What is Grief?

A crowd-sourced work in progress

In October of 2019, many of my friends were experiencing fresh grief. I had lost my best friend to cancer a year and a half before, and I was still regularly surprised by the pain of the loss. It sneaked up on me in unexpected moments. I thought this might be happening to others as well, so I asked for contributions. What emerged was maybe the most beautiful, heartbreaking, hopeful thread I’ve ever read. I hope you get as much out of these descriptions as I have.

Grief is…

Needing to ask her a question that only she could answer and starting to cry… then realizing the question was about high school so she wouldn’t have been able to answer it anyway because she didn’t remember high school even before the tumor, and starting to giggle.

Grief is…

Needing to know a recipe so you call him and don’t realize until you hear the disconnect tone on the other line that he’s not going to answer. You cry because you want him so badly to pick up, yet you laugh because it’s as if he’s only been gone for a minute.

Grief is…

Realizing that in the everyday craziness of life and trying to deal with your own grief (and moving multiple times and having unfinished walls) that you haven’t shared who your parent was, or enough pictures of them, for your own children to know who their grandparent was.

Grief is…

I don’t know if I remember what my mom’s voice sounded like anymore.

Grief is…

Going through a file cabinet at mom and dad’s and finding report cards and writing assignments of mine that spanned from kindergarten to high school and seeing that he always dated them in the top right corner with his neat penmanship. Wishing we could sort through that file together and laugh, there would have been tears of laughter probably instead of tears of sadness.

Grief is…

Hearing out of the blue the theme song to the tv show New Girl (which was her ringtone on your phone) and for the briefest of moments thinking she was calling.

Grief is…

So raw and visceral. It is when you don’t know how to say how you feel because you only want to scream. It is trying hard not to forget what it felt like when she scratched your back and played with your hair even when she was so sick and you were 44. Because that is the feeling of your Mother’s love in the most simple of actions.

Grief is…

Proof that you loved. Grief is perspective. Grief is every Christmas, and birthday, and Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day, and Monday through Sunday that you have to go on without that loved one. Grief is being parentless but still desperately needing your parents. So you allow grief to guide you in how you parent your own children. And you allow grief to help you focus on what’s truly important. Grief is the great reminder.

Grief is…

In the key of E. Putting on my makeup this morning and hearing a throwback Fleetwood Mac song. “Oh, I… I want to be with you Everywhere…” Perhaps I heard her calling out my name. I want to be with her everywhere. No time for Ugly Cry today. My watery eyes anticipate my daughter’s grief when I am gone. How can I prepare her for days when her mascara will run? For when the song will end?

Grief is…

Present in your belly before the most acute part of the loss. When each day passes and it’s one less day — even when it was a “good” day — because there’s only a year left after surgery. That year becomes 11, 10, 9, 8 months. And then symptoms return as every doctor said they would. The deadline approaches. And the months turn to weeks. You curse every calendar and clock. And the weeks turn to a single week when he can no longer eat or drink, and you know it’s a single week because there’s no extension on that kind of loan. Then minutes are measured in breaths and the breaths become shallow and spaced farther apart and filled with gravel. So what is truer grief: the grief that precedes for months as that day approaches, or the grief after the breathing stops and you feel the warmth drain from the body? Or the years that follow? I can’t say. But they don’t call it a deadline for nothing.

Grief is…

When the minutes turn to hours, hours turn to days, days turn to years, and the smells go away. The voice is cloudy, you can’t hear their laugh, you reach for their hand…

Grief is…

Also feeling so alone. It feels like nobody else has felt this pain and yet, look here. These all could be written by me. Grief is a tricky thing.

Grief is…

The great equalizer. But each experience is individual and unique and can be so, so isolating.

Grief is…

Thinking you see her shopping in one of those Lark scooter things at Target, but realizing that’s impossible because she’s dead, so there’s no need for you to run and hide down another aisle to avoid having a 20 minute conversation about other people’s dogs.

Grief is…

Hard. Laughter is good.

Grief is…

Not being hungry and food not tasting very good. It’s wanting to have someone next to me but wanting to be alone, too.

Grief is…

The smell of Old Spice or a song on the radio.

Grief is…

Seeing his newborn daughter and knowing they’ll never meet.

Grief is…

Going to the law office to change your will, because this uncle isn’t going to be your kids’ guardian even if you die, too. Then it’s two years later, checking your kid in for a test at Children’s and needing to change the emergency contact. When geez, you thought you had all that stuff taken care of and then there’s this random gut punch.

Grief is…

Crying over finding another hole in worn-out pajamas, worn Christmas Eve while curled up on the floor next to him in bed, holding his hand as he drifted away — his “jailbird” pajamas he named years ago.

Grief is…

Finding the perfect book and not having him to share it with. Grief is being happy that you had so many amazing memories with him but realizing that there won’t be any new memories with him. Grief is not being able to hold his hand anymore. Grief is being resentful of people that still have their dads. Grief is being surrounded but alone.

Grief is…

Saving voice mail messages from your dad because you don’t remember your mom’s voice.

Grief is…

Realizing there is no reason to turn left to go for a ride, so you turn right and just go home.

Grief is…

Not wanting to delete their phone number because it’s the only thing you have left to hold on to, but then you are reminded every time you call home that they are gone.

Thank you (and big hugs to) Nikki, Carrie, Joel, Jenny, Maira, Jolene, Rhonda, Kristina, Jessica, Karla, Mikki, Jen, Amy, Emily, Cathy, Denise, Dion, Marian, Deb, and Robin. (Just kidding about Mikki, she doesn’t hug adults.)

Thanks for reading.

Love, Susie