The Not-So-Well-Known Degrees of Grieving

As some of you may know, I participated in my creative writing school's senior thesis reading yesterday. A lot of people have asked for a link to the text that I wrote, so I've decided to publish it here. The piece is non-fiction, and was inspired by several different losses that I faced while in college, but most markedly by the loss of my close friend Z Grier. This piece was also published in the anthology, "Fighting for an Audience." The piece is published below.

The Not-So-Well-Known Degrees of Grieving

“He was not of this world,” they’ll say matter-of-factly, as if that notion is enough of an excuse to make his dying okay or acceptable. You might cling to these words and tuck them away—a security blanket to pull out each time the pain begins to weigh too much. Maybe you will scoff instead, and think that if he were still here, he’d punch you in the shoulder for crying so openly. Maybe you’ll do neither—perhaps you won’t even be listening to those around you. Perhaps you’ll be too busy folding the funeral bulletin that the usher handed you when you entered the church into seventy-six perfect, tiny squares. 

These are still the first days—the hours when nothing can rip your mind away from the fact that they are never coming back. Maybe it was your lover, your best friend, your brother, your sister, or a parent. Maybe you knew them so well that you will generate conversations with them in your head in the days to come while you sit alone in your car. Or maybe you barely knew them at all. Perhaps it was the girl in your psychology class from two semesters back, or the mother of an old friend, and perhaps you will feel guilty for mourning—or for not taking part. You hardly knew them, so maybe you will feel as if you don’t deserve a small sliver of the pain that everyone else around you seems to be sharing, but you would probably also feel bad if you did not take just a bite.

You probably won’t know what to say to their families, unless you are a part of their family, in which case you probably won’t know what to say to each other. If the departed was old, then you will find comfort in the idea that perhaps they are no longer in pain. If they were young, then you will shake your head solemnly along with everyone else, and you will agree enthusiastically when they say that “only the good die young,” and you will feel guilty the next time that you are lying in bed until three o’clock on a Saturday watching documentaries on Netflix, because you are lucky enough to still be alive and you are blowing it.  Regardless of their age, you will try not to imagine how cold the dirt must feel when it begins to snow at night, or how their skin might be decaying beneath the ground, but these thoughts may still haunt you sometimes, anyway.

If they were in a car accident, then you might vow to drive slower (which will probably last for about a week because you are a human being and the same thing would never happen to you), and you will find yourself wanting to drive down the very same road where it happened, wondering what their last thoughts were on the same stretch of asphalt. You will wonder if this is morbid. You might also wonder what song they were listening to when it happened. Or maybe you will avoid radios for weeks, afraid of the memories that songs often collect, if you are anything like me.

The weeks will pass, and if you were very close to the dearly departed, then you will find both joy and guilt in the moments when your mind is completely tied up by anything else. Perhaps you’ll be at work and you will be rushing to meet a deadline and you will not realize until you have finished working that you just went exactly forty-two minutes without thinking about it. Your first reaction will be a sigh of relief that such moments are even possible, and then you will feel guilty and selfish and you will reassure yourself and your missing loved one for the rest of the afternoon that you haven’t forgotten.

Those around you that aren’t also hurting will be sympathetic and gentle in the days that follow the death. At first, you will feel as if you have transformed into their fragile china teacup. They will pass you around carefully, making sure not to tip or drop you, but you will notice their eyes growing less and less eager and their touch growing more careless as the weeks stretch into the first month. “I am always here for you,” a friend will say, and you will shake your head, acknowledging that you know that they are always there, when in reality, you know that they see you as more of a burden these days.

You will stay up late at night recounting the last time that you saw the person that you’ve lost, and there is a ninety percent chance that you will regret something about that moment. Maybe you wish that you had held them tighter, in a longer hug, or kissed them goodbye before they went to work that morning. You might not have said goodbye at all. Perhaps you will wish that you had asked them how they were holding up—really asked them, and showed them that you cared. You might wish that you could take back the last words that were left lingering between you—all of the business that we often leave in limbo because we are sure that we will have another chance to fix it. If you didn’t know the person very well at all, you will wish that you had merely said “hello” instead of going about your daily business.

Your afternoons will be long, and you will torture yourself over all of the memories that you can’t seem to rein in mentally. If you were friends for years, you will have trouble forgiving yourself once you realize that you don’t know their favorite color, or what one thing they were the most afraid of in this world. You’ll stare at pictures and vow to never let the exact shade of their green-gray eyes slip from your memory. Their distinct laugh will haunt you, replaying endlessly in your mind. You will be unable to concentrate on anything else, wishing in vain that you could just remember the way that it sounded when they said your name aloud.

Perhaps you will sleep too much, or maybe you won’t at all. You might turn to drinking a glass of wine before bed, just to be able to lie down without remembering. You might fail the courses that you desperately needed to pass for the semester. And spend all of your grocery money on prescription drugs to numb the constant pain. Or maybe you’ll be constructive, instead. You’ll throw yourself so deeply and aggressively into your job that you will be promoted. Perhaps such a close brush with death will motivate you to chase the dreams and goals that your lost one will never have the chance to go after.

One morning, maybe a few months in, you will awaken and the pain will not rush in to crush you immediately. All of the nights of barely sleeping and mornings of waking up to your sad new reality have toughened you. You’ll reach your toes to touch the carpet, half expecting some pained version of yourself to grab them from under the bed and drag you back in, but no hands will reach out. You’ll be able to make it to your bathroom, and while brushing your teeth you will think about the person slowly and carefully, waiting for the pain of reality to come, but it won’t come. This will indicate that the tragedy has completely soaked itself into your bones. Now, you will be set to marinate in it slowly and gradually for a long, long time. The shock will linger and fade, and will wait in the darkness for an unexpected memory to take hold of you, but today you will decide that your pain is starting to feel less like accidentally touching a hot stove and more like running on black asphalt in the summertime, if you’re anything like me.

Eight months or so after the worst day, you will be driving.  A song will come on the radio and you will immediately be confronted with memories of your lost love dancing in your passenger seat, or holding you close so many years before at your high school prom. Maybe, it will be a song that they loathed, and maybe your gut-reaction will be to smile. And cry. And laugh. And for the first time, you might not immediately switch the dial to another station, and for the first time, you might just be able to drag a happy, misplaced memory out of the pain that has taken the place for so many months now of the person that you have lost.

When you glance at the calendar on a random Tuesday and you realize that any other year, you would have been celebrating their birthday with them, you will probably cry. You might sit alone on the couch in your living room and sob for hours, even if you have felt as if you were on the path to normalcy lately. You might bake a cake and decorate it and eat every piece of it by yourself. Or you might throw it in the trashcan and sit in the floor, staring at the patterns in the tiles. You might wonder if a day will ever come when, due to degrading health or the passage of time, you will no longer be able to remember their name. You will wonder if you could ever forget their existence completely. And maybe you will feel guilty for having these thoughts, and you will rise from the kitchen floor and you will clean up the mess that you have made with the frosting. Or maybe, you will continue to linger, and you will wish for the type of distant, impossible peace that only forgetting or never knowing could bring.

If you’re anything like me.