Good Grief
As opposed as I am to patriarchal systems and your basic textbook checklist of life-achievements, getting married – on our own terms – felt like one of the most punk things I’ve ever done. Coming from a family of perpetual bachelors, many a failed marriage and relationships consisting of adult figures who are incapable of sharing a room let alone healthy interactions, saying I do and I fucking will (break this cycle) felt empowering. So, we planned for an intimate garden wedding, with one of my closest, unvested friends administering the whole thing in under five minutes – as requested by the bride, who couldn’t cope with the idea of all eyes on her (err, us) for longer than that. The planning process was as fun and unforgettable as the day itself, but I missed those I had most wanted to share in the excitement with me, and a family structure that no longer existed.
On one of the days when all this hung heavily over my heart, I headed out on a walk with my dawg – who is, undoubtedly, my best man. I was sulking through the campo when he suddenly pulled me out of my reverie excitedly sniffing some creature’s butt. I thought it was a very chill cat at first, which seemed weird as we rarely ever crossed paths with one in the fields. I was baffled to find, instead, he was gently chasing behind the fluffy tail of an even chiller bunny. The pet-shop kind with floppy ears and peluche-soft fur. I approached slowly, sure it would eventually thump its hind-legs and take off, but it didn’t. So, we took him home and called him Schmidty. This little dude came with a big personality and settled into our family of five – the husband-to-be, myself, the dog and two cats – as though he’d always been a part of it.
I had rabbits growing up – big hare-types – and always felt them to be special animals with gentle souls, but this guy was next level. He was basically a dog – a free-roaming, instantly housetrained critter who would greet you at the door and hum his happy tune whenever you got onto floor level with him. Just like Blues, Schmidty came in to my life when I most needed to pour the love I longed for myself, onto others. And so, I did. His digs were worthy of their very own area code; hence we dubbed it Schmidty City. He was fed the finest grub, and was forgiven for (most) cables he bit through and personal objects he gnawed on. When the day finally came, and we got ready to pack all our stuff up to spend the weekend in the magical garden that was our wedding venue, he came along. And although my dad made it his personal mission to give Sir Schmidt first class treatment and an impressive assortment of organic treats, the bunster didn’t shit for two days.
When I fell pregnant with my daughter three years later, that little fluffle-butt would not leave my side. He joined in on my prenatal yoga classes and loved nothing more than to snuggle up under my belly when I was in Uttana Shishosana (puppy posture). When my daughter finally joined us earthside, he seemed to instinctively know she was now part of the tribe, regularly hopping over to her little bouncy chair to check in on her and give her head a sniff and a special bunny kiss. Three months after she was born, as I was getting ready to build him a whole new harem for overnight stays in the patio, I noticed something was off with him. As I was readying him to get into the carrier so the husband could take him to an emergency vet, I already knew it was going to be the last time I would see him and it broke me. His death broke me – wide open into many pieces that desperately needed to come undone so that I could finally rearrange them and give them a new place.
I had just started processing everything surrounding the daughter’s birth and had not even reached the thick of it when Schmidty passed on. His sudden departure launched me into feeling it all at once – different strains of grief pulsing through my body and soul, whilst my heart was simultaneously bursting with a kind of love and joy I had never felt before. It was a strange mental space to navigate, one that came with a great deal of shame and confusion. Mourning the departure of my furry friend, a creature that had been by my side for five years, was natural, understandable. Mourning the pregnancy and the birth that had brought me the greatest love of my life, felt wrong and inconceivable, and yet that is exactly what was happening. For years prior to conceiving, I was told I wouldn’t be able to; and though at many points in my life I was undecided as to whether I actually wanted to, I always longed to be a mother. Making peace with the fact I might not be, brought its own kind of grieving process – which was reversed as soon as those lines turned blue.
Throughout those nine months I carried my daughter inside me, I was guarding her with every fiber of my physical and spiritual being. Which meant I loved and cared for myself better than I had ever before. It actually felt as though I myself was being protected by an invisible womb of my own creation – no one could penetrate the Zen I had cultivated inside this bubble; nothing could get to me here. And I remained inside until around that three-month mark, when the adrenaline of this life-changing event wore off and into a daily routine, when the physical recovery only just began and when that invisible, invincible force that had shielded me throughout my pregnancy started to fade. When my Schmidty died.
Only now do I realize that all this was a death and a rebirth for me too. The death of the person I once was, all the new layers that grew inside me, all the layers I shed with her arrival. It was a difficult time, full of feelings that are so hard to word, let alone verbalize in all their complexities. As strange as it might sound though, the pain I was feeling was exquisite. Because bit by bit, I was allowing myself to fully release it.
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Blues – my dawg, my shadow, my bestest boy – came into my life just as my grandma – my second mother, my favorite person, my Sweet Sue – was making her exit. We chose each other, it was fate. Knowing we were finally going to take the step and adopt a dog, I had been checking in on the local animal shelter’s website regularly. When I saw his picture, it was instant love; he reminded me of my first dog, Tessa, who was by my side for nineteen years. Black, soft curls, a white patch on the chest, they were almost identical. Or so I thought. When we went to meet him – and the other dogs – this guy came trotting over to us on huge paws, a small body and a disproportionately big head. He didn’t give any of the other dogs a chance to come near us. We knew he was our man and he knew we were his family and the rest, as they say, is herstory. The husband isn’t joking when he says that, as soon as Blues joined the family, he lost his rank; and I’m not joking when I say I love him almost as much as I love the dog.
He’s been with us for thirteen years. Thirteen years of the cheekiest smiles you can possibly imagine whenever he’s caught out doing something naughty – like eating an entire pack of spirulina and pooping green for three days straight. Thirteen years of full-on conversations in his own language and him passing his bowl around the dinner table hoping for some scraps. Thirteen years of being dragged toward or into any body of water for inexhaustible splashing, swimming and ball-throwing. I hope, I wish – yes, even pray – that we’ll have many more years with him, but, as of this year, the signs are there. Through both him and our beautiful blind cat with dementia, we are currently intensely witnessing the circle of life. The daughter is becoming more and more independent, while our geriatrics are becoming more and more dependent on us.
I try not to get caught up in the anticipatory grief I am feeling almost daily and try my best to return into the realm of mindfulness whenever I do, but it’s tough. It’s easiest when I’m in it, just going through the motions, dealing with what these deteriorating bodies bring with them. When I’m exhausted in my role as caretaker and giver, when I’m angry with all that entails – not at them, but at the universe, because it’s easier to be angry than it is to be heartbroken. But the anger takes up so much precious energy too. Simply sitting with a bleeding heart and a gaping hole in your chest cavity, that’s where the real healing lies; it’s an awfully twisted truth and a privilege to get to feel so intensely. To love so fully and profoundly. We are born into impermanence and yet it is the concept we are least willing to accept. Natasha Lyonne, a writer, actress and director who has dealt with the subject in various projects, sums it up perfectly:
"Grief is a crazy concept. It's something that we don't talk about enough. Because it's happening every moment. We're grieving, you know, like what happened eight minutes ago, two minutes ago. You look in the mirror one day and you're like, I have a neck – where that come from? You're in a constant state of grief. Let alone relationships or people dying. My dog Root Beer is fourteen. Like, this does not end well, pal. You know what I mean? Me and Root, we are tight. I look at her and I'm like, I know how this is gonna go down. So, I'm in a state of grief for an event that has not occurred through grief. We're always in it."
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When the three-and-a-half-year-old daughter started elementary school this fall, we spent all summer doing the work of gently preparing her for the end of Kindergarten and the beginning of her new school by talking about it all openly and positively. She was excited, telling anyone who would listen about the new chapter awaiting, overjoyed with the idea of wearing slippers and feeding the school’s turtles and fish every day. Once Kindergarten – and the wonderful routine that came with it – ended though, and we were nearing the big day, I noticed a shift. She’d go from sassy threenager to clingy baby all within the course of one day – repeatedly and at unpredictable intervals. She’d go from refusing to hold my hand as we walked through town and onto the bus, to wanting to be carried everywhere, with her arms slung tightly around my neck. She’d go from telling elaborate stories full of impressive vocabulary, to pointing and da-da-ing in a squeaky baby voice. From wanting to hang out with the big kids to denying entry to anyone not within the nuclear family.
This was her manifesting her anxiety and her own parting process. She was afraid that, in moving on from kindergarten, she was being asked to move on from this particular phase of her childhood – that she could no longer be the baby and was expected to be a “big girl” now. This realization was both heartwarming and breaking: the knowledge that we are giving her the space to feel safe and fully able to embrace every stage of her development, and the understanding that, she will need to move on – to disconnect – from each one, as overwhelming as it may be. For both of us. Motherhood has made this concept of impermanence visceral to me. It has also made me understand that, while I may be the “big girl” now, it’s OK for me to grieve the little girl in me who doesn’t want to be. When I want to grip my arms tightly around the neck of a calming, centered figure in my life, and rely on them to carry me through whichever storm I’m weathering. When I want to lock myself in my fort and everybody else out. When I want to be loved and nurtured without having the language to express it properly.
It's a crazy concept indeed, especially when we allow ourselves to sit with it in all its distinctions – all the ways in which it shows up that we don’t really talk about. The personal, the ambiguous, the anticipatory, the disenfranchised, the secondary, the cumulative. Grief is not pleasant, but it’s good. It’s a privilege to feel it and to understand it. It may never free you from the pain, but if you allow it to, it will inch you closer to finding peace in the constant. The impermanence. Of all that is, all that will be and all that once was.