About Grief

In 2020, my ex-therapist—and I say ex because you should pick your therapist as carefully as you pick your partner—asked me why I assumed things would go bad even when things were seemingly so good. Why on sunny days do I look for a storm? I looked for rain in clear skies, lightning and thunder in dry heat, wind in stillness. It was a continuous state of grieving. 

About grief? I’m still confronting her. 

I started writing about grief and loss in my teens. Back then, breakups were over silly issues like thoughtless betrayal. Back then grief was not so dark and grim. Back then the grief was fiction and I could write about her from a distance. Grief. I’ve gendered her. Her, because I find comfort in women in a way I can't in a man. Not in the romantic but in the human sense. She, whoever she may be, can understand me more profoundly than any man can. Even the men who have bared witness to my body. 

I’ve categorized grief into two categories. Or rather I’ve categorized the things we grieve into two categories. The things that stay and the things that don’t. The things you grieve forever and the things you grieve for a season. All of these are of course subjective. Some would question the things I’ve grieved, others would say I didn’t grieve enough. Like most things, the experience of grieving is up to the human experiencing it. No, there’s no safe way to grieve. No timeline. It is ugly and it is beautiful. 

The widow

My pastor died almost five years ago. Before he did, my mother told me he was in the hospital. He was sick, Covid. But he was okay. He joined church services via zoom calls and made jokes through his coarse voice. I didn’t see him in the hospital. This part stays with me. The regret. He seemed in okay spirits. Before you die, for some, they say there’s this euphoric feeling that washes over you. The sense that everything will be fine. I wonder if he felt that in his final days. 

My pastor was not an easy man. Nor was I an easy child. Still, he loved me like I was his the way he loved all of us as if we were his. He drove me to college my first day, packed up his van with me, all my stuff, and my parents inside. He searched his house for a mini fridge so that my parents wouldn’t have to spend money they didn’t have on something I wouldn’t need forever. He was a firm man with a fierce belief in God, and while we clashed in that area, I knew that he was one of the good ones. It is rare to meet a good person. Someone who does things solely out of the kindness of their heart. 

When he died, my mother told me through her tears and our entire house wept. I sat in my room and vented to my partner at the time about how it didn’t make sense. How can a man of his stature and faith die of this sickness? He wasn’t elderly. He wasn’t sick. He simply got caught in the rain one day while visiting family in Jamaica and what began as a cold turned into something sinister.

He rode motorcycles through Volta Square in Long Island against his wife's wishes. How could God take him?

I’ve learned to stop blaming God for my pain.

We went to his widow's house. The pastor's wife. She also played a role in raising me as my pastor had. She bought me dresses for church and asked about my writing. She, who got excited for me when I started this magazine. I remember how heavy my feet felt as I exited the car. The unsteady heartbeat overwhelmed my chest. As I walked towards the door, I was expecting him to be there. To be grilling in the backyard like he did every few months. He was not there. No music rang through the house. There were no patterns of footsteps from children playing and running around. The house was silent. We found her sitting on a chair in the center of their living room, the pale walls gray against the dim sunlight. She was surrounded by the other women who had raised me, dressed in their skirts and loose blouses. They brushed at her unkempt hair, rubbed her thin arms, wiped her face dry. Her eyes were hollow when they met mine. 

“He loved you,” she said and reached for me. “He loved all of you.” 

I cried with her. I cried in secret. I cried months later when he would cross my mind. I was angry at myself for not going to the hospital. For being the elusive twenty-something-year-old whose priorities were herself. His death shattered my ego. Shattered my belief in permanence. Made me realize grief is not so distant. 

When my father got sick, I worried he would leave too. I worried that my youth which personified grief as breaks up and betrayal was all a lie. That true grief was endless loss. My father is still here, and I’ve learned to love him more. I learned that he is human and our imperfect relationship is still full of love.

About grief? She is multi-faceted and complicated. From her, I’ve learned gratitude. From her I’ve learned to love people while they’re here. To love them loudly and deeply. To pour into the cups of others as I pour into my own. 

Today we reminisce on my pastor and his complicated funny personality. I grin at the picture where I’m a teen on the back of his motorcycle riding through Long Island that one summer he gave us rides. To be loved is to be seen, yes, and he loved and saw us. He loved his wife and saw her. Today she smiles and the image of her shattered sitting in the center of their living room has been replaced by the brightness of her smile. 

She continues to persevere.

In my writing, I enjoy exploring grief. The things we grieve and why we grieve them. When I was younger, it came from the fear of the unknown. And though I’m still quite young and destined to face even more grief, it now comes from the exploration of the inevitable. The things we can’t control.