approaching Acceptance
notes on grief
‘approaching Acceptance’ is my collection of thoughts on grief, slowly gathered over time. they are addressed to my late mother.
January 24 2023
I almost talked myself out of doing this again. I’m already overwhelmed. I’m not sure where I should start, just how much to contextualize, or just how critical of myself I should be. I know that I’d hate to lose my nerve considering today is the first day I’ve ever had the urge to be alone with my thoughts and write. So, here I am granting my wish come true. I’m going to free myself of any expectations for the rest of this entry and just try to feel this out.
Yesterday, like most Monday afternoons, I had a therapy session. On days I have a session, I’ll spend most of the morning and early afternoon trying to pick through the past week. I’ll think of things I want to chat with my therapist about or unpack, and yesterday I went into our session with the intention of discussing my reacclimatizion to Charlottesville since the shooting. I told her I’d had a good weekend, and I did. But unfortunately, it’s much more complicated than that. I have my safe spaces and people, but in those times in between—when I’m alone—my body feels exponentially more tense. Walking to class, sitting at home, just existing in this town feels like a constant state of dissociation. If one of my friends is not physically near me, it’s hard, no, sometimes an Olympic feat to fully ground myself in the present moment.
I don’t entirely remember how the conversation progressed to my mother—feels like nine times out of ten that’s what usually happens—but if I really sat with it, I’m sure I’d recall it. She asked me the same question as before,
“What would your mother say to you?”
And just like the last time, everything went still and tight and before I knew it my face was soaked by my tears, and the room was quiet. I went back and forth in my head for a long time before deciding to finally tell her the truth. “I don’t know.” More of that quiet. “I don’t know.”
In one of my classes this semester we’re reading Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father. In the first three chapters, Obama delivers beautifully written reflections and recollections from his childhood. He speaks to his perceptions of his father over time and his relationship with his mother and grandparents in what I would characterize as pretty great detail for an author of 34. I’m not sure I could recall half of what Obama wrote of his own parents in the first chapter of that memoir. It absolutely baffles me that he was able to produce enough content to fill up an entire book when I struggle to remember details of conversations with my mother. It has only been five years since she died, and I am petrified of how much I do not remember. I don’t need to spell out all the reasons why I’ve decided to start doing this, but if I did, that would likely be the first.
March 11 2023
I dreamt about you again last night. Granted, all my dreams are about you in some way or another, but this one felt pretty obvious. I seemed to be the same age but my little brother was a toddler again. I don’t remember the specifics, but he and I were sitting with Dad in his bedroom and I felt this strong, compelling need to protect him. That feeling is not new—the primal instinct of an older sibling to protect their younger has existed long before me—but only in the past five years has it firmly planted itself near the center of my mind. I woke up longing for my brother now, as he once was, and of course, you. Because would that kind of dream even occur—would this overwhelming worry for his happiness and well-being beat as strong if you were here?
It’s exhausting you know, coming to the same conclusion over and over again.
We watched the sunrise on the beach this morning. Feeling my friends shiver against me as we stared into the sky beyond the pier, I realized that part of the reason for my stillness was security in the knowledge that you were partially responsible for what we saw. Whether it be the breeze—the echoes of your voice—or bright, beautiful pockets of magenta in the horizon— radiance from your smile—you are all around me, in whatever form I decide.
June 8 2023
Another season of my life is beginning and I feel as though I’m in total free-fall. I constantly alternate between utter assurance, blind faith, and total confusion when it comes to answering the question, “am I making you proud?”
The days leading up to graduation were a whirlwind. This isn’t unusual—stress and anxiety are shared experiences. It is like this for everyone else. But it isn’t. Not really. In those moments with friends and family—laughing, celebrating and reminiscing—that sense of foreboding—that pit at the bottom of my stomach—opened up again. But this time it took much longer to realize.
I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to the fact that our bodies remember before we do.
I am making “progress.” I have worked up the courage to take a prescribed pill scientifically proven to aid in my grieving—my navigation of this world without you in it. And yet the moment I identify that pit, it feels as though no time at all has passed. Logically, I understand that you are “physically gone, though spiritually with me,” but once again I am caught completely off guard.
Falling in love, forming new friendships, creating memories to look back on…these are all things I’ve cherished over the last four years. The idea of doing it over and over again would be wholly enticing if it weren’t for the realization that at each ending—at the closing of each chapter and season of my life—I will physically ache for the opportunity to share it with you.
December 3 2023
“Breathe. Just focus on breathing. In and out, over and over again.”
It feels as though I’ve spent most of my time here attempting to quiet my anxious thoughts and find a sense of stability. So many days I’m trapped in my own mind, completely overwhelmed by the life I fought so hard to experience. Last night I was asked if I would have moved to Amsterdam had you survived, and though I answered no, in truth I haven’t the slightest clue.
I think coming to that conclusion without feeling my stomach drop is kind of the point of this year. I don’t know what will happen a few months from now, let alone at the end of this year, and admitting to that still produces so much anxiety I’m sometimes close to tears, but that’s not how I want to be. I want to live for me.
Your tombstone reads, “we live to love you more each day.” That’s the case for me. In fact some days it feels like the only thing I’m sure of. But I don’t have the stamina to incessantly criticize every decision I make—no matter how small—from your hypothetical point of view. It’s exhausting.
I know that it’s unfair of me to hyper-fixate on my life’s choices based on what I think you would say. I know because that line of thinking doesn’t take into consideration that had you survived—had we lived through the past six years together, you would have also grown and changed.
Had we lived through the past six years together, I would not be faced with the choices I’ve had to make in your absence.
Had we lived through the past six years together, my brain would not have been chemically altered by the trauma of losing you.
I want so badly to believe what they say. “She would want you to be happy.” But who’s version? If I had realized sooner that the future we discussed at the kitchen table—the ones I clung to throughout my entire adolescence—wasn’t really my own, maybe it would be easier to believe what they say. If you knew me today—not as I once was—maybe then I could I believe what they say. But you don’t know me now, and you won’t. I didn’t intend for this to feel so bleak, but it’s the truth—and lord knows truthfulness is unavoidable in the business of grief.
Perhaps my purpose this year lies in not only healing from past traumas and determining the next steps in life, but also freeing myself of the notion that you are more often than not disappointed in who I have become. I know I’m not, and I’d like to start believing you aren’t either.
July 6, 2024
I’ve left my happy place again. Thanks to bureaucracy, a large number of family and friends whom I've missed, and of course my ever-present desire to make us proud, I’m somewhere new yet again. It’s been one month, and though I’ve learned a lot in the academic sense, I’m still searching for what I came for. When I stop to ask myself what you’d advise me to do in this chapter, I still can’t bring myself to complete the thought—the fictional scenario.
“Just do your best. That’s all you can do”
These days the biggest reminders of you occur primarily in introductory conversations. The letting-people-know-you’re-not-there-before-its-too-late-and-too-awkward conversations. When I inevitably beat myself up about how I’m not doing a particularly great job at “keeping your memory alive” I get so fed up. You may not know this, but I made an ambitious promise to myself after you left. I promised that I wouldn’t be the person who let their loved one’s memory fade over time. But I miss the mundane. I miss purposeless conversations. Since you left, most references of you are underscored with deep, difficult-to-ignore feelings. And even though I might be strong enough to carry the weight of them most days, sometimes others aren’t.
I know I need a new, new therapist again. Not just because of you or having to consistently deal with the reality of who Dad’s become in your absence, but mostly because of that free-falling feeling again. It’s better this time around for sure, but only because it’s familiar. I absolutely ache to feel and be grounded — to have a space that’s truly mine. It’s like that quote from my favorite book,
“Strange the things you remember. Single images and feelings that stay with you down through the years. Like the moment I’d realized I’d never owned a vase. That I’d never lived in any place long enough to justify having such a simple thing. And at that moment, I wanted nothing so much in all the world as to have a vase of my very own.”
When I first read it, I never imagined this feeling would be a commonality between our favorite protagonist and I. Yet here I am, unable to justify purchasing a set of cutlery for one.