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.