Selfish Grief
i’ve always tried to convince others (and myself) that i bounce along to the beat of a different dj and far too many times, it turns out, i’m just another pumpkin-spiced nobody with a side part and skinny jeans.
but this grief stuff?
it’s nothing like they say it’s going to be. or maybe it is and i’m just wishing my grief was special and unique.
unique grief. sounds funny, doesn’t it? sort of just rolls off the tongue.
i looked it up a couple weeks ago to make sure i was the rarest rose of brokenhearted daughters, just like i thought i was, and found the stages of grief described as:
shock/denial
pain/guilt
anger
depression
upward turn
i mean, the list goes on for what seems like forever, but that sums it up nicely.
except, my heart must have gotten a different pamphlet because i’m not really following that narrative.
when my dad called and told me she was gone, just around 2 p.m. on June 16th, i immediately entered into what i call “bellyache grief.”
the bottom of my stomach dropped onto my knockoff birkenstocks and stayed there for about 10 days. i wasn’t in denial. i knew she was gone…this was somewhat of a foregone conclusion for nearly two decades and one she spoke with alarming clarity and acceptance about death at times. (other times she was dylan thomas, promising to “rage against the dying of the light”). eating made my stomach hurt. listening to bonnie raitt and thinking of her made my stomach hurt. finding postcards she’d sent the kids made my stomach hurt.
it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt.
i was relieved when that stage ended, i’m not sure what made me turn the corner, my love of food maybe? or the fact that life must go on around here and dinners must be served and reality must be faced eventually. all i know was that it did and somehow my stomach climbed back up into my body just in time for me to turn into a real asshole for no reason.
bellyache grief had morphed into what i dubbed frustration grief. (i kinda wanted to call this the “butthole grief” stage because that’s how i’ve been acting .. but, yeah…too many connotations and the real spice in the word butthole kinda lessens each time you say it. it goes from funny to annoying to just plain gross real, real fast).
suddenly, the slightest inconvenience in my daily life had my teeth grinding my jawbone to dust and my claws unsheathed. grocery lines, bills, empty water bottles…they were all incredibly inconvenient reminders that life was fleeting and my mother was dead and what the hell did any of this matter anyway if the people we love suffer and die and this is why we can’t have nice things!
i’m sure you could liken it to anger, but that’s not what i felt. it’s like the entire charade of being human and getting out of bed was just an incredible inconvenience and, like, how dare the rest of humanity expect me to get up, put on shitty pants and half-ass adult my way through my days anyway? losers.
lucky for me, that stage didn’t last long.
stage three has turned out to be a doozy, though, and i hope it doesn’t have long-term plans on residing in my personality.
i recently tumbled face first into what i like to call “selfish grief.”
listen, this is my mother and i want zero opinions on anything to do with her. now, or ever. i don’t want to hear your memories, because they may mingle with mine and contaminate them. i don’t want to talk about her with you and possibly share something that was just meant for the two of us because our inside jokes would no longer be inside and who the hell cares about outside jokes once the secrecy has been spoiled?
i don’t want to hear your memories of her because i wasn’t there for that, and didn’t you hear me the first time? that is my mother.
at my worst, i am a product of being raised like an only child. i never had to share much and i think maybe it’s making this healing thing hard when you have a mom with a presence and love of life and people the magnitude that my mother had. people loved her and now that she’s gone, it seems like the only memories they have are these giant, asteroid-sized stories of hilarity and high stakes and calamity and i just don’t care.
i don’t want to hear them. i don’t want to answer the phone and say i’m okay. i want to take all these precious post cards and artworks and memories and hoard them away from everyone else so that i know they’re safe and i’ll never forget them.
or her.
and that’s the crux of it, this selfish grief of mine.
at the end of the day, the further we march from her last day on earth, the more scared i am that i’ll forget the sound of her amazing, loud, boisterous laugh or forget that time we got shitfaced in college station and i had to wake her naked ass up from the bathroom floor so she could get to work in an hour.
i know it doesn’t work like that, but i’m learning (and countless loved ones have reminded me) that grief is a funny thing and makes us feel things that might not be real.
so, be patient with me. i’ll answer the phone eventually and when i do, you better be ready to trade deb stories. i’m going to make sure none of them are lost to the ages if i have any say in it.