A word or two about grief

I keep thinking, This is the last one.

Enough of this. This topic.

Let it go.

I keep thinking I’ll move on or away from it, at least in my writing.

But then, when will it move on from me?

When will it feel normal again?

Ever?

These words, I write from a hotel patio in Marina del Rey. The hotel is horrific but this patio looks out to a spot of importance: Mother’s Beach. This is one of the places where Mom would rent kayaks or canoes and slip off into that water, rowing away. She would have a smile on her face. She would be thinking, This is life. I know it.

Right now there is a smoothness to the water, rather than the ripples she would make. Right now in the water I see the twinkling reflection of the harbor lights as dusk begins to settle, and far away, I can make out the twinkling dots of planes in the air lining up to come into LAX, like a constellation of stars lowering down from the sky. And I think about how she would love this. And I breathe the air she would also breathe and remember how often here she would say, “Oh, this air.”

My existence now, it’s marked by her and the absence of her. When will this cease? Will I ever be more of myself again? Or does the absence of someone you love become a bigger part of your being, hereafter? I’m beginning to wonder. Maybe grief dims the light just a little, just forever. Or maybe it’s just a phase.

I don’t know.

~

Sand is symbolic. There, but shifting. Never exactly what it was yesterday. The prints left within, then erased. Evidence of existence, then ripples indistinguishable. I’ve stared at that sand a lot today, watching the joggers leaving their marks both here and back on the ocean’s shoreline. And the dogs. I keep looking at the dogs. The dogs really get it. They always live in the This. This moment. This life. They get on that sand, they get near the water, they’re given a ball — and they’re simply possessed. They almost can’t control themselves. They cannot think of a thing besides this. How lovely is this.

My mom was a bit like that, at least more so than me. She would come to the Marina and then write a poem about it, about how heavenly it is, was. She would write the word Boats! in her calendar to mark the days she would come here, then breathe in and go, “This air.” I would live here, breathing the air, and not think enough about it.

I look around. I see all that we used to see and experience here together, and think: I should be so glad we had those times. But instead what I really think is: what I would give for one more.

One more walk to the ocean, one more time at the Chart House, where she would order two mud pies, not one, and enjoy it so much that she would look left, look right to see if anyone was looking, and then lick the plate. One more time at the boat rental, where she would set off with that smile across her face, even if she was going out alone. One more time watching a plane descending down with her, or sailing steadily up into the air, over the Pacific.

One more boat. One more film. One more laugh.

~

I’m reading Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. She goes back in time on occasion, with her journalist eye, to see what they wrote of grief long ago. This graph, from 1922, resonates:

Persons under the shock of genuine affliction are not only upset mentally but are all unbalanced physically. No matter how calm and controlled they seemingly may be, no one can under such circumstances be normal. Their disturbed circulation makes them cold, their distress makes them unstrung, sleepless. Persons they normally like, they often turn from. No one should ever be forced upon those in grief, and all over-emotional people, no matter how near or dear, should be barred absolutely. Although the knowledge that their friends love them and sorrow for them is a great solace, the nearest afflicted must be protected from any one or anything which is likely to overstrain nerves already at the threatening point, and none have the right to feel hurt if they are told they can neither be of use or be received. At such a time, to some people companionship is a comfort, others shrink from their dearest friends.

Emily Post, in 1922, had it right.

One hundred and one years after she wrote that, here I am, and I have shrunken from companionship. I want to be left alone, mostly. I don’t want to talk about it, mostly. Yet I do sit here now, in this place where once we were happy, and I look out to where there are no more of her ripples there in the water or in the sand. And I’m writing about it.

So I don’t know. Maybe I do want to talk about it. But in my own way.

~

I wish I were more like her. Or more like the dog.

Just breathing the air, and feeling the sand underfoot or underpaw, and just going, This!

I simply didn’t realize how good this was.

~

Instead I’ve been thinking: she would love this. She would order three of those dishes at Mercedes — because we’re here, and it’s that good, and you just never know. And because why not. She would jump into that water, and play. She would stop right here, and look up at the palms, and just be in awe.

My mother was so in awe of this earth, this life. I am too, but not like her. In the way that she was just so present, inside of every moment. Me, on the other hand, like now, I feel like I’m almost watching myself, and the others, within the moment, this place. Observing. Rather than just being here.

Mom was here. She was really, truly here.

And I miss this. I miss getting to see this. I miss being around it, and making her laugh, and treating her to those Marina days, and telling her it’s OK, yes Mom, just do it, just lick the plate, I won’t judge (even though I judged — but she was the one who was right: fuck it, if it’s this good, then lick the plate.).

Mom was glorious, and I miss that glory. That fun. I miss being around it, or being able to press those digits and find her voice there on the other end of the line. I miss simply knowing she’s there somewhere, my anchor, my reminder.

~

What is grief?

Grief is many things. But for me, among those things, it’s been this:

It’s staring a lot, but not moving. Not remembering why you’re staring. Or why you came to the spot where you’re standing.

It’s not being able to find the bag of coffee you just bought, and then finding it, inexplicably, in the trash can. Somehow, in the fog, you’d simply tossed it there.

Grief is not remembering what you said to whom.

Grief is that woman at the copy place, who was asked a simple question that she couldn’t answer, and after a pause she said, “I’m sorry, my husband just died, and I’m just trying to remember how to open a door.”

Grief is just that: it’s trying to remember how to open a door.

When that happened, when I heard her say that there next to me, I looked over and understood her. Later, I told her so, told her I was there copying and sending off some paperwork because my mom had just passed away, and she said, “It’s really hard. I wish you luck.” And I said the same. It’s all we needed to say. The look we exchanged said more.

Grief. We expect it. Know it’s coming. We think we know how it might be. We see it in movies, read it in books. Hear the stories. See it from afar, and imagine.

Then it happens, in a certain kind of way, or with a certain person, and it completely disorients. It unmoors you entirely.

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. — This, from Didion.

All the time I’m trying to make some light out of it. Trying to worm my way through the muck of it. But it’s really hard. And it is definitely weird.

Grief is definitely weird.

~

I paused this writing just now, took a break to return to the ocean, to go and try to see the sunset. Because she would have. I arrived too late to catch the actual sun dipping into the sea, as it does. But the light still left, it was beautiful. And it made the palms really stand out there in the darkening blue orange light. Like dancers. Like celebrities — as she wrote. She would have loved them. She did love them. She would have snapped a photo of them, too, if she had her camera. She might have written about them also. Again.

~

Maybe this is the last one. Is there a point in putting all this down, writing it down? Snapping that photo?

What is the point of putting any of this down, and what is the point of sharing it? What was the point of Mom painting a painting, or adding another line to her poem about the Marina?

I just don’t know.

Grief really is not knowing.

Maybe the point is just to see what you think. Or feel. On paper or canvas. Or maybe I set this down, what I think, what I feel, with maybe some of the same idea she may have had when she set her brush to the canvas or pen to the paper: that maybe what I think here, or feel or see here, maybe someone somewhere, someday, will see it and see something in it they recognize.

Grief is wondering.

And grief was turning the other way then, from the end of the pier, and walking back towards this hotel, and looking south to see more of those planes coming in for a landing, that dipping constellation, and then seeing that other twinkling light there to the right, the light of a plane going up, up to somewhere else. And imagining.

Grief is these arrivals and these departures and all of the curious spaces in between.