I used to feel that I spent an inordinate amount of time writing about grief. Particularly during the writing of Field Guide, I resisted giving the proper weight to the aunt’s death, because I didn’t want to. I kept thinking about my mother’s comment, “Why do the mother figures in your stories always die?”
But, the truth is, I also spend a lot of time writing about joy. About love. About desire.
Yesterday was hard. It was hard enough that I called my father, and poured my grief into him. And he talked with me, and told me a poem, and said, “The simple things always before the complex. A walk outside. A psalm.” And then he asked if he could do anything for me. And minutes later he arrived to take us for dinner and a walk and ice cream and the park and basketball and he was right. The simple things before the complex. Family. This is all I have ever wanted, and what I struggle with most. Family. A partnership without abandonment.
You see how the grief sneaks in. Abandonment.
And so I will tell you about my love. About the fidelity of it. Last night, Gavin and I were shooting baskets. “You have H,” I told him, when he missed a shot.
“No, we’re playing animal basketball.”
“What kind is that?” I asked.
“It’s like this,” he said. “When you miss a shot, you get an animal. I have iguana.”
It is simple, really. That’s what I miss the most since my mother died. After, my family relationships became strained and complicated. But is easier to enjoy them than it has been to be at odds. Much easier to love them than not.
Resentment and anger and grief are such strong things. They seem to take much more energy than pleasure, and fun, and love. They use me up. I disappear.
It is a disappearance, isn’t it? And later, when you remember yourself, you wonder how long you’ve been away.
What I have been wondering is, what is it in us that makes loss so very painful? I used to think it was selfish, a reflex of the ego; but it’s so much more primative. Mindless. Like a hunger for everything.
And so my favorite soothing mantra is “When in doubt, do the next small thing.” That’s like your father’s wisdom. Because it is simple. Breathe, sweat, talk, eat ice cream. Repeat.
A hunger for everything. God, that’s so perfect. A hunger for the best of what is now lost, and all that will never be as well. An ache for the everyday.
During my divorce, a buddy wrote:
CHOP WOOD
CARRY WATER
with a sharpie. I kept it on my fridge for years. It is still one of the most consoling thoughts I have.
abandonment… that’s always my biggest fear. Grief is a whole new odd emotion to me… I think your father and the other comments speak truth though, keep going, keep the routine, you and I will find our way back to ourselves eventually.
I’m so jealous of you for having a good dad. The thought of my dad doing any of those things–asking how I am, *listening*, doing something for me–such foreign concepts. I always like to know that someone, somewhere, has it better.
Saturday morning at yoga, the instructor said, “You don’t have to give up to let go.” I was ready to hear him.
Kronda, as a minister, my father is sometimes a hard man to come to with my confessions, but I am never sorry when I do.
I’m with Gavin. You miss something or someone, you get something. An iguana, a sweet evening with your dad. Maybe the draw to grief, the obsession with the hole, is an invitation to create a space for something else.
G–you are a beauty.