What’s Work Got to Do with Grief?
I’ve been thinking a lot about work and identity, what it means, how much time we spend between the hours of 9 and 5 daydreaming of vacation or alternative lives. Our culture is cruel that way, the constant churning of want and fear of not having and the reality of the bottom dropping at any moment.
I confessed to my friend Adriane the nagging guilt and worry I experience from “not working” these last few years. She laughed, “What are you talking about? You’ve done so much!” and proceeded to list all off the things I’ve done since 2020:
Running a gubernatorial campaign
Getting a grief educator certificate
Being accepted to two writing residencies and getting published
Finishing a draft of my memoir
Restarting a nonprofit
Teaching writing workshops
Practicing meditation
Rebuilding myself
This constant minimizing of what I’ve accomplished the last few years isn’t a humble brag or me trying to be coy–I have come to equate “work” with stress and annoyance and the fear of letting someone down. If all I’ve done the last few years hasn’t felt this way, then how could it be considered work?
Through a series of events–including being writers and the Great Recession–Daryl and I never had typical 9-to-5 jobs at the same time. Our work life and career was a patchwork. Over the years, one of us would take the baton of having a “square job,” as my friend Mary calls it, while the other was freelancing or following another dream. The Square Job holder was always more stressed, less pleased with the situation at hand, but we did it so the other person could build something different. I was building a novel and Daryl was building a podcast.
Since 2015, I’ve worked from home and, for the last several years of his life, so did Daryl. While this meant a bit more financial insecurity for us, it also meant we got to spend a lot of time together during the day–meeting up for lunch, late mornings, running errands, walking our dog together, being able to peel off and experience more than work during that eight-hour stretch. How I treasure that time now, like we were stealing it back without knowing why.
After Daryl died and my last part-time job dried up, I stopped working in the traditional sense all together (see list of not-so-invisible work above). We had some money in savings and, after my mom died suddenly in 2022, I had more money. I took grief, wellness and writing classes, traveled to see friends and family, learned how to draw and paint. Working on ourselves is also invisible labor.
Money received after a loved one dies is a tricky, tricky beast. The money in my life isn’t luck, but it has provided a little bit of what life insurance promises–comfort and security.
I’d like to say, as we always do when it comes to unexpected privileges, I’m “lucky” or “blessed,” but there doesn’t seem the right word for money coming into your life after experiencing two significant deaths back-to-back. We live in a country that has no federal bereavement leave and many who do have it through their job are afraid to take it for fear of appearing unreliable.
Several years ago, when I DID have a fairly stressful 9-to-5 job, my uncle died suddenly and I was preparing to return to Michigan for his funeral. I had one last task which was to set up our company payroll. Late that night, back in Michigan, I received a text message from our intern, “Sooo, I just got my paycheck and I think there’s an extra zero?” I pulled up my bank account, and nearly threw up–I had accidentally quadrupled our salaires. I was frantic, it was 11pm, the payroll company was closed and I went into a full-blown panic attack. I called Daryl, crying. My grandmother’s house did not have Internet, so I couldn’t do much beyond what my phone allowed. I was afraid of being in trouble, and really, really angry with myself that I had messed up, done something wrong.
I knew the mistake was correctable, but in those hours before I could get through to the payroll company, I let anxiety and punishment take over. Punishment for not being my sharpest self, for messing up, for not being more in control. My anxiety was compounded by grieving, just another thing out of my control. The reality is the mistake would not have happened if Work Life recognized Real Life and I could have taken time off immediately after hearing the news of my uncle’s death, rather than muscling through those foggy, terrible days.
Recently, I dreamt I was on a trip and staying at a hostel. When I got out of the shower and came back to my room, wrapped only in a towel, an older man was sitting on my bed, arguing with his wife who was also in the room. The man looked and acted like Jerry Stiller, he was loud and annoying, complaining about trying to find a good place for lunch. Worse, he was sitting on the clothes I’d laid out on my bed. I asked him to move and please leave, but he ignored me.
Eventually, I shepherded them out of my room into the hallway. As I was getting dressed, I started to cry and was trying to explain to my roommate how much I missed my dog. Then, the couple barged back into the room asking about our itinerary for the day. The dream continued like that–me trying to enjoy the day and sightseeing, while the couple made ridiculous demands, interjecting themselves into conversations, oblivious to the fact that no one was enjoying their company. All I wanted to do was have a good cry and talk about my grief, but the couple kept interrupting.
When I woke up and tried to piece together what the heck that all meant, the thread of interruption, annoyance, anger and sadness was clear: why couldn’t these dummies realize I needed a moment alone? I realized this must be how so many people feel when they are grieving and have to return to a job, constantly interrupted, unable to fully go through an emotional cycle, cut-off and alone in their grief.
While blissfully and terrifyingly alone the last few years, I had the time and the space to begin to put myself back together at my own pace.
I think of how different my life with Daryl would have been if we both had 9-to-5 jobs (in reality, probably more hours than that) and spent only evenings together. Daryl would not have been able to spend extended time with his family in England, he would not have been able to travel with me to events and conferences, play soccer, or enjoy being with our dog. We barely would have seen each other and, when he got cancer, I have no clue how we would have managed the necessary travel of his clinical trial schedule.
We made a choice that suited us best, and yes, it meant some credit card debt and a lot of uncertainty, not buying a house or having a new car or having kids, but none of that felt like a sacrifice because we didn’t want those things, we just wanted to enjoy our daily life.
I don’t know that arranging our lives in that way made us lucky (how do you use that word to a life that includes a terminal diagnosis?), but, I’ve realized that my patchwork life of making a living and following my interests, was not a fluke, but a conscious choice to break away from a typical work schedule and experience more of life around us together–whether that meant other creative opportunities or little side dreams we were building, or just having a leisurely breakfast together on a random Wednesday.
I say I took a sabbatical, which is true, except I’ve never had a “routine job” to step away from. Nothing about my career has been routine. I left college and wanted to be a music journalist and, instead, ended up at a prestigious business magazine. After that, I followed my interests and,for better or worse, talents with organization and writing–nonprofit, arts, corporate media, PR, brand strategy, freelance article writing, theater reviewer, music reviewer, liaison, coordinator, event planner, teacher, writer.
No one needed me between the hours of 9am and 5pm and there was a terror and thrill to this new reality. I learned how to shape my day, how to survive the time from sunup to sundown without Daryl, my North Star.
We used to say, “When we get our money right…” we would do X, Y or Z. We dreamt of the day and then it came–the podcast audience grew, advertisers and contracts became real, funds and lawyers were needed, I finished my novel and had an agent interested in the finished draft. And then came cancer.
I know our story can look like a tragedy–a life cut short just as things were beginning to turn to the bigger and better. I can’t live with that as the measure of our life together. What I can accept is that we have a narrow view of success, of what we call a career, of what we call daily life, of how we spend our days, and we miss the real gift, which is time.