My friend and former colleague Carin Bringelson and I had lunch on Sunday. And she was patiently listening to me talk about some of the things that had happened since my mother died two months ago. And I referred to that period as “whatever you call this.”
“I call it grief,” she said.
Yes, well, right. Grief.
But “grief” is such a limited term for something so pervasive, so all-encompassing. It holds a funhouse mirror up to everything, from the most mundane to the most consequential. It makes me feel totally numb at some times, completely cut off, while at other times it makes me cry watching a video of a bullied kid on Facebook. I look down at my keys, which used to be a giant mass that would jangle in my pocket like a janitor’s – now they don’t. Her name is everywhere: on an old bill, on a card she sent me in that spiky handwriting of hers, on my Netflix login screen for god’s sake. I get in my car, which was hers, and look at the Beanie Baby she kept on the dashboard for some reason. I think maybe it was rare or valuable at one time; I don’t remember.
I’m not depressed, exactly. But there is a blanket over everything. Tasks take a bit longer, thoughts are a bit jumbled at times. I’m tired a lot. I think that’s all normal, especially combined with winter blowing in.
And then there’s Christmas. My father died just before Christmas 1995, and since then the holiday has been…problematic. We just can’t seem to catch a break. One year my mother fell down the basement stairs right before Christmas; it was a miracle she didn’t break anything or suffer a head injury. Her lung surgery to remove a tumor, which took her five months to recover from instead of the one month the doctors expected, was in early December 2014. That Christmas was literally harrowing.
But my mother, like my grandmother, loved Christmas. So I did my best to make an effort. One year, I suggested that my mother and I just get each other one gift. She agreed, solemnly, and then proceeded to create a giant tower of gifts for me tied together with a single ribbon. Sneaky. 🙂
She was famous, again like my grandmother, for giving not-so-great gifts, despite all her best intentions. One year, she gave me an air popcorn popper and a plastic-sealed book of black and white photography, which when opened revealed lots of images of naked people entwined in extremely unlikely sexual positions. (She knew I liked photography, and the image on the cover was innocuous.)
This year, well. Yeah. Pretty different. And sometimes this terrible ache is a physical thing that makes me catch my breath.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that right now, “grief” is indistinguishable from “my life.” It’s not all terrible; not by a long shot. We had so many fun times, so many laughs. And she touched many more people’s lives than she would ever realize. I know it will move and change and morph. I just have to hold on. She once gave me a refrigerator magnet with a quote from Winston Churchill:
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Good advice, Winston. Good advice.