Diary of Grief: Notes from Week Two

Today, grief meant polishing off a one pound bag of peanut M&Ms, while driving in the minivan. I just kept reaching for more, with a robotic compulsion, that could, in retrospect, almost be considered comical: because I think I looked like a rodent shoving nuts into its cheeks, real fast-like. Anyhow, I got lost trying to find Wolf Camera, which I’ve been to a zillion times. The brain, on grief, doesn’t function as it should. I felt almost desperate in my mission, which was to scan photos of Steve for his family before leaving for Palm Springs tomorrow. I feel desperate to do anything for them. Anyhow, I drove like twelve miles in the wrong direction, and had to double back, the whole while reaching for more M&Ms. I think it was a message to grief, inhaling all that candy: stay the hell away from me today. I’m tired. After fourteen days, I’m tired of grieving.

It didn’t much work – eating all those M&Ms. I think they just got piled up on top of the grief. Not to mention, when I finally arrived to Wolf Camera, I feared I might vomit onto the scanner bed. But the man who helped me in Wolf was an angel with a gold front tooth and a Romanian accent. I’m sure glad these people exist: the-nice-just-because-they-want-to-be-nice sorts – and right when you need them. Right when you feel like you might come unglued and spill your insides out in every direction if someone so much as speaks to you in the wrong octave. Right when you’ve been lost for miles and might barf up a bag of M&Ms – that’s when you need the kind souls of the world around. You need that sort of grace in a time like this – extra kindness and goodness and love.

Speaking of grace – and kindness and goodness and love, friends of mine watched my three boys for three hours so I could go to Wolf without the entourage and so I could finish writing my speech for Steve’s memorial service -- which I also needed to accomplish before leaving for Palm Springs. When the family first asked me to speak, all I could think about was how I was going to sob through the whole thing, like hyperventilating and convulsing and the whole nine yards. But so far, just writing the words down has been the hard part. Hard because I got stuck in sadness, writing about dear old Steve. It took me all week, but I think today, in those hours of blessed solitude, I finally finished. And afterward, when I went to collect the boys, the same kind friends served up some homemade mac and cheese, which I found exceedingly comforting.

And tonight, we came home to the yawning, empty suitcases that needed yet to be filled with a week’s worth of wardrobe. And then there was the business of what the hell do you wear to a funeral? Do people still wear black? Is that passé? Is it required? Do I have anything black? So I googled what to wear to a funeral and the advice was all over the place, like, make sure not to show any cleavage and wear the deceased one’s favorite color. Utterly confused and too exhausted to make a sound decision, I called my friend, D, because the last thing I want to worry about when we drive in from Palm Springs the night before the funeral is what I’m going to wear. So D came over at nine o’clock at night (more kindness and goodness and love) and told me exactly which dresses in my closet were appropriate; she’s good at this sort of thing. Then, she looked me right in the eye and asked, “Which dress would Steve have liked?” And I knew immediately he would have like the plum dress, so I’m wearing that one.

It feels odd to be going on vacation, right in the middle of all this grief. I would not have planned it this way. But you don’t plan death; and least of all a death like Steve’s. So I'm heading out in the morning, with my family, and I think the trip will just become part of the journey: the arduous journey across the foreign landscape of loss.