be taught in school. They should teach us about the different kinds of grief — how you feel when your beloved pet dies (sad) or how you will feel when your relationship falls apart (really sad but also angry and also hotly defiant) and how you feel when you lose a person that you love to a sudden and unexpected death (sad in a way that permeates you even in your fingernails).
My grandmother died on a piercingly cold, 15 below zero morning on February 1st, 2017 and I was really sad then. In the days prior I sat with my family and tried to comfort my mom as she performed the palliative care that the hospital staff did not bother to do, because she was dying anyway, why spend time moistening her mouth or lowering her fever? It took 3 days. The morning she died the cold towel I placed on her forehead the evening before was dry and hot, hardened into shape by a 105 degree fever. That morning, I kissed her still warm forehead and, after I called her siblings with a quivering voice told them she was gone, I went outside to breathe. I looked up at the stars still in the sky before the sun crept in and I couldn’t see them for all the tears flooding my eyeballs and felt like diving into the frozen pond outside the hospital because the pain of the icy cold water would be a distraction from the pain my body was manufacturing. This was the moment the anxiety and the fear of waiting for someone to die subsided and The Sad started.
My grandmother didn’t expect to die. The day she had an aneurysm was like any other, the minutia of which was spread across the house as evidence. The half written grocery list. The nail polish on the table. Reading glasses next to the paper. Curling iron in the sink. Coming back to all that was like looking at a life that hit pause, forever. I put some of the nail polish on one nail.
In the two weeks following my grandmother’s death there wasn’t time to experience sad. My mother and I set up camp at my grandparents home and set about dealing with the chaotic administrative process of death. I wasn’t even the one in charge, my mom pretty much slid into that role with more grace and stoicism than I will ever have on my best day. I shouldered whatever was leftover (quite literally, I was a pall bearer). I found photos from her past and made a memory board. I wrote her obituary. I found and reconciled her bank statements so her account could be closed. I received the well-meaning visitors who became visibly uncomfortable at the sight of my bereft grandfather.
The Sad erupted, though, as it does, when it has been on hold for too long. It roared out of me when the immediate family stood at the front of the church, looking into the casket at my grandmother for the very last time. I noticed the mortician glued her mouth shut so that the corners of her mouth turned down into a frown. She didn’t ever frown like that. My mom took her glasses. I put my hand on the casket, unable to bring myself to touch her lifeless body, and I sobbed. Normally I am embarrassed to cry in front of people. I was still embarrassed, but I was more sad so sad won. My uncle hugged me. I could not stop crying. When it came time to carry her to the hearse I struggled under the weight and with the slippery wood pall in my hand.
On the way to the cemetery my dad tried to make small talk with me. I wanted to scream “I CANNOT HAVE A CONVERSATION RIGHT NOW I AM ONLY SADNESS.” It was not his fault; no one knew that I was so sad because I did not have to words to tell anyone. Each tear was the words, the childhood memories, the pancake breakfasts and JC Penny school clothes shopping trips and rides in the pontoon boat and country music songs and joyful Christmases and plush always vacuumed carpet that I dug my fingers in to to make designs that I could wipe away. Each tear was a piece of 32 years of respite and unconditional love that was now going into the frozen ground. At the cemetery the comfortless priest said a few words and we took turns flicking holy water onto the casket and then we all left, the casket still on its riser, alone in the bitter cold.
No one warns you about the dreams. It is a widely documented phenomenon, dreaming of your loved one after they die, and yet there is no one who prepares you for it. I had the same dream over and over again: I walk into the house, up the stairs to the kitchen like always, Grandma inevitably preparing something to eat, but not for herself. She looks up at me, and says “well hi Alicia” like she always did. I exclaim “Grandma!” Then she disappears. I dreamed this dream for months. Sometimes it would vary, she would stay a moment longer or tell me something before vanishing. Once I dreamed I was there in the 1970s. The house still had the green shag carpet and wood paneling. She had brown hair, was younger, in a striped dress. Her sisters were there with their families. They were having dinner, cups clinking, people laughing. She was happy. I always woke with a fleeting sense that everything was normal, that her being gone was the dream. Then reality set in and I would cry. The last dream I had she and I were sitting on a bench waiting for a bus. It was foggy, misty, I couldn’t see beyond her. She told me “I am still with you, just not how you think.” Then she was gone. And the dreams stopped.
Coming back to regular life was where The Sad set up shop for the long haul. Returning to work after someone dies is hard. Reality is profoundly changed. It is stepping through the looking glass and everything looks the same but feels foreign. Death makes people uncomfortable so no one asks if you are OK. God forbid you say anything other than “Yeah, I’m OK” or worse, cry. Sorry, I don’t give a shit about this spreadsheet Roger, I can’t even hear you because this sadness is screaming inside of me. I am surprised you can’t hear it. It’s all I can hear.
The expectation of being able to return to normal after a week or two postmortem is absurd to me. (I fully acknowledge that many people do not have any bereavement benefits whatsoever, another cruelty of capitalism). Grief is just beginning then. The fog of shock is lifting and the present becomes a bog of thick unrelenting mud you have to wade through. The mud gets higher and higher, until your head is tilting upward gasping for air even though it would be easier to just give in and sink and let the bog have you. Centuries later you will be disinterred, skin black and hair shocked red from the lack of oxygen at the bottom.
My partner was my bedrock during this time. When I wanted to sink he pulled me up, let me get mud all over his clothes, cry into his chest late at night, ruining countless undershirts with (falsely marketed) waterproof mascara smears. He held me without asking questions and never made me feel guilty for turning an otherwise pleasant evening into a sobfest or declining intimacy because the sadness made my body hurt. I don’t know if there is a scientific explanation as to why it feels like your heart hurts when you are emotionally pained, but the feeling in my chest did not go away for months. He stayed, too. We are going to get married. I wish she could have met him. They share a birthday.
The first Christmas without her was the hardest. The greatest joy for me at Christmas was never the gifts, or the songs or the special meals, it was going to Grandma’s. She loved the holiday too. Her home was the gathering place for every family event — a fact of which she was very proud. Her house was always impeccably decorated with heirlooms and new finds alike. My favorite was a green felt bell with a music box inside, when you pull the cord it plays”Jingle Bells.” It always hung in the entryway, and every year, EVERY year without fail the first thing I did when we got into the house was pull the cord to announce our arrival. The house always had a warmth to it, even in the coldest winters. The first Christmas without her we ate at a restaurant and stopped by the house after. It was dark. Spiders had scattered tiny bug corpses in most of the corners and windowsills. There were no decorations. There was no felt bell. I begged my grandfather for one of her ornaments. He was not ready to share her with us, but he relented and let me take one. I cried and cried and cried. A neighbor stopped by to give my grandpa some cookies. He shifted uncomfortably at my tear-stained face and unsteady voice.
I have just one picture of my grandma and I in my possession — all the others are tucked safely away in albums at my parents’ house. It is her holding me as a baby, happy, full of life, and my chubby infant smile burbling at the camera. Every time I see it I feel the sad, but I also feel love. Recently, Tess Holliday said that “grief is love with nowhere to go.” The intensity of the feelings is gone, but the love will always remain.
Miss you, gram.
