Good Grief

The Soft Pain of Sitting in Difficult Feelings

On the stool next to the kitchen island, I sit with my right foot tucked under my butt. My left leg stretches long towards the floor and my bare tippy toes press down on the hardwood floor to hold me in place. It is an upright version of the fetal position. Absentmindedly, I scroll through the job postings on LinkedIn. Strategy Manager. Operations Consultant. Customer Service Director. If these were profiles on a dating app, I would swipe left, left, left every time. Meanwhile, every so often, I reach my left arm across my chest, tuck my hand underneath my right armpit so I can stretch it around to rub the muscles along my right shoulder blade. This shoulder has been frozen solid for the past two weeks. The constant pain interferes with almost everything I do and demands of me any extra bandwidth I have.

After several more minutes of scrolling, I notice the time in the top left corner of the screen. It is 3pm. This is the time that I used to call Barbara. Every day at 3pm. As that thought crosses my mind, a tear forms in the corner of my eye. To distract myself, I close LinkedIn and open my calendar. Maybe I have something in there that I have to do. But as soon as I look at the wide-open day, it hits me. It is Friday, November 1st. Now the solitary tear multiplies and silently, a river of tears runs down my face.

Exactly one year ago, I took Harley, my little morkie, to the vet for the last time. Despite a cocktail of heavy-duty meds, his collapsing trachea, which I had been treating since he was a puppy, was getting worse and worse. For a full week, several times a night, and many times throughout the day, I watched him struggle to breathe, Each time he had an episode, I had no way of helping him as he gasped for air. When the episodes got worse, it became clear that the next time, he could suffocate. He was suffering. And as much as it broke my heart, I knew it was time for me to let him go. It was the loving thing to do.

Now, a year later, sitting on my stool in the kitchen, time accelerates and slows down all at once. I picture myself in the vets office, feel Harley in my arms, see his cute little face looking up at me, and watch his eyes lose their light as he takes his last breath. It is a full body recall.

The tears flow even harder. Without thinking, I open the Photos app and swipe through picture after picture of Harley. With each one, my chest shakes a little harder and the sniffles get a little louder. Tears drip onto the screen. From my nose, snot starts to run down and over my top lip. I keep going and give myself over to the moment. As more tears stream down, a giant snot globule forms and dangles precariously from my right nostril. I do not bother to grab a tissue or even wipe my face with my hands. The messiness is kind of the point. I revel in it. Then, deep within my chest, from the center of my heart, a pain rises up. It travels through my lungs and into my open throat. There it transforms into an unintelligible exclamation. As soon as it does, my chest heaves and with great force, the sound bursts out of my mouth. AHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Propelled forward by the energy in my scream, I unravel myself and stand up. As soon as I do, I look past the counter, into the sun room, across the full array of potted plants and out the big windows into the backyard. That’s when I notice the cactus at the far left edge of the collection of succulents. It is flowering.

Suddenly something clicks into the place. Monday, October 28th, just five days ago, was the 9th anniversary of my mom’s passing. Even though I have that date marked in my calendar as “Mama’s Todestag,” and even though I got a reminder on my phone on Monday morning, at the time, it only briefly registered in my consciousness. Because I was in an all-day class, I brushed right past it. But now, looking at the giant pink blooms and the new ones waiting to open, my mom’s passing and her absence are very real. The grief is feel is not just about Harley but also about my mom. It is all in this cactus because it cactus is the last tangible connection to my mom.

A few years after my dad died, my mom moved into a condo and this cactus sat in the windowsill of her dining room. Anytime I visited her, whether I was helping her in the kitchen or we sat at the dining table playing a board game, the cactus was a focal point. It demanded attention. After she died unexpectedly nine years ago in 2015, it was one of the first things I brought home with me. And every year, it flowers like this on her birthday in April and on the anniversary of her death in October. Only this year, I did not notice. Not until right now.

And that makes me think of the lavender in my back yard. In the spring of 2018, when I walked into the back yard, I noticed, really noticed, the two flowerbeds that run along the back patio wall. They were completely empty because the previous owners had removed a row of rose bushes from them. When I bought the house, the wife explained to me at the closing that those rose bushes used to be her mom’s rose bushes. That’s when I understood completely.

My mom had several rose bushes in her garden and one of them stood out. For as long as I can remember, every spring and throughout the summer, anytime I went down the stairs from the porch off the kitchen into the backyard, I noticed that rose bush. I watched as the buds emerged, turned into pink petals wound tight, and, when the air warmed up, slowly opened into gorgeous, soft pink blooms. When my mom cut some of them off and put them in a vase on the kitchen table, the bush flowered again as it grew to be at three feet wide and six feet tall. Then in the fall, before the bush went dormant, my mom cut it all the way back, almost to its base. When I asked her why she did that, she said:

“Dieser Rosenbusch brauch einen harten Rueckschnitt, damit er gedeihen kann.” Yes. This rose bush needs a hard pruning so it can thrive. 

“Ah, I see.”

“Naechstes Jahr, kommt er zurueck. Staerker und schoener.” Next year, it will come back. Stronger and more beautiful.

So, as I thought about how to fill those flowerbeds along the patio wall, I considered adding a rose bush as an homage to my mom. But, as a new player in the gardening game, I did not trust myself to start with something as complicated as roses. Instead, I decided to fill the open space with six lavender bushes. Like roses, lavender is sensitive, fragrant and loves the full sun. Unlike roses, lavender requires little maintenance, and it does not respond to hard pruning. Any branch that is cut will not grow back. And even though lavender flowers are smaller and much more subtle than those of roses, they have no less splendor. When I planted those bushes only hours before I flew to Germany to see my then fourteen-year old niece, it felt like a dialogue with my mom. It was me telling her who I am.

In early November warmth, the lavender is blooming again.

But right now, I feel overwhelmed. With my hands pushing down on the counter in front of me, I brace myself. My mouth opens wide and another deep, extended scream barrels out. With it comes a mountain of grief; grief that I have been holding in and pushing down. Some of it is old grief. Grief over the loss of myself. Grief over all the times I gave up on myself. Grief over the loss of safety and security. Grief over the loss of my voice and my willingness to silence it. And grief for still having to grieve all of that when I thought I already had. Grief for the loss of a place to be every day. Grief for the loss of a calendar filled up with meetings. Grief for the loss of a routine that I honed for ten years. And that brings me to the more complicated grief. The grief that I know is coming once I make the last edits and finish the draft of my book. What will I do then? Writing and editing have filled most of my free time for the past two years and kept me focused since my last day at my job. If I am done, how will I fill my time? And will I have anything else creative to say? Already I feel the ache of losing one more thing to change and anticipate the grief that comes with it. That is why, so close to the finish line, I keep putting off doing the last bit of the work I have to do on my book.

Oh, I wish I could call Barbara. If she were still here, she would be the person I could talk to about all of this. Not only would she listen to me, but she would also have a way of pointing me back to what I already know to be true within me. But Barbara is not here. She is gone. I will never hear her voice again. I will never see her face or feel her hugs—never, ever, again. As soon as that thought crosses my mind, my whole body shakes. Then my head drops, and my hair drapes over my wet, snotty face. This is the grief that sits deep inside of me. This is the grief I really do not want to feel. Not because it hurts. No, because if I feel it, really feel it, I will also let it go. If I let it go, I will be able to move on. But I if I move on, I will lose my connection to Barbara. That is not a loss I think I can take. So, I would rather hold onto this pain and keep it locked in. This is the winter of the heart.

But then I think of the lavender. Because it is unseasonably warm, the bushes just outside the windows are blooming again. Purple was Barbara’s favorite color and lavender was her favorite scent. More tears cascade down my face.

What if I allow myself to feel this mountain of grief and let it melt my heart? If I do, then there will be nothing keeping me from stepping into all that is ahead of me. Oh, right. I would rather suffer the hard yet familiar pain in this frozen shoulder than release the joy buried beneath it and fully embrace the unknown. I would rather hold myself captive than release the grief and become the person I was made to be not the person I think I am supposed to be.

I shift my eyes back to my mom’s cactus. The afternoon sun streams in behind it and bounces off the little disco balls inside of a square vase right beside the cactus. Now the floor, wall and ceiling are covered in small, shimmering reflections of light.

That’s when I hear myself say, out loud:

“Danke Mama. Ich liebe dich auch.” Thank you Mama. I love you too.

With that, I go into the bathroom next to the kitchen, wash my face, and blow my nose. Then I walk into my studio, pull out the enormous 3’x5’ Post-It notes I have stashed in the corner, rip off a sheet, and hang it up on the wall. With a Sharpie and a stack of smaller Post-It notes in hand, I stand in front of the blank canvas and begin to paint with my words—again.

Memories are stored in the heart, not the mind. That’s why a connection forged in love will never be broken and the love will never run out.