The Museum of My Grief
Four summers ago, my gnawing, aching pain found me attending a grief retreat in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. I’d left the pleasant SoCal weather I’d just moved to in order to return to the hell of the East Coast in the summertime—hot, humid, buggy.
Emily Rapp Black, a writer and human I really admire and adore, led us through workshops focused on writing about our grief. One prompt that I’ll always remember was where she asked us to write about our grief as a place.
Although I’d just moved to sunny SoCal following my residential mental health treatment and believed I was doing “better” than I had been, I still remember the image that came to mind then. It was a soot-covered, bleak cityscape. Post-apocalyptic, even. To call it dystopian would have been mild.
The sixth anniversary of my mom’s death is July 8, and with that date looming in my head, I’ve been reflecting on the place where my grief is now. I could lie and say that the reflection is in an attempt to orient myself, and, sure. But if I’m being honest, it’s to put myself on a yardstick. To show I’ve grown. Which I have—but that’s not the point. There’s no gold star for Doing Grief Right. (If there were, I’d have it by now though, right???)
If I were to bring you to the place where my grief currently resides, it would be a museum. (Admission would be free because who the fuck would pay for this macabre?)
Everything has been curated just so, and please don’t touch! In our first exhibit, we see mementoes from the griefcations I thought would numb the pain.
Here, you’ll find the rosary beads I collected from any basilica I entered, though this lapsed Catholic doesn’t really know what to do with them other than occasionally wrap them around my hands like some kind of worry beads.
To your right, you’ll find the spoon rest from my solo trip to Ireland, where I drowned my sorrows in Guinness, cute Irish boys and misty walks along the Cliffs of Moher.
Oh wait! Don’t trip over the Moroccan rug from the trip that I only remember in terms of how dark it was inside my head.
Behind that glass, you’ll find the medal from the 2017 NYC Marathon that I ran several months after her death, so determined to not let grief stop me.
Behold this photography collection: everything from the how-did-I-think-I-was-fooling-everyone-my-smile-was-so-fake-and-my-eyes-so-puffy photos to the behind-the-scenes photos of my tear-soaked eyes, mascara dripping down my face.
In this room, you’ll find The Graduate School Collection: artifacts found along the way to earning that masters degree as I threw my entire being into turning my pain into something worthwhile.
RECORD SCRATCH
Just like my relationship with my mom wouldn’t have stopped growing and changing if she were alive, her ceasing to breathe doesn’t mean our relationship ceased to change.
If I’m being very honest, some part of me, deep down, has denied her death for the past six years. MY mother? Nope, not possible. I obviously have been able to acknowledge my deep grief, but actually acknowledging the loss—in the depths of my being—is another level.
Acknowledging the grief is “easier,” because it’s focused on me. But that leaves out so much of her humanity, both the beauty of her essence and the rough edges of the little Sicilian-American lady from Northern NJ.
I’m 40 years old. In many ways, I’m just now beginning to feel more “adult.” (Some of that stems from her being a sometimes-overbearing parent who didn’t give me much space to make my own decisions and mistakes; some of that stems from dealing with the aftermath of her loss.)
I’m finally ready for a romantic relationship. I’ve allowed myself to become more emotionally involved and attached to the last two guys I’ve dated than to anyone before them. As my handy dandy biological clock ticks, I am thinking more about if I want a child or not.
I can finally listen to the Taylor Swift song Marjorie (about losing her grandmother) without crying every single time.
I think a lot lately about how I would have asked my mom how to be. How to navigate these big things: knowing who’s the right partner for you, knowing if you want/are ready for children. What it’s like to be a 40-year-old woman in a society that obsesses over youth.
We, as a society, tend to romanticize our relationships with our loved ones who are no longer alive. When I was 33, I was dating a 40-year-old man, and that seven-year age difference was NOT OK with Carol. She judged religion, socioeconomic status, political affiliation, of people I dated, people I was friends with. And so I hid these things from her about others, but also about myself.
So, while I miss being able to ask her how to be, those answers came with costs, too.
Just before my mom got diagnosed with cancer, I’d started to work with my therapist on how I could build a healthier relationship with my mom. We were incredibly close—as long as I was who she wanted me to be and I didn’t rock the boat.
I now know that she would have accepted me no matter what because she loved me so, so much. And I know that’s why she judged so harshly, because she also so deeply believed she knew best of what would be good for me.
AND. I also know that it would have been a huge struggle for me to get there emotionally. Sorry not sorry to quote Taylor again, but everything you lose is a step you take.
With that loss came a whole marathon’s worth of steps taken.
Would I trade that all to have her back?
I think the “expected” answer would be “yes, in a heartbeat", but I honestly don’t know, which is fine since that’s not a choice I have, you know?
Welcome to the new museum of my grief. It’s interactive, like the Liberty Science Center.