She, Grief

My English professor asked us to pick a noun and to write what it smelled, felt, tasted, sounded, and looked like using one word, and then she asked us to write a personal essay. I chose grief (not that anyone chooses grief as a rule). Today is my mother's 70th birthday, I wrote this last week.

Source: ebay

My phone vibrated and somehow over a dead sleep I heard it. The caller ID said "Claresholm General" and without being conscious of it, I think I knew. My first instinct was to be accommodating; "I must make it easier for whoever is calling, I'm chill I'm fine I'm good." So I picked up, and this woman identified herself (I don't remember her name) and she said my mother was dead (she said "I'm sorry for your loss") and then my ears were ringing and I asked her to repeat herself and she did and I asked her if she'd called my sister and she said no and I asked her not to because somehow, as the eldest, that was my job. It was my job to tell my sister that our mother, my baby sister's best friend, died by surprise 15 minutes ago and we have to go to Claresholm now. It was 3:42 a.m. Who is themselves at 3:42 a.m.?

So I called my sister who lived next door, and unfortunately, when I call someone and they answer the phone, I always say "hey, how's it going?" It's 3:42 a.m. How could it be going? Who gets a good call at 3:42 a.m.? She, very confusedly, said "I'm fine, how are you?" and then I had to figure out how to tell my sister that our mother was dead now and we had to drive to Claresholm to grab whatever goodbye we could. My instinct is always to protect her. I had to see through the tracers and hear past the ringing to make sure she was okay, that she was safe, that this pain couldn't get to her and shred her like it shred me. For weeks nothing had a taste that wasn't pennies. Nothing felt real. Everything was microfibre against dry fingertips, catching in a way that makes your guts hurt. And in the deepest pain, when I felt like a raw nerve and I had the kind of anxiety you get when you smell your teeth burning while getting a filling at the dentist, where you have to trust the process lest you do more damage, even though you're sure the process might kill you and you swear you'll never love anything this much again in order to avoid the loss, even in that pain, as the elder sister you have to be the umbrella to protect the younger from the deluge of rage and desperation that comes with losing half your family in six months, almost to the day.

And through all of this, you are somehow expected to cope on your own and it feels impossible. It's not impossible, and I can say that from two and a half years on, seven days out from what would have been her 70th birthday, it's possible to lose your mom right after you lose your dad and to be okay, as long as your baby sister is okay too, because grief is a bright, cold light that will burn and desiccate while it feeds and nourishes. Grief is exactly one tablespoon of peanut butter spread over one day, then exactly one tablespoon of peanut butter spread over two days, then suddenly exactly one tablespoon of peanut butter spread over two years plus five months plus seven days.

This grief, though? This grief closed chapters I didn’t know were waiting for closure. It fixed fences I didn’t know had been broken. It clarified so much in its starkness. When you feel like you could explode like phosphorous but shrink like virgin wool and if you screamed loud enough the sound barrier would have nothing on you, Grief (yes, capital G) comes to you and says “I understand and I’ll make sense someday but you have to feel me to grow, and you don’t have to harden but you will have to change because I am evidence of connection. I am evidence of unexpressed love. I am what is left behind when someone matters.”

So I try to hold the love above the pain, the memory over the missing piece. I try to remember the scent of vanilla and the sound of music and how big the sky looks in the summer. I try to feel love in the softness of my cat’s fur against my face, and I think about the taste of the first ripe raspberry pulled from a bush in the backyard and I let grief push me to strap in because it’s just me now, me and my baby sister whose best friend died by surprise, and we’re all that’s left. I let grief show me that She is natural and that She’s not here to help per se, but She’s here for good and also forever.