Grief has a thousand scenes. Sometimes, standing back, I’m astounded to realize it’s all part of itself.
I’m preparing for the new July grief group, the closest one thus far in my tenure here. Nine human beings who walked in the house, or picked up the phone, or met their dad outside the emergency room, and trauma began its long unspooling. Before and After suddenly acquired precise demarcation. That. Night. Violent and unimaginable and true. And true.
They know this.
And most of them are newer to this reality horror show, closer to the Before than I now am. And lately I’ve been exploring approaches, how to accurately access my empathy, appropriately, but honestly, within the clinical framework of this work.
Tonight, as I maneuvered the CR-V through the Michigan Greenway rotary, the Mario Kart of it all, I alighted on a little ledge in Wellesley. It was winter, because I’m looking around in the frame and there’s melting snow in the big grand circular driveway, and I’ve already clocked this one dinged-up old 90s Toyota, faded lipstick red. There were other cars ahead and behind, and my brain said That One. And then Haley said from behind me “That’s Nina’s car.” And I swear to God I just knew. I swear on Charlie’s life, on his memory, on Team Andesn. They didn’t even have to tell me, though later they did. “This is Dani. Dani, Lauren.”
I knew. And my eyes filled up and overflowed, hugging her. Both of our sole siblings, with whom we we were bonded in a holy way, in a fundamental way, in a way that when they jumped, our souls were severed. Violently. Suddenly. Inexplicably. Worse than worst. Something neither of us would have deigned to imagine. Don’t tempt the devil. We didn’t.
The nightmare arrived anyway. For Dani, the call was six months before March 17. For both of us, there was this palpable light and warmth and hot tears and unbelievable catharsis that was holistic, bodily, entirely everything and self and dead and alive and beyond life deeply all at once. It was intense. And it was gorgeous. It was such a relief. It was such a relief. It was such a relief.
“That’s Nina’s car.”
And suddenly this island was inhabited. I found someone I recognized. Who recognized me. We could meet there. We could talk about this place. She got it. She knew. The sacred broke into the profane in an exhale.
So, this is what I’ll bring to the group, too: the refreshed memory of this scene. This scene that provided my first experience of something like beauty. In the midst of this fresh hell. This, too. This scene is part of the movie. Astonishing bienvenue. Receive its sustenance. It will help you keep walking. It helped me keep waking up. In the days when I still woke up screaming.
I don’t accept that this is my home. I hate it here. I’d give anything to return to St. Patrick’s Day at eleven or noon. I could do the impossible. I could do it, and I would, and everything would be different.
But this fight with God makes me tired. I need to sit down awhile. When you’re tired, I saved a space for you. Here’s a notebook and a pen.
theme and variations 