The silent unsung test of grief
It’s a media trope, the person persevering in the face of the loss of a loved one. Cooking show contestants say they are honoring their dead grandmother by baking her cheesecake. A grieving spouse writes a book, a bereaved parent starts a foundation.
Look at them, being brave. So brave.
I watched, in the desultory manner of a person who lives with someone who is interested in the Olympics, more sports that I normally do this week. So I read an article in the New York Times about McKenzie Long competing in her first Olympics at 24. Her mother, Tara Elizabeth Jones, died in January of a heart attack.
The article, written by Marcus Thompson II is well written. “Grief is reputed for its sucker punches. A master in the art of unbeknownst, its specialty is sneaking up on the grieving, pouncing on the smallest triggers. A song. A piece of candy. A similar laugh. A certain word or how it’s delivered. A random gesture.”
That’s true, it is an apt description of grief’s lifelong guerrilla tactics, which I know well.
But what makes me tired is the brave. The trope’s separation between the valorous grieving who soldier on and accomplish great things and the weak ones who don’t. The rest of us. Me.
Thompson has this line later in the article.
“Grief can be a consumer of energy, a larcenist of zeal, powerful enough to buckle the strongest. Many people need it to run its course and vacate before resuming their usual excellence. Long, though, is among those who can forge through grief and emerge better than ever. A heavy heart hasn’t slowed her down.”
Long came in 7th yesterday in the women’s 200-meter finals in Paris. I celebrate that, I think it’s wonderful, and I hope that her thoughts and memories of her mother supported her through that heroic effort. I hope she goes on to win lots more medals.
But it’s also ok if she doesn’t. It’s ok to have a heart so heavy it stops you in your tracks. I lost my son RJ, in August of 2005. It was a long time ago. My experience is that some losses never run a course, they never vacate, they don’t end, you just learn to work around it. In my life grief is not a self-improvement project, a “forge” from which I “emerge better than ever.”
You can make the best of what life gives you, learn the lessons grief can offer, take the gift of understanding how valuable it is to have this time with the ones you love. That’s all true. But I’m not better than ever. I’m not burnished, I’m broken.
Broken has gifts. Compassion, forgiveness. When I get cut off by someone driving recklessly and want to get angry I wonder if they just lost someone. When my grandmother was dying I drove from Seattle to Bellingham often, and one time I drove into the car in front of me. I wasn’t on my phone, I wasn’t talking to anyone, I was alone in the car. I was so sad she was dying, so tired of balancing the end of her life and being a single mom of two school age kids and working and driving back and forth that I just drove into the car ahead of me. I have lots of compassion for bad drivers now.
I can relate to people who have lost loved ones with a skill that seems to be useful. Some of them say it helps. And one of the things I say is that you don’t have to be brave. You don’t have to start a foundation, or pass a law. If you can get out of bed most days you’re heroic. If you can take care of your children, show up and do your job, take a shower, do the dishes, eat something, you’re heroic. And that’s enough.
Here’s to the ones who lose a loved one and keep going. They get up with the baby, they try to be kind to the ones left behind, they field all the stupid unhelpful things people say after a death. They go back to work too soon because they need the paycheck, they clean out the closets, take care of the bills and taxes and all the other stuff that can be left behind. It took Comcast five years to change the reset on the password from RJ’s email to mine. It took literally a dozen calls. “RJ has the password reset in his email,” they would say. “RJ is dead,” I would tell them, again, “And I don’t know what his password was. Can’t you just reset it when I tell you the account number, the address, the checking account number from which I pay the bill?” Five years.
A writer who sends out a recommendation email to a very large list of people sent out a note about my story on the Moth last week, the story about RJ’s death. I only knew because some people got in touch on social media. The timing was interesting, just a week or so before the 19th anniversary of RJ’s death. Here’s the link and what the author wrote.
The Moth Presents — Stephanie Peirolo: Walking with RJ. “This is an incredibly moving and brutal 12-minute video. It helps put things in perspective, and it made me reconsider my “stresses” as almost entirely absurd. Perhaps you also need a reset for this weekend? Watch the whole thing to feel it properly.”
I appreciate the promotion, really, and anyone sharing my work anywhere is great – I’m an artist, I want my work to reach a wider audience.
But it also sounds a little bit like “if you need a gratitude boost listen to this brutal story and you’ll be so glad you’re not her.”
I am her. That happened to me. And as one who knows, let me tell you, if you are grieving however you grieve is ok. And if you lost your dad or your child or your wife or your brother in the last five years and you got up this morning and got dressed and fed your dog and went to work you are heroic. And you deserve a medal, in the great silent unsung trial of grieving as life moves on without the ones we loved, leaving us stunned, bereft but still here.