Grief is love

I grew up knowing what grief was. Maybe not it's exact name but what the feeling was. How your heart hurt. How your soul ached. Grief surrounded us. And not in a horribly sad, black dress every day kind of way but in a we've lost people who are very important kind of way and it's okay to be sad and it's okay to think about them and it's okay to remember them and laugh about them. This became a part of me.

I have no memories of my own about my great grandpa Kenneth. As my mother tells the story, he knew he'd never live to see me be born although he knew I was on my way. Cancer sucked back then, and cancer sucks now. Those are the worst words I can say about cancer because in my house growing up sucks was a curse word. (No idea why really, since actual curse words were lobbied about quite frequently.) But his spirit was kept alive through photos and stories. So many stories.

Similarly I have no memories of my own of my Aunt Ginny. But I almost feel like I do because my Grandma MacDonald kept her memory alive so well with stories. Same goes for my Grandmother's father who died when she was 16. So many stories, so much to keep close.

When I wasn't yet three my mother gave birth to twin boys who didn't survive the day. I don't remember anything about that time but to this day I remember their birth date. I clean off their gravestone marker at the cemetery and I spent many a summer day trekking up the hill to water the flowers we planted. There and just above them, at my uncle's grave, an uncle who didn't survive the day he was born either.

We didn't really talk about the babies in my family but we didn't not talk about them either. Each year on their birth date I'd calculate their age and wonder what it would be like to have two little boys in the house. Or to have two brothers instead of one sister. As the years went on we mentioned them less but never forgot.

When I was not quite 10 my mother's father passed away. I have distinct memories from that day, from that week. Of knowing something so bad had happened. Of knowing that life would go on but never be the same.

We would go years without another death close to the family like that one. But the grief never went away. My grandmother would have a big family dinner in a restaurant around the time of my grandfather's death. We'd spend days planting flowers by his gravestone, watering the flowers at the babies' stones.

But then another grandfather passed away, my dad's dad, and I was older, in college, and I remember feeling the grief so differently, not completely yet, but knowing what it meant, at least in part.

When my Grandma MacDonald passed away I was a bonafide adult. At least that's what life tells me. And I will never forget the feelings that accompanied that death. That immediate sadness. That immediate emptiness. The moment of sitting there in the funeral home, listening to the pastor, holding hands with my sister and my two cousins, sobs racking my body. I'll never ever get that image from my brain. And I don't want to. I have to hold on to that. To that love. To that pain. To that hurt. To that grief. 

And then came the summer, three years ago, when all three of my remaining grandparents passed away within weeks and months of one another. I remember thinking I might never stop crying. I might never get a handle on things again. Life was so profoundly changed. Not like when I was a little girl and people would be sad for a while and then I'd not really notice the difference. I was so young, I couldn't pick up on the deep sadness that envelopes people when their loved ones pass. But I'm no longer so young.

The grief settled in and made a promise not to go away. It enveloped us and changed us. These were people, who as an adult, I had made a part of my daily life. These were people I called on a daily or weekly basis. These were people I thought of regularly. These were people I kept track of. I knew their schedules and their favorite candy bars and whether or not they'd be happy with the score of the game. I knew these people. These were my people. Not just family. My family. My every day support system.

And suddenly they were gone.

All at once.

Gone.

And then someone else passed away. And then someone else. And it felt like the world would never be the same again. Or okay again. Because, frankly, let's face it, it won't be. Ever. And we just have to deal with that.

And then last summer, in 2014, I went home and I saw Mom #2, Marilyn. I saw what cancer had done to her body, not to her spirit, never to her spirit, but to her physical being. I saw that she really was sick. She really was dying. And yet we all pretended it wasn't. Because that's what you do. You pretend it's going to be okay, because even if it's not, you have to believe it is. Because what else do you have.

I didn't say goodbye to her last summer. I thought about going to her house and walking up the porch, and petting Cyd hello, and wrapping my arms around her. I'm sure she thought about it too because she didn't come say goodbye to Angela and I. There were opportunities for both of us but we never took them. None of us. And I know why, at least for me. Because deep down I knew I wouldn't just be saying goodbye until Christmas. I'd be saying goodbye forever.

And I couldn't do that.

I believe in Heaven. I believe in my people smiling down on me when they aren't too busy doing awesome Heaven stuff up there. I believe in hope and I have faith and I have love in my heart. I do. But I also have grief. I have such profound sadness that strikes me at moments and it almost knocks me down because I'm not expecting it.

The grief over Marilyn has been that way. Knowing today, the day she died, was coming up over the past few weeks, even months, I had a keen sense that things were not okay. And I have come to terms with the fact that that is okay. Grief has no correct fashion. It takes no direct path. It doesn't happen and then end. It continues, just as life does. It reminds us hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, eventually yearly, that we had people in our lives we loved so much or who loved us so much that it hurts now that they are gone. And that is miraculous. That in all this world we are loved. And we love. And we hurt. And that's all life really is.

Some days I miss her handwriting on a bright envelope in my mailbox. Some days I miss the sound of her voice through the phone. Some days I miss the way she'd sit at my mom's kitchen table and talk for hours. Some days I miss just knowing she's there, in that little house, and that I can stop in and get a hug and shoot the breeze.

When we went home for Christmas in 2014 Marilyn taught Ang, Mom and I how to make rolls. Her mother's rolls. Eileen's rolls. She wrote out the recipe for us. She walked us through the process step by step. And she made us promise to practice. We haven't yet. It's been too hard. It's been too sad. But this fall, when the weather cools and there's spaghetti on the stove, we'll practice, Angela and I. We'll practice and we'll remember that day and we'll smile and we'll laugh and we'll probably cry a bit. Because grief is all of that. Grief is us. Grief is love.

January 2014