12 December 2015
During the last 10 years or so of my mother’s life, I was living on the opposite side of the world from her. We wrote letters to each other, and we talked on the phone. Sometimes she would fill half an hour with rambling stories I’d already heard twice before, sometimes it was small town news. The point is that although we still felt close, our relationship had become auditory and verbal, not tactile or visual. Since her death in 2009, she has taken on many of the philosophical qualities of Schrodinger’s cat – I can’t see her, but then, I didn’t see her much before either. Our relationship is still non-visual, so it is sometimes hard to realise that she is not sharing the same earth with me anymore. But I can hear her. When I am making polenta (closest thing to grits I can find) and I start to stir in that extra spoonful of butter, I can hear her say “We know what’s good, don’t we, baby”. Her voice is as clear as it would be if she were standing behind me, urging me to use more butter. Sometimes it catches me off guard and I cry. Not a sweet little tear running down the cheek, more like a sneeze – it is automatic, sudden, unthinking grief.
And that’s how grief is. For a little while, it is a constant companion. Then it eases. Then it comes back with a vengeance. Then it eases. Even as I think it is gone, it lurks. It is no further away than my ability to recall – sometimes accidentally.
In my current situation, I wonder sometimes what it is I’m grieving, but I’ve come to realise that it isn’t one thing, it is a multiplicity. It is the same with the loss of anything – we grieve for the loss itself, we grieve for the future, we grieve for the empty space inside. We grieve in every possible tense – past, present and future. Is it any wonder that it goes on for so long? Is it any wonder that it lurks?
I arrived at work last week in a fine mood. My morning had gone well. Traffic was okay, and Steve and I had good car conversation during the commute. Nice. I was in the car in the basement carpark, and Steve was getting my chair. I happened to look up just in time to see a colleague running for the lift, and I burst into tears. I can’t run for the lift. I will never run for the lift. One day, I won’t remember what it felt like to run for the lift. I won’t remember the pound of my feet. I won’t remember the flex of my thighs or the tightness of my calves.
But we are constantly adapting, Steve and I. There are question marks over so many things that I might be able to do again, albeit in a changed form. So my grief is tempered with possibility and by our desire to be more and do more. Possibility helps me keep going, helps me keep trying. Possibility fills the hole a little bit. I don’t know how long I’ll grieve about this. Maybe forever, but maybe less sharply with time.
oh Claudia. This post resonates. First, my mom is visiting for the holidays. And this week she made shrimp and grits. And she must have put two sticks of butter in the grits. And bacon. And cheese. Delicious. I am sure I’ll hear her advice always: You can’t go wrong with butter. Second, in my own moment of deep grief, i had someone say something that has stuck: “don’t let anyone tell you that time will make it all better, it just makes it different.” And i guess for me that has turned out to be true. It doesn’t go away, it doesn’t “heal”– it’s just different. And different is not necessarily better, but it’s, well, different. In good, bad and unknowable ways.
Love the blog and hearing more about how things are going. We miss and love you both!
‘you can’t go wrong with butter’ – sage advice. also, i might need your mom’s recipe đŸ™‚
When you and Steve were going through a hard time several years ago, I thought about you a lot – probably more than was reflected in communication – but I imagined you most every day for months trying to get through it. I remember that you took a holiday together to have a break from the world and how wonderful that sounded to me at the time; just you two keeping it together. I know a little more about what that feels like now and even though the tragedy of it sucks, the getting through it part is a gift.
One of the things that interests me about grief is how awkward most people find it (and I would include myself in there at times), and I wonder why it is that in the most important times of our lives we are so isolated just out of sheer ignorance about how to be in that moment with someone. I think we are so removed from suffering on a daily basis that we have no idea how to cope when it happens to us or to someone close. I don’t know what the solution is, but I feel that people are missing out on something with that lack of capability – I think people would be better off (we’d be better humans?) with some knowledge or understanding about suffering.