Diary of Grief

Day Four: Quicksand

For whatever reason, the fourth day ends up being a living hell; a weird, frozen-in-time, isolated sort of hell: like I’m stuck in a quick sand of grief. I’m home with the three boys today, and I feel like the three of them are tiptoeing around the quick sand. They sort of circle around me, like little black birds, pecking at their cheese and crackers, pouring their apple juice, looking up the weather on Google, making their beds...

When I first woke this morning, even before I hoisted my under-slept body out of bed, I resolved I was going to take the kids somewhere special, like Fairyland, and spend the day reconnecting with them. I have felt so absent this week. But the hours of the morning pass – and pass – and pass, and I tell you this, my dear friends: I simply cannot do it. I am stuck. Deeper and deeper I sink, hardly able to travel from one end of the house to the other, let alone, to Fairyland. I feel guilty for being so far removed, for not being able to fake it very well with my family this week. But it also occurs to me that if my children are ever going to be prepared for grief in their own lives, well…it will be through what they observe of the experience. There are no how-to lessons on grief: there is just the wretched, raw experience of it. And I don’t think we are asked to overcome it, but merely survive it.

The dishes pile high today. The laundry, of course, is also in massive, possibly composting, mounds. And apparently, the mail is piling up, too. The mail carrier came up to the door today with our mail. I can’t fit any more mail in your box, he says, it’s all jam-packed. He seems annoyed. I take the mail from his hand and speak defensively: We had a death in the family so I haven’t been checking the mail. He remarks, Oh boy, and heads back down our front steps. I can feel that I’m especially on edge.

While clearly I’ve not been much for mobility today, I have been thinking a lot. About how death is an enigma that haunts us all – how not one of us can escape it; about the way death perplexes our delicate and limited human intellects, and challenges our spirits to their innermost core, no matter what the circumstances around it happen to be; no matter what we believe comes after. Because in death, the living feel forsaken.

At some point, I coax myself to the backyard and sway in the hemp chair a bit. From the swing, I spot the cross that hangs on our fence: it’s a mosaic composed of irregular shards of bright-colored ceramics. I think about how we’re all broken like that; some of us in more pieces than others, perhaps, depending on our story. I think of Steve, broken on earth, but now whole. This is maybe the first soothing thought about death I have arrived at on my own, since Steve’s passing: that each of us longs to be whole our entire lives, and in dying, we finally are.

Finally, finally, around 2 p.m., as the quicksand nature of my day becomes unbearable, I convince myself to do two things: seek out some company to get me through the evening, and to get us all out of the house. After herding the boys into the mini van, I head to the end of our block and sit there, immobilized. I have no idea which way to turn because I have no idea where we are going. The boys are buckled confidently in their seats, trusting that I have a plan, as always – a destination. But I absolutely don’t. Even more perplexing is the fact that I can’t seem to make a decision that requires so little imagination. Finally, I turn left and head toward downtown. But I have second thoughts, so I make a u-turn and drive back the other direction. I head over Fairmont Drive and into San Leandro. We end up at Michael’s Arts and Crafts, which ends up a ridiculous nightmare of a shopping trip, with Henry opening packages of beads and rolling them down the aisle. He also broke two piggy banks. We buy a mosaic garden stone kit, some stupid dollar toys, and head home.

On the way home, I am unusually agitated and realize that I failed to eat again today. So I drive the mini van through Caffino, and order a mocha. Food simply doesn’t appeal. The boys talk me into a whole variety of indulgences: strawberry banana smoothies, cookies and cream shakes, chocolate milk: I am a pushover, too strung out to defend any point of view. And that’s okay for today. I laugh to myself, thinking they could have easily persuaded me to order chocolate croissants, muffins and cookies, as well. Pulling out of Caffino, I realize I am precisely one block from the place where Steve's body was found. Tomorrow, Mom and I will visit Steve's site together.

I am actually looking forward to having somewhere to be; to having a destination that feels exactly right.

Diary Of Grief

Day Three: Distraction

It’s hard getting started, as usual, this morning, but I manage to stomach some coffee; and praise be to God, Chad is home today. Chad defends my need to play George Winston to the boys, rather than Lady Ga Ga. He is tender and sweet all through the morning, asking me what I need. And mostly, I don’t know what I need – until my cousin knocks on our front door: she’s crazy in love and is here to tell us about it. I pour us each a glass of sparkling water and add some lime slices and sprigs of lemon verbena. We sit out on the deck in two anorak chairs, soaking up the day’s generous sunlight. Tell me all about it, I say.

I don’t realize it at the moment, but really, I am asking for a distraction. I am asking to be elsewhere, outside of my grief. It has occurred to me, as subtle and silent as it can be, grief is hard work; it is exhausting; depleting. It is work I have been committed to for days; and the road ahead feels long, yet.

My cousin’s vivacity explodes in every direction – like fireworks, her being ablaze with her first true love. I relish the display – every minute of it, in fact: her hands pressed upon her heart, her dark eyes widening as she speaks, her shiny, black hair swaying in a delicate breeze. I invest my mind in the stories of the amazing first date, the magic kiss, and all of the Rumi poetry a girl could want. Love indeed. I delight in this vibrant twenty four year old sitting before me. Simultaneously, a question from somewhere in the depths of me whispers: what about Steve?

The thing is about the grief, it never actually leaves; instead, it occupies a ghostly sort of space beneath the conversation. Underneath the sensation of seltzer bubbles on my tongue, beneath the scent of lime, beneath the sound of my own voice, my own laughter, the grief remains, somehow insisting on itself. There are even a few moments where I feel I am betraying my grief by soaking up these rays of sunshine. But I let these thoughts pass, figuring this entire process is foreign to me; figuring I am going to need to be led some – by unexpected visits from cousins in love and the like. So I allow my cousin’s stories to infuse me with a contagious sense of joy and hope and wonder – things I haven’t felt for days.

I have decided that at least for today, distraction is a grace, for which I am very thankful.

Diary of Grief

Day Two: Sinking In

This morning I wake feeling pinned to the sheets – so I decide not to get up. Instead, I lay diagonally across the bed, peering out the window at the camel-colored hills, and the silvery fog draped over them; I think of Steve. A hawk swoops over some cattle out in the distance and some beautiful words written to Steve on his Facebook Memories page come to mind: The heavy blanket has finally been lifted and your spirit is free to soar.* I try to imagine Steve’s spirit soaring like the hawk: free: unencumbered: whole. And it’s to this image I cling. My own heart is so heavy. Not soaring. Not free. Or light.

Chad has a work meeting today, so it’s just the kids and me again. Maintaining composure with the boys feels like it will be impossible. The intense feeling of restlessness is worse than it was yesterday – like lightening bugs trapped in a jar. I find myself ducking into different rooms of the house to let the involuntary tears fall. I notice, though, as I allow the tears to fall that the restlessness finds relief – like the fireflies are finding their way into the open air again, one at a time.

In the kitchen, after trying to eat a piece of toast, but composting it instead – after making the coffee required too much effort – after doing a couple of aimless laps around the house - I scribble the following on a note pad:

Grief doesn’t let you

make your bed in the morning

or even sleep in it

during the night;

no—grief keeps you

awake

into the early hours

of morning, poised on the edge

of you don’t know what;

awake to

the fragility of

e-v-e-r-y-thing.

Grief immobilizes.

I let the boys watch extra videos today, and draw myself a bath. Submerged in the comfort of hot water, I recall that tonight I’m supposed to host a dinner party. Will grief let me host a dinner party? Should I cancel it? Friends we have not seen in nearly a year will visit; I decide to keep the plans, concluding that as fragile as life feels at the moment, it’s important to connect with friends. So after the long soak, I gather up the boys and head to Trader Joe’s. I make it as far as the parking lot, but we are near the place where Steven was found; we are on the very street, in fact. Behind the wheel in the parking lot, I collapse into tears again; after a few deep breaths, I turn and speak to my three boys: Listen, I say, I’m feeling very sad and the sadness makes it hard to do the things I normally do. Do you boys think you can be extra well behaved and helpful in the store?

The world in Trader Joe’s feels divided in two: those who know Steven died and those who don’t – which makes it lonely. The boys, who know my soul’s sad secret, are angelically helpful; and I am so grateful. I feel rather zombie-ish, tossing bananas and bread loaves into the cart. I watch the faces move past us in the aisles, going about their shopping: alive: inhaling and exhaling, laughing, speaking and texting. I feel oddly disconnected from the living. It feels strange and surreal that all things are still in motion, when this beloved old friend of my mine is not.

After loading the groceries into the van, I find myself turning left out of the parking lot, instead of right. I am looking for the place where Steve’s body was found. I drive slowly, frozen groceries and all, an obvious aggravation to cars trailing behind me. What I’m looking for is important; what I’m hoping to find, my soul needs. As human beings, physical in nature, when faced with death, with the nonphysical realm, I think we grasp for something that can connect us – that can help us feel less lost from that which we mourn. I think I understand now why a cross at the roadside or flowers on a gravestone, or even a Facebook Memories page, can all be vital for those suffering a loss; it’s part of how we make sense of our grief; how we move on; how we comfort ourselves. It’s how we stay connected with whom it is we love and grieve. We believe they are with us in a new way: admiring the crosses we’ve stood in the ground, smelling our flower bouquets, and reading our words, from whatever mysterious place now holds them. After traveling up and down the street a few times, I realize that with the limited description I have, I won’t be able to find the sacred spot I long for today.

Maybe tomorrow I will find what I'm looking for.

*compliments of J. West

Diary of Grief

Day One: The News

I arrive home from church feeling restless. The three boys and myself have a wide-open Sunday sprawled out before us, with Chad at work until late tonight. I circle the kitchen island like twenty two times: plenty of dishes to be done, pictures to be framed, the usual laundry and vacuuming; heck – there’s an entire garage to be unpacked yet, from our move back in April. But I feel a restlessness I can hardly describe: like the long moment when you’re at the top of Great America’s “The Edge,” waiting for it to drop.

I call Chad at work. He reports he is drawing blood; I report that I am circling the yard, aimless as a chicken. Later, I eat some tuna out on the deck and glance around the yard; consider that my herb garden is missing mint. How did I forget to plant mint? I flip through a cookbook, seeking out a recipe for the friends coming to dinner tomorrow night. I brew some tea, put Henry down for a nap, walk around in some more circles. Then – the phone rings. And just like that, my day is transformed.

In just the two words she utters – Hi Shannon – I can hear in my mother’s voice that something is seriously wrong. What’s wrong, Mom? She sighs heavy: Steve died. Steve was my very first friend on earth. He has been a friend of mine literally since birth; we grew up together, our families like blood relatives to one another. Incredulous and horror-stricken, I ask all the usual questions: how, when, where? – and underneath it all, the silent question of why already lingers. Mom tries to relay the story, but her words get lost in a sob-choked voice. Steve’s body was found a few days ago. He collapsed on the ground, and died instantly, right here in my hometown. I am sick from the inside out.

As soon as I hang up the phone, my heartbeat picks up, racing and pounding. There is an ache in my forearms, an ache that travels down into my fingertips and throbs beneath my fingernails. My chest tightens and twists. Breathing gives way to panting, and rides the edge of a long wave of sorrow and horror, all just waiting to break on the shore with a heavy sob; but it doesn’t. Instead, it builds, rises, and remains there in the depths of me. The restlessness I have felt all day gives way to full blown anxiety. I am lost. In my kitchen, I am lost. For a while, I pace the wood floors beneath me, just panting.

Within twenty minutes of the news, I am crawling through the attic out of raw impulse, trying to unbury the right box of photos – I need to see Steve’s face again: now. It’s been several years since Steve and I have seen each other. I’d kept up on the major news of his life via my mom and his sister: his joys, sorrows, endeavors, recoveries, relapses, loves and losses; he was often on my mind. At the kitchen table, I sit and sort: at the moment it’s all I know how to do. There is a Steve pile and all the rest. With my pile of Steve pictures, ranging from birth to late adolescence, my breathing slows again.

Nestled in a blanket on the couch, I flip through pictures of a friend I literally began my life with. There is a photo that has long been half-magical to me, one of Steve and I sporting typical, infant, layette getups, parallel parked in our infant seats, not too many weeks old. The origins of our friendship will probably always amaze me: back in 1973, two best friends in high school (my mom and Steve’s mom) get pregnant only one month apart from one another. And strong women that they are, they birthed us both at age seventeen and raised us together like brother and sister. In the years to come, our families grew; I gained a brother and Steve gained a sister; and our families did everything together: weekend barbecues, camping, Disneyland, Santa Cruz, Hawaii, Mexico, Easter, Christmas, Fourth of July…It was like having extra siblings. I cherished Steve and his entire family so very much. Though our lives have been farther apart in recent years, nothing ever alters the past: the joyful years spent with one another remain the same and will be with me always – like a gift I’ll hold until my own death.

My six year old comes to the sofa’s edge, What are you looking at, Mommy? I explain the sad story of my friend, Steve, and he says, You must feel very sad, Mommy. I tell him I do feel very, very sad. And bewildered. We were born together; we were supposed to die together; to have similar life spans. The fact that at thirty-six, we are nowhere near done with our lives, and yet Steve is gone, feels all too wrong. That I’m sitting here on my blue sofa, and his body will never again occupy a sofa, haunts me.

I think I am only at the beginning of my grief.

Alive

Well, friends, I spent the week practically dead – having been overtaken by a nightmare-ish stomach flu. Sitting in an upright position for the first time in four days, I take notice of sights and sounds like they’re here for the first time. The blue couch is vivid and shocking – like it dropped out of a blue heaven somewhere while I was sleeping. And the flowers in the vase strike a pose so alive it seems they might spring up at any moment and start dancing the Can-can across the kitchen table, like little orange show girls. My tired eyes follow a moth as it flutters about like it owns the kitchen – so fast, its wings! So slow am I still. In the laptop screen, I can make out a darkened reflection of myself. And, friends, it is some straight-up comedy – as in, God help me if anybody stops by the house right now: they’d be like: Oh, sorry, I was looking for Shannon. Is she home? For starters, the reflection reveals a mass of knotted hair gathered at the top of my head, like a ballet bun gone natural disaster -- like a small hurricane. Then, if we focus on the right side of my reflected head, greasy strands of hair jet right out into space, like skewers, refusing to fall all the way out of the once-upon-a-time-bun. Moving to the left side, an entire section of my fallen hair is matted together as though it were an object, a still life, if you will – like a giant papaya. Add to this that my skin is positively yellow (I saw it for myself in the mirror this morning) and my lips, a pasty, pale lavender sort of hue, and you have a condition none of us wishes to find ourselves in.

I glance down at my attire. I seem to be wearing a long, beige, gown-like shirt, now stretched beyond recognition, layered over some inside out sweat pants that are gathered above my knees. Detecting an odor somewhere, I lift a section of the shirt up to my nose and sniff at it: utterly foul: like I’m rotting. How long I've been wearing this little get-up, I honestly don’t recall – three? Four days? None of it registers. Such is the disorientation of being sick.

Besides being totally miserable, falling ill can be such a perplexing experience. One minute, you’re out feeding your tomato plants and sweeping the magnolia leaves off of the deck, tra-la-la –ing about, feeling all fabulous in your blue jeans, whipping up summertime marinades, enjoying Japanese Maple tree shadows on the back fence, making sweet haiku in your head; and then, there you are – out of nowhere – with your cheek suctioned to the bathroom tile, in this surreal universe of bodily horror, wondering how you will ever get up off the floor – or if; wondering when, how and why you arrived here in the current state of isolated agony.

This time around, having my life abruptly consumed by the flu was slightly more perplexing than usual, being that I was literally vacationing in Las Vegas just hours before it struck. Seriously, can you believe this madness? One minute, I am in Vegas with the love of my life (sans kids) fondue-ing about, dipping my relaxed, healthy body in and out of European pools, sipping Mojitos poolside, chewing sugar cane sticks on lounge chairs beneath an enormous and vividly blue, desert sky, elongating my limbs in the Jacuzzi, sweating out toxins in the spa’s Eucalyptus steam room, savoring the best sushi of my life – only to board the plane back to San Francisco with the first signs of the flu.

It's rather jarring to move from a state of such concentrated pleasure to one of such concentrated pain! By the following morning of the flight home, I was wrapped in ten thousand blankets, shivering to the core, then sweating, then shivering – lost in the maddening ways of a fever. And as if throwing up in my bedroom wastebasket wasn't miserable enough, (I’ll be brief here) it was a flu that felt the need to come out both ends. I was consumed with the worst body aches on God's green earth; body aches so severe it hurt to blink. Every square inch of me was sore to the slightest touch. Poor Chad tried to administer some comfort with a sweet hand to the shoulder, only to be swatted away, as though he were a wasp (sorry, Love). Apparently, when Chad went off to church without me, our kind friends all passed on get well hugs; Chad’s response was: Shannon’s not taking hugs right now. It’s true – I most certainly wasn't. And I would betray the fury of my flu if I failed to mention the barbaric pounding that occurred at the crown of my head each time I attempted to reposition myself even the slightest bit, like, say, to wash down a Vicodin (the pill of mercy) with a few sips of water.

Do you ever get those thoughts when you’re sick, that because the misery is so over the top, you think, this can’t be just a flu; it’s got to be something much more serious — like maybe what you have is Lyme disease, after all? And that really, right now – though nobody knows it – you’re actually dying a slow death right in your own bed? You see headlines: Castro Valley Mother Dies Mysterious Tragic Death: thought she had the flu, but really she had __________ (fill in the blank with the most rare and awful disease you can imagine – or just invent one, like I do).

Part II

The days in Vegas seem as distant as my childhood tricycle now; the memory of pleasure gone, like an elusive rainbow kite lost in the sky – which is not the worst of my concerns. The worst is the part where it’s been seven days and I still feel like a school bus ran over me in the night. Like this is how you might feel when they body-cast you at the hospital. And they might as well – body cast me, that is. Chad went back to work and the only energy I managed to exert all day was swatting a few flies with the kitchen towel – which left me dizzy and breathless. I can’t quite turn my head to the left or right and I find it nearly impossible to climb the stairs in our house, what with my knee and ankle joints collapsing in sword-like spasms. What ever happened to the 24-hour flu?

The lawn-mowing sounds in the neighborhood haunt me: neighbors are out and about, performing the tasks of their lives. The cars cruise down the block, perhaps headed to the farmer’s market; perhaps returning with bouquets of the season’s finest leeks, nesting in the crooks of their arms. The image of leeks conjures longing – the longing to live again; to slice and sauté vegetables; to thrive; to participate in it all! Tonight, my girl friends will be sipping Southern sweet tea, nibbling on fried green tomatoes and hush puppies – all without me. Yep, the world goes on without you when you’re sick. I ache thinking of all of the summertime things I'd like be doing with my kids – like making mosaic garden stones for the vegetable beds; like having more of those fabulous family dance parties, where our living room gets converted into a night club and the five of us are shaking our hips silly to the tune of Boom Boom Pow. I want to swim, hike, barbecue….eat! Hell, I’m even excited to unpack the suitcases, which are still parked in the entry way like fat, lazy cats.

Will I ever get back to the land of the living? The question floats out into the atmosphere and circles back in a strange, figurative dance of the mind. Is this how it feels to age? Is this how the ninety-somethings of the world feel? The terminally ill? All of the laid-up people of the world? Isolated; and removed from the infinite possibilities of life? A wave of compassion washes over me, which makes me feel alive again, if just a little. A small fire lights up in my woebegone heart: and I feel …is it grateful? Yes, grateful to be alive. And as I move beyond the irrational fear that I somehow have Lyme disease or Rheumatoid Arthritis, rather than the flu, for just a moment, I glimpse my life again. I can imagine being back in my blue jeans, my bare feet on the sun-baked cement, removing dead heads from the geraniums, making lemonade with my children. A tiny speck of hope blinks before me, like a firefly in a cave; hope that my health and livelihood will return to me, albeit, at some mysterious appointed time.

Summer evening is falling now; the sun disappears from its usual spot on the sofa. The day feels positively empty, pointless. I did nothing. In a moment of sheer will power, I stand myself up, and feeling eight times my weight, shuffle out to the backyard. The poor Virgin Mary is lying on her side in the flowerbeds. I haven’t the strength to lift her. My eyes wander the length of the herb beds, so lime-green and healthy. I choose randomly, and lean over the lemon verbena plant, rubbing its leaves between my fingers. I inhale the scent. And again – deeply. The tart, intoxicating, fragrance whispers a secret into the summer air: you are alive. It turns out, I did do something today; I survived.

Evening Walk With a Lollipop