“I think grieving people are conscious of the sell-by date of their own misery.”
I don’t remember who said that - maybe Donald Hall, former poet laureate of the US, and author of many books, poems and one spectacular grief.
After her dad died, Mom said she spent a whole month in Utah. She said she was homesick but didn’t realize it until she got near home, because she was having so much fun, and made a lot of new friends among the community those distant relatives welcomed her into. It was a nice adventure, she said. How kind these cousins were, knowing her heartbreak. I have no doubt the idea for the visit was planted at the wake, where mom, only eight, stood next to her daddy’s coffin, wondering why he didn’t get up. “No one really explained to me what death was,” she said. “So I just stood as close to him as I could get. I was always a daddy’s girl.”
Daddy has been gone nine months now - a gestation period of sorts; in this period I have become accustomed to the shock of remembering he is gone. I was a daddy’s girl when I was little, but as I grew older and moved further away, with the bad years between us, Karen took that place in my dad’s heart. Her grief is still a raw thing, an animal sleeping in a cage, not ready to be soothed.
I find myself thinking of daddy when he was at the age I am now. He didn’t seem old to me, he was always a hale and hearty type, a house project to finish, a new one started, a neighbor or relative to help install a new electrical panel, renovate the kitchen, build some bookshelves. As his own house became complete in the arena of needs met, he was everyone’s handyman.
How do you feel at sixy, dad, I asked him, and he replied “Well, it’s better than the alternative.” I’m afraid I wasn’t very empathetic to this answer - we are a family of teasers, even to the point of tears at which point the hurt party will be told by the teasing party to stop being so sensitive.
Are you talking about death, I asked dad, incredulous. Are you saying being sixty is better than being dead? Dad looked abashed but didn’t say anything, perhaps realizing that by his own edict in our family you are not allowed to be depressive or pessimistic - you are expected to look at the bright side, to stiffen your upper lip and face life’s challenges as best you can, without complaint. Complainers were lumped in the same category as liars and malingerers. I’ll give you something to complain about, was a common threat of my childhood, and never needed to be repeated.
You could always sleep in a coffin at night, so you can see if you are right, I suggested. Now this is maybe not as terrible a thing to say as it seems at first blush - I write horror, and have often thought it would be interesting to try the experiment of sleeping in a coffin like a vampire. Still this is no excuse for me saying that. I knew as well as Dad that at sixty he was the oldest living male in his family for some generations - both his father and brother died in their fifties, and I think deep down dad was morosely certain his own days were numbered. Perhaps that particular anxiety departed as he lived past his 70s and well into his 80s. He was a healthy old man and would have lasted longer than 87 if not for the dementia. The day before he died, he made his usual visit to the gym in their little farm community, using the rowing machine for thirty minutes.
He really goes at it, mom said. Younger men always come up to talk to him when he’s finished. They are always surprised to hear how old he is. They tell him, You give me hope. Mom went back to the gym a couple of months after dad died, and said that almost immediately one of those young men asked after dad. He’s gone, mom said. The day after you last saw him. She was surprised at his shock, but I’m not. To that gym rat, dad’s death came quickly - one day he was in the gym rowing away, enjoying his moderate fame among the locals, the next he was gone.
In fact dad’s death came to him slowly, in increments that left him visibly diminished, giving all of us a clear heads up what was about to happen. It was as if the grim reaper with his robe and scythe took up residence on the overstuffed sofa in their beige suburban living room, nodding at us as we passed, sitting silent sentinel at night in the ticking silence of the darkened house, perhaps lifting a hand when dad, unable to sleep, shuffled past on his way to the kitchen for a snack. Despite that presence, we hoped for a caesura in the progression of dad’s disease - I guess everyone hopes for that. You stated that plainly enough.
I drew an unlucky card, you said of your rare incurable form of colorectal cancer, diagnosed at Stage 4. At the time of diagnosis they gave you less than three short months, but with radical experimental treatments you lasted another eighteen before finding yourself on the downward slope, as you put it (how that sentence tolled against my heart). I’m hoping to maybe squeeze five more years, you said, but the slope was short and steep, and less than two months after that conversation you were, unbelievably, gone. It makes me feel disloyal, that I grieve so much harder for you than daddy. I don’t know why I feel guilty about that, anymore than I know why I carry this grief like a baby I found, unable to put it down, unable to stop tending to it.
Moving to Portugal maybe didn’t help with the grieving process so much as interrupted it. Like a loyal pet that was accidentally left behind that travels thousands of miles to find its owner in a new home, my move across the Atlantic created a caesura in my grief, but not an end to it. The complications and stressors of daily life - renovating the buildings, trimming the trees, planting the gardens, learning the language, meeting the neighbors, navigating the bureaucracy of our residency - have kept grief mostly at bay.
It is in my happy and relaxed moments that it finds me again, surprising me with its sudden appearance. Walking Jake in the park the other day, I sang aloud as I often do when I am certain I will not be overheard. It was a song from your expansive playlist; I tell people who didn’t know you that you listened to music like other people scroll social media. Moments before, I had been taking pictures of tiny flowers and laughing at Jake rolling in the clover and dunking his head in the creek that flowed through the center of the park. Mid-song, my voice cracked and I was sobbing. Jake came running and I had to reassure him. Tears and toast, as my husband says - Jake never fails to materialize by my side at the sound or scent of either.
Grief is such a strange thing. Why was I suddenly swamped with sadness when I had been walking along without a thought or care in the world? I think it was just life, and happiness itself - the sudden understanding, zooming out of nowhere that the way the morning light lay on the flowers, the beckoning of the trail are not just things denied you, but will be denied me one day too. In the act of living in the beauty of the present, maybe a fault line opens in the heart, a grief not just for those past, but for a future that someday will not contain me.
As we approach the third anniversary of your death, I find I can now mention your name without a tremble in my voice - there was a time even saying the word “ex” made me cry. It is a relief to no longer be surrounded by constant reminders of you, as I was in San Francisco, a city we moved to and discovered together.
Now the only thing that reminds me of you is memory, itself. Being blessed with a good one, I suppose my thoughts will always turn a corner in my mind and find grief, like a cat I forgot I owned, ready to pounce. It is comforting, in a strange way.
As they say here (I don’t have the proper accents for the letter e) ate logo - see you soon.
grief, so like a cat
whether creeping or pouncing
I’m always surprised