when the worst thing actually happens

do you remember that day?

After our first week in a grief writing group (yes, I lead some and take some too!) one of the lines that made it to my page was....

I am 27 turning 60.

I started to think about our homework, and these words came pouring out of me in a notebook while I was on a plane flying to my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday. An age that neither my mother nor her mother ever reached.

This feels likes it was written from inside the body and brain of the 4th grader who experienced her folks divorce and the sixth grader, who experienced the death of her Mom’s Mom, that would inform the death of her own.

I was thinking about the grief that informs our grief and grieving experiences.

Would you be willing to share yours in the comments?

There are some families that talk about it. Some clients tell me it was a tv show or movie that informed theirs. Past generations have been stoic. They performed strength over vulnerability. If we don’t talk about it, we simply learn not to talk about it. What informed your grief?

Here is a peek inside my own…sharing in hopes that you might share yours too.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Here’s the thing. At 27 I am not thinking about grief. At all. The only grief I know is from 4th grade. That fateful Thursday night that my parents told me they were separating. I know it was a Thursday because they called me off the front stoop of 26 Wallace Road, while I was studying.

“We have something to tell you”.

We were never a family meeting, family, so I knew this was not good news. I was outside memorizing my spelling words for the weekly Friday words quiz.

“We both love you very much, but we have decided we are better friends than partners.” I remember thinking, I should not cry, that it would make them both sad. Dad would live near his office in the city. He was looking at apartments where we could come visit. For now, he would come to NJ on weekends to see us and hang out. Something else about us taking a bus in from the Garden State Arts Center. In that moment, my body went kind of numb. Flat. I floated above the bedroom and looked down at a family no longer mine. In that moment I also thought, I could probably save them, if I just got 100 on my test. They would be SO proud together. No problems to speak of. All would be well. That night, Danna slept in my room. I think now maybe Mom slept in my sister’s room and Dad alone.

When we had to move to a smaller house, Mom got the little room with a queen and the big one fit our twins with the Heller rainbow sheets. We never talked much about the divorce or the move, but rather just landed in a new configuration and forced acceptance.

There was something born though in that moment. Independance? Fortitude and perfectionism? A thick skin? Some called it “so jersey girl” and others my Scorpio superpower. Dad always used to say, “you worry about worrying.” I mean when the worst thing in the world happens to you at 10 years old, there is a whole lot of worrying about what could go very wrong next. Right?

When Grandma moved to The Shadowbrook Apartments nearby, well that seemed like such good news. Now what was once a one-hour drive to Clifton up the Parkway, was a quick and careful bike ride along Hubbard Avenue. A “main drag” as Mom called it, but a straight shot to hers from ours.

She talked me through each of her well-traveled treasures. Finding new spots for admiring in her condo. We sat crisscross legs on her quilty bedspread to go through her jewelry box. She loved to tell me about all of her charms. “This one from a dance contest I won….” She would jangle them and tell stories about her before days. She always wore a chic housecoat inside like a movie star, with an a-line and zip up front with her coral Estee Lauder lipstick. The kind in the gold ribbed case. I know because I would always try a little in her bathroom. I ran the Sally Hanson Hard-As-Nails over my own, too. I now think that alone was a metaphor for the tough women in our family line. Grandma always smelled like Nivea. Her soft hands, and red oval nails, always creamed.

She had owned an employment agency where she used her stage name, Mona Conrad. She said it was because Grandpa did not want the guys to think she had to work. I think it was because she missed being an actress. After Grandpa died, she ran his trucking company. The kind that shipped those, ten-for-a-dollar tapes and albums. She made herself a stack of notepads for her desk that read, “Mother Trucker”. I was old enough to get it, and remember thinking how brave and brilliant she was to figure out a whole new business.

One day she had to go to the hospital because her emphysema machine was not doing the trick. Sometimes we waited for her to puff on the medicine for a bit before we went out for the day. This time, Riverview Hospital had to help.

I answered the kitchen phone after school. It was a nurse somebody from Riverview. “Is your Mom home?” she asked.

“Is my Grandma dead”, I replied. I am in sixth grade and this is the next very bad, very sad thing.

Mom comes home hours later. She goes straight into the freezer. I think she must have something stashed in there for dinner. We are all very quiet and a little scared. She is not talking or looking at us. She takes Grandma’s frozen matzoh ball soup to the dining table we got when Grandma moved to the smaller house, and starts to howl. She sounds like something hurts. It is more than regular tears. Or yelling. But the tears come in a puddle on the table. The sounds that are coming out of her I do not recognize. It’s not movie ending sad. It’s her Mom is gone sad.

Nobody says grief or grieving. Same that day as it was the day my own mother dies. Sounds come from me that I can’t recognize. I fly over the scene in the same way as that divorce talk day. Mom is missing. I don’t want frozen soup. I just want someone to talk about it. Why the fuck isn’t anyone talking about it.

PS. Dates are open for Grief Camp at Kripalu in March….I hope you will join us. Love to hear from you in the comments. Hit the heart if this resonates, it helps more folks find us here. Consider upgrading to paid, it helps support scholarship at The Memory Circle.