The Girl with the Grief Ribbon
Halloween is upon us, our neighborhood littered with tacky skeletons scattered in yards as if dismembered, weird mannequins sit in porch chairs, fake tombstones greet me on my dog walk. On Saturday, it will be two years since Daryl died. I remember the numbness of walking past these displays and thinking “What do these fools know about death?” I’d like to say that feeling has abated, but it hasn’t. I get it, kids like to trick-or-treat, being spooky and macabre is fun, the intention of Halloween is to out-scare the ghosts. I just wish it had more depth, or that we celebrated Day of the Dead which has the skulls but with appreciation for the actual dead and less pointless crap that will end up in a landfill vibes. I joked that this year I might plant cards on the decorations that say: “Boo! You have stage 4 cancer.”
About Loss and Grief
A few weeks ago, Anderson Cooper launched his podcast “All There Is,” about loss and grief. He recently lost his mom, Gloria Vanderbilt and is tasked with cleaning out her apartment. He interviewed Stephen Colbert and several friends reached out to suggest I listen to it. They were not wrong, it was a truly meaningful and beautiful conversation.
“I think that one thing that people who haven't experienced profound grief in their life, yet, sometimes don't know what to say. And that is totally understandable. What do you say? It's like this person is in this completely foreign land to you. You know, it's a real thing. It is like they are going through a physical event that you can't you can't perceive the forces that are on them. It's like they're in a wind, but you can't see their storm, but you can just see the effect of it on them. And it can be harrowing to the people who see it. They don't know how to address it. They think that maybe nothing that they say is worth saying.”
— Stephen Colbert (Stephen Colbert: Grateful for Grief, All There Is with Anderson Cooper, SEP 21, 2022 )
I’m going to admit something here, fully aware of the irony of doing so on my GRIEF BLOG: Sometimes, I’m tired of writing about grief. I’m tired of thinking about grief. I’m tired of being in grief. I’m tired of explaining grief. I’m tired of living in grief. I wish people knew I was a widow—give me the black outfit or jewelry to distinguish me and I can avoid the conversation. The slight shock, the way I feel it immediately ages me to be old enough to have a dead husband. In fact, being under 50 grants me the status of being a “young widow.”
When Daryl first got sick, I was jealous and sad when I saw older couples, knowing we would never reach that point of life. But now, when I see them, I’m sad because I know it will be just as hard for them when their beloved dies. None of us win. Things are taken too soon, or held onto until they are dust. I’m glad I never had to see him suffer with dementia or shuffling to and from doctor’s appointments, our bodies slowing, aching and breaking. Instead, we lived out 50 years in only two. I did see his body breakdown, mine become stronger than his and that is one of the worst things you can experience with someone you love. Especially someone in the prime of their life.
When something shocking happens, you wake up every morning with this dull remembrance of it. It’s not the “Oh!” gasp that it is in the beginning, not unlike a breaking of your heart, when your brain clicks on and remembers the terrible thing that it has allowed you to forget while you sleep. Though, in my case, my subconscious loves nothing more than to play with metaphors of loss—in some dreams Daryl and I are on vacation, lost in a hotel, running late for a flight, some logistical hiccup.
When pictures and “memories” appear on my i-Phone, I now count backwards from his diagnosis. 2015 is now “Four years before diagnosis,” the countdown like the launch of a space shuttle. I need to know what we knew at that point in time, were our smiles without knowledge of the black hole that would suck our life away? But what could it have told us if the tools were available? And what would I have done with the information—would our lives have been any different?
The truth is that grief far scarier than Halloween,
the horror of loss measured by the greatness of your love. Grief flattens the world inside you and around you. Like the fallout from a nuclear bomb, what surrounds your beating heart is a desert with some interesting wildlife and flora and fauna, and not much else. When living in a lonely grief-y landscape, any joy you find is an oasis. The sameness of things, the everydayness of the people around you going through the same motions they went through before and after your loss. I feel like a very jaded vampire (is there another type?) watching those around me think they are safely shoring up against death and loss.
Grief-Shaped
Grief reminds me of the story of the “Girl with the Green Ribbon,” by Alvin Shwartz. All her life, the “girl,” Jenny, wears a green ribbon around her neck. She falls in love with a guy, they get married and not until she is on her deathbed does she allow him to remove it. When he does, her head falls off. Remove the grief and off goes my head. Grief is like those terrible “waist trainer” girdles celebrity women wear. It wraps around you, hugging and tightening and squeezing your breath away, and you have no choice. It is also a terrible replacement for your person. I don’t want to be grief-shaped. I want to be joy-filled and happy, I want to cut grief off me and run screaming from the room, but it’s impossible to cut off without removing your memory of the person.