A Natalie Observed

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  • Initiation

    Yesterday, I was vibrating. I woke up vibrating and took Dottie to hike further up Upper Trail than I have before. 1.5 hours up before turning around when I realized my body needed to take a break. Dottie did not want any water and my quads clenched with each step, a reminder of the tremendous pain in the muscles of my hips. Despite accomplishment of the distance, I got home and was still vibrating. It was not enough to relieve whatever was happening.

    The energy in my body was unfocused, exhausted, and mired in the Grief that is living in my hips. I spent an hour after this hike attempting to pick something to watch but could not identify my mood to select something. I started cleaning my coffee table which led to unloading the dishwasher when I got up to fill my water bottle and then I looked at the cake I made in the fridge before remembering I had laundry in the dryer and when I put away a towel I remembered I needed to shower followed by “oh yeah, the coffee table project” and then trying to pick something out to watch while I clean because I could not find something to listen to. I hiked this morning to help my brain with this frenetic lack of focus but still had it afterwards. It is times like this I wonder about ADHD, but I know I do not have it.

    This lack of focus is from the energy of the Grief living in my hips. It has been here all month. I cycled less this month than any month this past year because my hips are yelling at me, screaming that I am not doing enough, that I am drowning. I am in hip pain because I am in soul pain. Francis Weller talks about trauma as a rough initiation of the soul onto its new path. I love the way this idea relieves my body of the responsibility I feel to “get better”. I do not want Yoga that is a “work out” because the body should be “worked with”. Grief is the same. I let it wander into the space whenever it needs to because that is what my body needs. I cannot force that timeline because I cannot rush an injury into healing. I tend to it, witness it, create community with it, and invite Grief to sit alongside me until such time my body needs to sit inside of Grief, to sit in the presence of it’s altar. I am still learning how to surrender to the idea that, despite everything I learn, I will never be the master here. The Grief Palace has more detail than ever before and yet I know I will never know everything about it. Mine is to accept the invitation to keep learning, to learn the art of working with.

    I stretched before and after hiking. The pain in my hips lessened with each inhale and exhale as my muscles lengthened and released the acid they held onto. With every step during the hike, I imagined the wince of the muscles in my hips as they held their breath pulling other areas of my back and legs closer to them. The hike was good for them ultimately; they hurt less afterwards than they did when I woke up. But the hike did not help the feeling of vibration in my body. I started writing to harness it somewhere. Here we are.

    Last Saturday, after several days off from riding the Peloton because my hips scream when I am on it, I woke up with a goal of being lazy and watching a show. While scrolling to find something, I stumbled on the second season of Drops of God. I had no idea AppleTV was making more of this show that so beautifully explains everything I will never remember about wine. “I wonder what Jeffrey would think of there being a second season.” As soon as I thought it, I started sobbing. I immediately felt resistance to the sadness that overcame me. I did not want to feel Grief and I felt resentful of it’s intrusion. I did not want to remember how painful Longing is. I wanted to numb this feeling, but could not. I did a 30-minute stretch to see if my hips were in any shape to ride the Peloton. They were without any pain for the first time in a week and I did an hour-long ride. I knew I should take it easy, but I did not because I was vibrating and avoiding. Something had to happen to release this energy. After the ride, I was still in it, in the energy of the Grief, so I stretched another thirty minutes. I took a bath with lavender bath salts to ensure my muscles could get the relief they needed and to force stillness.

    After the bath, I still could not focus and decided to reorganize my entire kitchen. Mom and Phil gifted me the Franciscan Desert Rose dishes Grammy had given to mom after my parent’s divorce. I wanted to put them away in an effort to keep the apartment tidy as I have managed to do. Putting them away gave me reason to solve a problem I had not had time to solve until now: I kept reaching for coffee cups in the wrong cupboard. Yesterday marked 365 days in this apartment, one whole year in Chico, and things are eerily the exact same as when I moved in. A shrine to where I was one year ago, to the absolute shock my body was in. It strikes me I went 357 days reaching for coffee cups in the wrong place before fixing it. After completing two rounds of dishes in the dishwasher, removing everything from every cupboard, cleaning the cupboards and putting everything away in new homes, I took Dottie to the dog park. I was still vibrating and avoiding which meant I needed to keep my body moving. Dottie and I spent almost an hour amused by a hot pink tennis ball. The sun started to dip behind the buildings. “Finally”, I thought, “I can go home.” I made myself a Hello Fresh dinner and went to bed by 8pm. I made it through one day of avoiding grief. I avoided Grief because I knew I had Grief Art Therapy Group on Sunday. I would confront feeling the Longing for Jeffrey tomorrow.

    I am realizing as I write this that I feel a need to nest in this apartment. I want to finalize decorating, get organized, and feel visually less cluttered. I am getting rid of clothing and sorting the medicine cabinet. I am staying busy with tasks that help me feel anything but how I feel about losing Jeffrey. To function right now still takes a level of dissociation that is harder for me to do when sober. I am keeping up with cleaning tasks, completing longer workouts, taking Dottie for more frequent long walks, more stretching, more meditating, more getting work tasks done on time, more clients, more professional training. I am absolutely more productive which does feel better for me. A month without THC has given me a baseline for where anxiety is in my life, for how I function alongside Anxiety. Alongside Grief.

    I still feel the least Anxious I have ever been in my life. And the most confident. I know exactly what my body is doing, thinking, and saying. I listen to her well. My hips hurt because I am grieving. I am moving my body differently trying to manage the distress of Jeffrey’s loss and my hips are hurting. My hips hurt the same way they did the weeks after he died. My body is still healing. One year ago, I spent my first night in the apartment I moved to from Seattle because Jeffrey died from an alcohol related heart-attack. I was traumatized to the point of moving to another state within two months of his death. My life changed so much and so quickly. I am one year in Chico because Jeffrey died. When processing the enormity of trauma, I tell clients that you cannot put the universe in a box. The task itself is impossible. I have to sit here and try to sit amidst the universe, amidst the fall out of Jeffrey dying. I have to sit, experience, and witness the process of my initiation.

    I do not recognize the person I was only one year ago which is a new layer to the Grief. In the Grief Art Therapy Group, I brought in the creamer dish from the Desert Rose dishes as my offering and intention for our suggested theme: New Beginnings. The sugar bowl and creamer dish are original to the first batch of dishes hand-painted in California in the 1940s. Grammy gave the set to mom when mom moved out from Grammy’s. Mom was living somewhere as an adult without a partner for the first time in her 30s. Grammy collected dishes with the gusto of a hoarder and the taste of someone well beyond her station. I set the creamer dish on the altar and explained the origin of the set, that they are now in my cupboard at my first apartment after Jeffrey died. Threads of my life weave together, generation to generation, creating something ornate, intentional, familiar, yet foreign. It is beautiful even in all the despair.

    For two hours, I painted the roses on those dishes. I meticulously layered acrylic paint, mixing and remixing the colors to get the hue of pinks as close as I could to the original design. As I added leaves, sparks fired somewhere deep in the core. I wondered about why I was painting these remnants of a past no longer familiar to me. They are absent of all the pain that has led me to this moment. Tears formed in my eyes as I found magazine photos that cultivate the feeling of loneliness. I finalized the image by writing words associated with anger and rage in black marker, the words violently overlapping and obscuring what used to exist in simple ignorance beneath them. I am the picture of the roses violated and disfigured and marred by Grief. This is who I am now. I am a woman who touched time, whose hips hurt when grief gets stuck in her body. I am a woman who has the energy to nest into this next phase of learning. I am doing a good job of surviving. Even when vibrating, I am enough.

    I woke up this morning, and my hips are no longer hurting. I do not know if it was the hours spent in the park, the stretching before and after, the heated blanket while writing, or the writing itself, but somewhere in this distracted grasping for anchor, in the living alongside Grief, I found relief. This story is still in process.  

  • Helpless, Helpless, Helpless, Helpless

    I wrote the last blog post over the course of a couple days. My first attempt to write it caused a panic attack and after recovering I was too tired to finish it. When I returned a couple days later to complete writing it, I realized I wrote the entire post about Jeffrey and not “to you”. I do not know what it means that I instinctively wrote about Jeffrey and not to him, but here we are. Writing about Jeffrey and not to him.

    Today is fourteen months since I looked across a small hospital room at Jeffrey’s dad and agreed it was appropriate to donate his organs. A powder keg of energy lights up my body and has all weekend. I am weepy and lonely and confused on how to pass time. Without weed or alcohol, I vacillate between complete boredom and needing anything to help me take a break from the intensity of integrating how lonely I feel. I told Heather no one is witnessing my life. There is no one here to know I did my laundry, vacuumed, made myself dinner, or worked out. There is no one to come home to and explain that I felt very emotional after going to a movie last night. Dottie and Carla can only provide so much validation of my existing and it mostly comes from them in the form of demands for pets, walks, and feeding.

    I woke up still in a somatic lightening storm and knew I could only alleviate it by walking. I took Dottie to Upper Park and headed straight up Monkey Rock, losing the trail as water seeped out of the Earth absconding clear pathways. Wisps of cirrus clouds reminded us Earth dwellers the vastness of the atmosphere. In contrast, damp lava rock anchored the ground peppered by green grasses nourished by a wet winter. There has been so much gray weather since November I bought a SAD lamp. Lived in Seattle sixteen years and Baby bought her first SAD lamp because she could not delineate the edges of depression and grief and overcast weather. It is likely placebo effect, but I do think it helps me wake up in the morning. I sit with coffee with the SAD lamp on for 20 minutes while I watch my progrums (spelled how I say it in my head) before I start the day.

    As I walked along the canyon, Dottie trotted ahead of me, looking back every so often to make sure I was still there. I never walk with her off leash as I do not trust she will have good manners when seeing another dog. Dottie always gets so excited to show other dogs how well she can play, but not all dogs have the patience to let her show them. A pesky, loving little sister. Today we chanced no leash, and somehow did not come across any dogs for Dottie to perform for. We walked mostly alone, the occasional trail runner passing us, pairs of female friendships coming their way back down. The air was crisp, the kind that burns your throat when you take a deep breath. The warmth of the sun embraced my body between the knife cuts of the whispering breeze. I asked myself “Is that you?”. I find Jeffrey in the moments where two things are true at one time. The air bit with bitterness and the sun defrosted my insides. The canyon is hibernating and alive. I feel both the weakest and the strongest I have ever been. There is some metaphor tied to Jeffrey’s bipolar diagnosis here, but I am not sure how to paint it.

    I took Jeffery to Upper Park when we visited Chico for his birthday in 2023. I feel him when I am there. Just as film would splice back in time the memories of a loved one gone, I braid together the pieces of him in parts of Chico I loved. I know he would have loved living here. Chico is a container; a place my body knows is okay to be honest and messy. It arguably held the messiest parts of me, the parts that forged in the fiery template that became the barometer of everything I ever did after leaving and since coming back. I always tell clients that even in the messiest, most traumatic childhoods, the body knows where the nervous system formed and will feel quieter. Mine formed here, in the spaces between finches and dark-eyed juncos dancing in the winter sun. In the sincere “good mornings” offered by each person I passed by.

    I have not had any THC since 12/30 and have noticed a considerable lift to depressive symptoms. I no longer feel shame, despair, or fear of never clawing my way out of this hole. I cannot know if that is because of THC’s biochemistry leaving my body (withdrawal is 30 days), a natural cresting of the Grief, or something else. I am sharing in the event anyone else is wondering if THC is having unintentional side-effects. I am not at all claiming a forever abstinence from it but am relieved to not feel so weighted in my experience of living. I told myself 2025 was my year to survive, that I would not judge the way I remained alive the first year of living without Jeffrey. I knew I would need to reevaluate if the techniques were worth keeping and am doing that now.

    The most painful part of 2026 is realizing I can no longer say Jeffrey died last year. He died fourteen months ago, but it is no longer last year. Jeffrey died in 2024. I can feel the energy of my own want to move past this experience, to be in something new. But then I remember I never will move past it. This is who I am now. This is part of me. It is forever. Jeffrey did not die last year; he died in 2024. Fourteen months ago, today. I will forever be chasing the feeling of his wonderment about the canyon alongside me. Chest tightens as Grief sits on it. Tears form and fall. I gasp for breath and realize I was not breathing. Dottie trots back toward me and stands leaning against my thigh so I will pet her. We keep walking. The sun is whole-hearted and the breeze is bitter. Neil Young Helpless starts playing in my headphones. I am alive.

  • Unattractive Gray Box

    Last Friday, a friend posted about the time and date for a community member’s Hero Walk and I had a panic attack. I remembered what it felt like to be posting the same updates for people in my life about your Hero Walk and immediately without warning left my body. I watched myself at the Hero Walk. I watched myself in the room with you. I watched what it looked like to watch me post about the Hero Walk online, to be the people who learned you died. Just as quickly as I left my body, I came back, gasping for air, standing up from the sofa and trying to get to the kitchen sink so I could splash cold water on my face. I grabbed an ice cube. Earlier this month, I saw a doctor and received medication to help with panic attacks, but I have never taken medicine like this before. I was nervous in my panic to try it without someone being around. What if my body does not like it? What if the panic gets worse? I laid in bed at 7pm and turned on Law and Order SVU. I am rewatching old episodes because they do not require much focus. It is interesting to notice how much Stabler bothers me now. His macho, patriarchal ideas of how to be a man are grating. The panic subsided as I watched season five attempt to explain why conversion therapy is wrong.  I was asleep by 9pm and slept until 7am the following morning.

    On Saturday, I sorted all of my mementos into new boxes I purchased for whenever I was ready to sort them. I found a card written by my best friend in second grade thanking her for the Sky Dancer I gifted her. I looked at photos of people whose names I cannot remember, found evidence of my past relationships, of my sister’s past relationships. Of my father’s and my mother’s past relationships. I found birthday cards from my father’s mother who I only remember in images. I read all of the carefully dated and filled cards from Grammy and reminded of all the evidence of her past relationships. I sorted napkin drawings and love letters and poems and and took photos of the things to send people from my past. Here we are, I was telling them. Here is the evidence of who you are in my life. I kept these things to remember you, to remember how you made me feel, to remember the complexity and delicacy of loving and being loved by so many people.

    On Saturday, I also touched all of your shirts. In sorting the mementos, I pulled out the things that are you. You cannot mix into the other boxes. You require your own. A few months ago, I bought an unattractive gray storage container so I could consolidate all of you into one place. I was in the storage aisle at Target for a long time deciding on a container. How do you select the container that fits all of you in it? What color represents the things you no longer need because you died?

    Before Saturday, you were scattered all over where I live now. I would open my bedroom closet to grab a sweater and see the Panda bear with your heartbeat recorded on it be the ICU nurse. The panda sat atop the quilt the organ donation family coordinator stamped your hand onto. I had a container in the hall closet of random artifacts we found while mom and Phil packed to move me from Washington to California in January. Your shirts were in a moving box in the office closet. I needed to organize these things so i can choose when I look at the remnants of you. I also wanted to see what I had been avoiding looking at. What does all of you fitting into a box look like? I do not know what to do with everything I have left. Your wallet? You do not need those credit cards anymore, but I am not ready to let go of it all. What if I regret giving them away? So all of you lives in an unattractive gray box all together in my office.

    After consolidation, you are now in the photo of us on my dresser from when we sailed on your dad’s boat over 4th of July. We listened to fireworks echo across the islands and felt the power of the explosions in our bodies. You are in your deodorant I still cannot throw away in the bathroom cabinet above the toilet. You are in the urn your father made for me, the one with wood from your cane and remnants of the tree in front of the family home you grew up in. The urn has circular cuts on the sides. Your father explained them as portholes, as if you are looking out from inside a ship. We cried as he talked me through what your urn is, cried as I scooped your ashes into the jar that sits within the urn. Ashes got onto the kitchen counter and I wiped them up with a Clorox wipe. You are in the photo-booth pictures from your fortieth birthday celebration that sits next to the tiny pocket-sized penguin Jena gave me when you died on my desk. You are in the half of the neon MuirWood sign that I still have in the office closet. And you now you are in the unattractive gray box.

    It occurs to me that someday all of these things, these remnants of you, will all be and only be in the unattractive gray box. The shirts I am keeping might not ever become a quilt because I am stuck on finding someone who I can trust to help me make it. I am scared of your shirts getting ruined and not having them anymore. I smelled them as I refolded them and put them in the box. They smell like Downy and dust. Your smell is not there anymore. How many times will I move the shirts before I do not want to move them anymore? If I ever date, how do I explain your photo on the dresser? I suspect that eventually the photo on the dresser will not feel appropriate there anymore. I want to believe whoever is next will understand the remnants of you I have in my home, but it feels extraordinary to imagine such a person could exist.

    On the day I consolidated all of your things into the unattractive gray box, I also reorganized my entire office, removed the trash, worked out, and took a bath. I did not eat until 5pm. It was not until 8pm when I was surprised by a panic attack while walking Dottie that I realized I had not been in my body all day. I journeyed to another place in my mind to organize your things, to touch all the memories of my life. I am scared I will always flip between feeling everything and feeling nothing. I walked outside in the cold for thirty minutes, audibly crying. Your welcome, Meriam Park, I hope it was a good show.

    I gave up on New Years Resolutions a long time ago. I do not like the pressure of failing at something when my life has thrown so many curves that limited the execution of a goal. I do like settling into a Word if it appears to me, although, I do not put pressure on myself to find it. In 2025, my word was “surrender”. I knew I needed to surrender to the experience I am having of grieving you. I knew I did not need to resist my feelings of losing you, of having lost myself in my relationship with you. I sit here today trying to grapple with what it means to have made it through this year, but I do not have the words. I think I am still too in it to see what it all means. As I considered what my word should be for 2026, the only one that comes to mind is “acceptance”, but even that does not feel quite right. Maybe I am still in the hangover of surrender. Maybe I keep surrendering until a better idea appears.

    One of my new favorite podcasts is called Shameless, “the pop culture podcast for smart people who love dumb stuff.” In 2025, one of the hosts, Michelle, had her first child and also lost her mother to brain cancer. In Shameless’s New Years episode released today (recorded in the future of Melbourne time), Michelle reflected on her difficult year, on losing her mother, and on not trusting setting intention for the 2026 because loss had changed her view on predictable safety. Michelle’s 2025 word was Presence and two weeks later she learned her mother had brain cancer. I really, really related to Michelle’s fear. I am scared to set any intention that goes beyond meeting myself where I am because any other expectation feels wrought with potential heartbreak. If there is any lesson in 2025, it is that I can get myself through anything, I am a good advocate for my survival, and nothing will every hurt as much as losing someone you love. Sometimes meeting yourself where you are is all you can muster. And that’s okay.

  • A Wishing Flower

    In the past two weeks, I spent dozens of hours switching between old episodes of Housewives of Potomac and podcasts which analyze each episode. I would rather immerse myself in the carefully constructed drama of wealthy narcissists than examine whatever it is I feel whenever I remember the new layers of grief I felt this week. I am in a feeling that takes my breath away and the familiarity worries me because I know where it leads. I do not like this pathway. How was I just in a reality where this was not present? I had the giggles on Thanksgiving for the first time since I can remember and now I am here? It feels like it will always be this way, grief showing up like a nosy neighbor, a confrontation by all the weight of losing you.

    On Tuesday, a colleague brought a case involving a young widow client to our consultation group. As she processed, I could feel all Parts of me show up at once. The Widow. The Therapist. The Griever. The Colleague. The Trauma Survivor. The One who wants to feel anything but all of this. As The Widow began discussing what this client might be feeling based on my own experience, The Therapist saw looks on my colleagues faces, looks of people who got a peak into the enormous complexity of my grief. The Colleague realized parts of this last year people do not know, the parts The Griever has not written. The Widow spent a lot of time this year wondering if you tried to die, if you completed suicide. The Widow, The Griever, and the Therapist saw a look on one colleague’s face that made me question if my peers realized the hole The Griever keeps trying to crawl out of. The client is in month two of their new hell. In my January of this year. Without knowing them, The Widower knows where this client is and it is very dark there. It is unfeeling and numb. It is one hour at a time. It is surviving.

    While I can make space for the parts of the client story that were so different, for the unique ways different bodies process traumatic loss, The Young Widow knows a version of a story most people, including my colleagues, will hopefully never know. This complexity is alone. The Therapist, the Trauma Survivor, and the Widow know clinical intervention for this client is only to make space until the client’s body shows signs it needs more support. Their body will know because the body always knows. It will panic, become depressed, anxious, and show signs of distress. Until then, the therapist should create safe attachment, make space, and validate. There is no therapy in the first year of traumatic loss. There is only containment and, as needed, education on why the body is reacting the way it does with interventions to help support the reaction. The Colleague and Therapist felt deeply aware of how triggered I must have looked to my peers. I cannot do anything about what they saw. What they saw was raw and honest. This is who I am now, the amalgamation of all these fucked up Parts. They are wounded and they have knowledge. The One who wants to feel anything but all of this cannot process it all. It is too much. I am kaleidoscopic.

    When I close my eyes, I see trying to heal from this grief as attempting to reconstruct a wishing flower. I can feel the texture of the dandelion seed, that soft, delicate prickle. The breeze is Time taking each seed away from me. I will never have all the seeds back. If grief has a timeline, I feel like I am in the few seconds after opening my eyes having made the wish. I did not wish for this. The panic of the task at hand and how long it will take overwhelms me. It is a nightmare. It took me a year to get here and every seed I manage to capture is another painful piece. There is still so much work to do. I am surviving.

    After that consultation group where all my Parts came, I had seven client sessions. By the end of Tuesday, I was exhausted, inhuman. As I ate dinner on the couch, I let my mind wander and began to sink into the reality the consultation group even happened. I am a person with all these parts. I opened my phone and another clip from When Harry Met Sally came up, the infamous diner scene. We watched When Harry Met Sally on our New Years Eves together. You were shocked when I told you I had not seen it. My memory tells me you loved the movie because of your mother, because it was her favorite. I feel apprehensive about my remembering around this detail and worry I am dishonoring your mother and your loved ones by disclosing it. For me, the movie is you. It is surreal to have the tragic death of a Hollywood celebrity trigger the capturing of a new seed of my loss of you. I put my phone down. I watched more adult women fight with each other. I went to bed. Tomorrow we will start again.

  • Touching Time

    I found your Christmas stocking. It rests on our coffee table mocking me, comforting Carla who sits on it throughout the day. Cats believe anything remaining in a space it should not be is theirs for the taking. Blankets, post-it’s, purses, stockings. Your Christmas stocking has a “J” on it. I bought us new stockings the second holiday we had together. I thought we deserved something nice, our own traditions. You put a lavender essential oil and a lavender face mist in my stocking. I got you a new orange pen and a small notebook from Lucca. You felt so thoughtful to me. What do I do with this stocking? When I pulled it out of the box of holiday decor, I pondered if I knew anyone whose name started with a “J” who might want it but could not think of anyone. I imagined driving to Goodwill and dropping it off, but that does not seem right. Randy suggested donating it to a free little library for someone else to have but giving it away at all feels wrong. I can put it in the box I purchased but have yet to organize for all of your things. Something is stopping me from sorting my memories of you. So here I am, nine days later, wondering what to do with the parts of you I do not feel ready to lose or let go of. Grief defined.

    I am in a space of saying “yes” to social gatherings although still have little mental bandwidth to make the gatherings happen on my own. I spent the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend reconnecting with a friend and meeting his wife for the first time so our combined three Boston Terriers could play together. It was lovely and hilarious. Dottie humped their dogs despite my discouragement and it was so nice to remember the presence of this person I cared about so long ago. After departing, I wondered what it would be like to come across a herd of Boston Terriers in the wild and determined it would be comically noisy and frenetic. Can you imagine hiking in the wilderness and coming across a gaggle of these tuxedoed creatures? Afterwards, I attended a friend’s child’s fourth birthday. I had a nice time and left at that point where I could keep drinking or drive myself home.

    Both social interactions back-to-back awoke the Part of me that is lonely since you died. Most everyone I met was my age or around it. All of them were partnered and/or married. Several had children. We were not ready for kids and now I face a life where I may never have them. I do not want to be a single parent and am comfortable with this decision when I revisit the position I am in. But still. I sobbed when I got my first period after you died and realized no part of you would be living in my life anymore. I was devastated. Being around people my age is a stark reminder things did not happen the way I hoped they would. That you died.

    Part of me feels like I massively failed at this thing everyone else seems to figure out. I can say the things one says to remind themselves their worst fears are not reality, and I do say those things. I did not plan for this. This is not my fault. I cannot predict the future and some of these fears may not happen. Saying these things does not temper this Part’s fear that I will always feel lonely. What if I am too broken to have the things I still want for myself? Gulp. There is no comfort to assuage this fear. It is primal, rooted, and obstinate. The next person who comes into my life has to be able to help me hold the large amount of heartbreak I experienced in my life. And there is just so so so much of it. It feels impossible to expect this kind of person to exist when I can barely contain the devastation myself. I am looking at your stocking as I write this. It is laughing at me.

    When I got home from this child’s birthday party, I decided to watch Train Dreams. I am reaching for more grief content. I crave camaraderie in what I am experiencing, a validation that I am lonely in a profound way and other people know this feeling. If other people know this feeling, then I am seeable. I exist.

    I read a review that described Train Dreams as a movie you do not watch, but drink in. I could not agree more. The film exquisitely captures the simple and extraordinary experience of living when faced with profound loss. What does it mean to live when ths much devastation exists in you all at once? Watching Train Dreams felt like watching what I feel like when I explain to my dad that I touched Time when you died. Because I feel like I touched Time when you died. I do not have another way to explain what it feels like to lose you. I feel like the trauma of losing you is not so much in the integration of a world with you in it (before) to a world without you in it (after). Although this is clearly a massive piece of it. The trauma of losing you is somewhere in the murk of having a new and profound understanding of how tenuous all of this living-stuff really is. I feel like I gained an overpowering knowledge of all the universe’s truths.  I have an image of Father Time touching my forehead and giving me a data transfer of everything there is to know about everything. Train Dreams showed me this feeling, the feeling of touching Time in a way I can barely articulate in writing. I worry I sound delusional to people as I try to describe it, but then I remember anyone who thinks I am delusional has not experienced this kind of loss. This kind of loss is delusional.

    Reading about Robin Lovesong’s near death experience in her memoir Loving Bravely is the closest I have come to understanding this new knowledge articulated with words. But I did not die and come back to life the way she did. You died and you did not come back. Sometimes I wonder at what exact point did I received this knowledge. When did Time touch Me? I suspect it happened when I used my entire body to move you from your side to your back and began pressing into your chest at a count the first responder talked me through while on the phone. “I need you to slow down and go to my beat, Natalie” the first responder directed. I followed their instruction. I touched you when you were dead, attempting to bring you back for more than 8 minutes before the paramedics came. I touched what it means to be living when you were not. My life will never be the same. If that is not Touching Time, what is?

    After my last session today, I checked something on Facebook and the memory I posted on the one-month anniversary of you dying popped up. I forgot today marks thirteen months since I found you on our floor. I feel relieved and devastated to have forgotten. I am no longer counting down and tracking this timeline which means I am making progress in healing. But, what does it mean that I am not? On r/Widows, what I read is correct: the second year is harder than the first. So far, the second year is full of realizations contextualizing the meaning of your loss. I opened the box of Christmas ornaments and realized it had been two years since I had seen them. Last year I was living with my mother and stepdad in the haze of having lost you, counting the hours and days as they passed, looking for any milestone to anchor me to Earth. I was in my mother’s Christmas, a familiar place during an unfamiliar time. Time passes more quickly now than it did one year ago. I have had a year to fine-tune my skills. And, including healing, I am more skilled at looking for the signs that you lived at all. Your stocking is on my table because I do not want to forget. Because, alongside the fear that my life will always be lonely, is a fear that I will forget what it feels like to love and be loved by you. What happens to the things I put in your box? Touching time, indeed.

    Note to self: Touching Time will be the title of whatever memoir this blog becomes.

  • Wicked Dread

    I touched it again, that feeling between the space where I am now and the reality of your death. I touched it and had a panic attack. I am learning the panic attacks are the result of a confrontation in my body as what it feels like to lose you meets the space where I am, wherever this is. I sat next to my dad while Glinda’s heart broke and tears poured down my face in succession, one hot glob after another. How did I get here to this moment? I was watching a movie, completely rooted to the ground. Embodied. And then I remembered what it felt like to lose you and had to talk myself out of following my thoughts down the pathway toward panic. You were just grounded, and now you are not. The flash of lightening is so fast I cannot see it, let alone catch it. It feels tenuous, the elusive bubble every child tries to hold in their tiny, inept hands. I sat next to my dad negotiating with myself. Am I breathing? Yes, but not consistently. Count your breaths, Natalie. Focus on the box. What is becoming so difficult is that these moments feel like feeling you, and, aside from the panic, I do not want them to end. I want to feel what it feels like to miss you. And I still cannot. I have a panic attack. It is a new layer to the grief. A new room.

    The anniversary of your Hero Walk was the 17th. The Sunday after Grammy’s funeral. I retreated to my apartment from mom’s early so I could sit in the space of trying to remember what it was like to watch medical staff line the hallway to escort you to your final surgery. That day, like so many the week you died, is so difficult to remember. I have flash images of seeing Randy and Adam, of your father and sister, of your close family friends whose names I cannot remember.  My parents were on either side of me. I was wearing your orange shirt we splurged on at Bloomingdales the month before you died because I wanted us to have one nice thing we felt confident in. The family representative invited me to say goodbye to you, but I was not ready. I did not expect to be given space in front of so many people to say my last words to you. I lost my legs and learned that when people do that in movies, it is real. My body stopped working and I would have fallen if not for my parents on either side of me to hold me up. I walked up to you and stared, sobbing, unable to speak. I think I said that I could not do this, but I do not remember. I do not remember my last words to you. It haunts me.

    I had a brain-spotting session tonight and focused on the feeling of dread I have when I have to do anything new since you died. I dread meeting with prospective clients for the first time. I dread their first sessions. I dread going to outings where I do not know everyone or have not been to the venue. I dread going to a child’s birthday party. I dread leaving my house. I dreaded having guests in my home and having to be “on” for so many people at my Grammy’s funeral. I logically want to do all of these things and know I will be okay doing them, but the dread lives in a gnarled, mangled mess in my stomach, anchoring me to the past.

    The therapist took me through the dread and wove it into the feeling of my safe space. My safe space is Rockaway Beach sitting next to you. My therapist does not know you are there, but I do. We were so happy there in room 27 with Beamer and Dottie, Beamer in his cone because Dottie scratched his eye. I imagined the sun on my face, and the cold breeze reminding me of the wide spectrum of things that can be true all at once. I noticed the glitter on the sand and the sherbert of the sun saturating the clouds as it sank below the horizon. We thought it was so beautiful, this life we created with our gremlin dogs. And it was.

    As I processed the dread and revisited the beach with you, I smelled the way the sea released against the shore and heard the waves as seagulls skipped around the surf. And somewhere in that process, the feeling of dread emancipated not out of my body completely, but out of my soul. The thought of sitting with my entire family during Thanksgiving felt less overwhelming as my brain married the idea that I can get through a year of losing you, therefore I can do anything.

  • 11:11

    One year ago, I arrived at the hospital for rounds anticipating guidance on removing your life support. The medical team informed us the day before tests confirmed you were not responsive. Your brain did not register any of the pain you definitely should have been in. I already knew. I knew when the neurosurgeon named Natalia told me on November 9th to keep hope up, to talk to you and play music. She told me we never know what kind of healing the brain can do and while I knew she was right, I knew you were not coming back. You did not have it in you to heal from this. We did not know how long you did not have oxygen when I started CPR. She introduced herself as Natalia when I arrived at your room. I remember because I tried to address her by title, as Doctor, but she corrected me. “I’m Natalia”. She’s the only name I remember from that week because her name was close to mine. She asked if she could hug me before leaving. I said yes and she gave me a strong, sturdy, caring hug. I played Reggae Saturday on KEXP because you loved Reggae Saturday. That’s what we would have listened to. I held your hand. I told you I loved you and that it was okay to move forward. I am realizing now you were the first of two people I have told this year it was okay to move beyond this life to whatever is next. The second was Grammy.

    After Natalia hugged me and left, I sat in the room listening to Reggae Saturday with you alone for a couple hours before others arrived. I do not remember who came or when. I know your sister was there and your brother. Your dad and his partner. My parents were making separate journeys from Chico. I had not slept while staying at Adam and Randy’s. I lay awake and cried, in shock. I got to your hospital room by 6:30am. Dottie was staying with Adam and Randy because I could not leave her alone. I sat on the sofa in your room and focused on breathing. Inhale, 1-2-3-4. Hold, 1-2-3-4. Exhale, 1-2-3-4. Even today when I have box breath like that to help my body settle, I remember sitting in that room on the pleather sofa that was easy to clean. I remember looking at lifeless you and out the window at the oranges and yellows of fall. I remember the beeping as they tried to thin your blood. The machine did not work and the nurse was so kind as she overly explained that “this happens sometimes”.

    I was hugged by your neurosurgeon on November 9th. On November 10th, we learned your brain was unresponsive. That you felt no pain. My mom and I walked to your room and a doctor asked to speak with me in a quiet room down the hall. I knew she was going to tell me you were not responsive and actively thought “remember this hallway Natalie, it’s going to change you.” I remember the wall of professional photos of the medical team. I wondered who the interior designer was of a hospital and how did they get that job. As the doctor told me, a conversation I cannot remember, a woman walked in on her phone seemingly unaware I was learning you died. That woman was probably stuck in her own nightmare. Not getting the hint from the palpable despair in the space, the doctor who told me you were brain dead asked her to leave. The woman startled, apologizing for intruding. My mom held me as I wept. We went home. There was nothing left to do. I told Facebook you were not going to wake up and the first of many panic attacks gripped me. Sitting on our sofa in our home, I lost my breath and hyperventilated as I attempted to touch the reality of you dying. The same reality I still struggle to touch. The energy of trauma is other-worldly and powerful. No wonder it splits us.

    On November 11th, I arrived at the hospital a little late for morning rounds. My parents were with me, and I think I asked them to stay in the family waiting area until I knew what was happening, although I cannot remember. I did not want to crowd your room and we were only allowed so many people. The medical team stood lining the hallway and I parted the members of your family blocking the entrance to your room so I could set down my water bottle and jacket. Was it raining outside? Or was it sunny? I think it was gray? So many details I cannot remember. I squeezed your hand and told you hello. Your eyes were half open, the sparkle no longer adorning the cerulean anymore. There was a thin layer of white crust under your eye lashes as your eyes attempted to keep moisture in them. I grabbed a tissue and wiped it away. I tucked your hair behind your ears. I joined your family in the doorway to your room and tried to understand what the medical team was talking about. They gave updates about your nutrition and fluid intake.

    I think it was on the 11th, although I cannot remember exactly what happened and when, that your sister said the quiet part out loud on behalf of all of us: why are we gathering to discuss your nutrition and fluid levels when your brain died? I did not understand what we were doing at Morning Rounds and was so grateful when your sister interrupted their updates to ask. We arrived on the 11th expecting to be talked through pulling you off life-support, but here we were getting updates on your nutrition. Your sister knew you would not want to be laying there like this. We all knew you were not supposed to be suffering any more than you already had. It was not what you or any of us wanted. I did not hear the reasons and went back to your bedside. Someone told me we were supposed to meet with a team at 10am. Everyone dispersed for a walk, a cry, tea, or coffee. I do not remember where I went.

    On the 11th, at 10am, your father, his partner, your brother, your sister, myself, my mother, and my father all sat in the room where I learned you died just the day before. Across from us, two women introduced themselves before quietly and kindly discussing next steps. They asked us to talk about who you were to us. I do not remember much of the conversation. Eventually, they explained organ donation and how it works and I realized they were preparing us for a conversation I had not anticipated. You were an organ donor, and your body had not completely died yet. Just your brain. And, amidst all of this, we could help you help other people. Several of us indicated approval of the idea. It was unquestionably what you wanted. The donor coordinator asked your dad one final time if she had permission to move forward. He made eye contact with me and I nodded (or did I say something?) and he looked to the coordinator and confidently said “it feels like a no brainer. Let’s move forward”. Here we all were in a situation where you were brain dead, having opted to be an organ donor. It was a literal no-brainer. The air in the room hung heavy as everyone quickly assessed if we should start crying over this remark or start laughing. I started laughing, tears filling my eyes. You would have thought it was funny. We looked at the time, and it was 11:11am. So, on the 11th day of the 11th month at 11:11am a group of us defined a day meant for Veterans and Hope as something else entirely. We formalized your time of death.

    Today, I woke up at 5am and could not fall back to sleep. I cried as I remembered where I was one year ago and what it felt like to not know what would happen to you. I tried to exercise but quit one-third of the way through because I could not stop crying while on the bike. I canceled the massage I scheduled because I poorly planned it to take place at 10:45am and I knew I could not stop crying or relax as 11:11am passed on the clock today. I am sitting in my dry, but sweat drenched clothes, wearing the KEXP “You are not alone” shirt your dad got you and your Eddie Bower printed fleece pullover we bought that one time at U-Village. I carved into a candle my mom gave me yesterday. The candle was made by a shaman to burn on 11/11, the angel number, the number of hope and remembrance. My mom had been saving it for herself for years, always out of town on the day or not able to get to it. She handed it to me last night after I made Grammy’s cookies for her memorial on Friday. “I realized you could use it more than me”. I carved the words “love”, “healing”, “wholeness”, “alignment”, “rest”, “peace” and “laughter” on one side. I carved your name on the other. I am going to sit here and watch it burn in between episodes of whatever I end up watching. Because today marks one year since you died and I do not know what else to do but try and remember and focus on what’s to come. David Kessler once said “Anxiety” is the Present and the Future while “Grief” is the Present and the Past. I’m firmly in Grief today. It is a relief to be here.

  • Orange Sky

    Yesterday, I found a poem you wrote me while deleting random notes on my phone. You wrote the poem on September 30, 2024, a month before you died. I had not read it in a while and I started crying. Then I had to work and put away my feelings for everyone else.

    Mornings
    The sky blushes softly, the night fades away,
    As dawn breaks the silence with whispers of day.
    Golden hues scatter, the twilight’s unspun,
    The world stirs in awe at the rise of the sun.

    Birdsong floats on a breeze through the trees,
    Carrying secrets found flitting o’er soft morning seas.
    Each leaf seems to tremble with joy at the sight,
    Light spilling forth, golden, pure, and bright.

    There’s dew on the grass, tiny diamonds alight,
    Each moment a wonder, each second delight.
    In the stillness, the future reaches out with the sun
    Every dawn a promise of a day with you begun.

    Last night, while Alexi Murdoch sang to me about an orange sky, I remembered what it felt like to be absolutely enamored with you. The first chord strummed on the acoustic guitar, and I froze in place, closing my eyes to limit sensory input. I felt my breathing slow, and my stomach relax as joy filled my center, the feeling of warm chocolate chip cookies. I tried to hold my attention there, on the feeling of utter relief. My body is exhausted trying to hold me together, a rigid container bursting, a small aquarium for an orca. I tried to keep my attention on the sensation of buoyancy in the ocean. I felt like I feel in those moments of serenity when I finally notice I am drifting to sleep.

    I managed to stay there for the first in your love before I started sobbing and hyperventilating. The impression of you so close to me feels like every shiver in every horror film. Am I cold or is this you? I touched the feeling of your warmth and was slapped by how far I have fallen from it. My body cannot hold both realities without panic. It is almost a year, and I still cannot hold the pain of your dying alongside how much I love you. Realizing I still cannot hold both caused me to panic and hyperventilate more. I stood up to splash water on my face and fill my water bottle. As I walked back to my bed, I realized this panic attack is because my whole body remembered what it feels like to lose you, that, if I could have felt it all, this is how I would have reacted to finding you on my floor. I split in two when you died and have not yet integrated the halves back together.  

    Tonight, I was reading what I wrote above and realized that I was able to stay in the feeling of loving you for thirty seconds before panic took over. Given I could not feel how much I love you at all 363 days ago, thirty seconds feels like a big accomplishment. Shifts are happening after all.

  • Are you here with me?

    Grief took me walking again. We walked on the South Rim Trail named for Annie Bidwell. Grief led me and Dottie through grass the color of butter and underneath trees still dotted with the leaves confused by a 45-degree morning and an 80-degree afternoon. I imagined the leaves asking if they should be dying or thriving, but that is probably projecting. We stopped at Bear Hole and sat down as cyclists gathered themselves to finish their ride. Bear Hole looked different from the South side of the canyon. Smaller. I wondered if that is because of the slope of the canyon or because there was no fog shrouding the sky, just us and the autumnal sun. Probably both or something else completely. You would know the answer.

    As I walked, I wondered out loud if you were walking with me and tears fell down my face as I registered profound anxiety at not knowing the answer. A runner gave me a look of pity as she passed me. Well… are you? Are you here with me? Does my wondering increase the possibility of you walking alongside me? I mean, we think therefore we are… right?

    If Grief takes me on walks, Depression keeps adding weight to the ball shackled to my ankles. I cannot tell where Grief ends and Depression begins. They run alongside each other taking turns punching me in the stomach. Since Grammy died, I am back in the wing of the Grief Palace I cannot map as it hides from me in total darkness, no distinction amidst the shadows. It is not suicidal here, but it is dark. I have been in this part of the Palace before, and I do not like it here. It comes with dreams of children dying, people chasing me, and torture. I dreamt two nights ago that I lived in the world where the acceptable punishment for a child stealing food was nailing a cabinet door to their head until the nails fell out. Dark.

    My body feels like it is straddling the precipice of panic and I am spending more time managing my stress with focused, mindful breathing, through exercise, and through dissociation. I want to drink and have more weed because I want to feel anything else but this fire in my chest, pain in my hips, and the knot in my stomach. I want relief from overwhelming dread. I do not drink and have more weed because I know it will not actually make me feel better and my mostly sober brain feels judgement over “doing the right thing”. I feel like I will always live in this wing of the Grief Palace and the Part of me who knows I will escape this place is so fatigued from trying to rationalize and remember for everyone else. Today, I watched Twisters and understood the moment a background character let go of what was keeping them from being blown away. I may not be in the middle of a tornado, but I am exhausted. How much longer do I need to hold on?

    I found you on our dining room floor 359 days ago. I somehow managed to get myself through 359 days of you not being here. And now I have to get through the next two weeks.

    I keep repeating the plan to myself, so I know I have one. You will get through this, Natalie. You know how.. You’re already doing it.

    Important Dates:

    • Saturday, November 8th will be one year since I found you on the floor of our dining room, did CPR, rode in an ambulance, and my life changed.
    • Monday, November 10th will be one year since the neurosurgeon confirmed your brain was not feeling pain.
    • Tuesday, November 11th will be one year since they declared you and we gave your body to organ donation.
    • Thursday, November 13th I have therapy in Sacramento. Hailey and Tootie get into town.
    • Friday, November 14th is Grammy’s funeral.
    • Sunday, November 16th will be one year since your Hero Walk.

    I am off from work from the 7th until the 16th because I cannot imagine having to hold other people when I can barely hold myself. I did not make plans for any specific days because I do not know what my body will need as it remembers learning you died. My only idea for an activity is to sort and organize mementos and the things that belonged to you. I figure this will help me honor you, keep me busy, and give me space to remember the parts of us I want to. The parts of you I love so much. I also plan to go for walks with Dottie if the weather allows it. And to sleep.

    I want to ask someone to wake me up when this is all over.

    But it never will be.

    Shut up, Betty.

  • The Wisdom of Ruth Anne Cline

    I took today off because I did not know what I would need. I still do not know. After drinking a cup of coffee, catching up on Marco Polos, and watching an episode of Dawson’s Creek, I felt like I would crawl out of my skin. I thought about running errands, but going to the grocery store is something I would do for Future Me. And today is not for Future Me. Today is for Past and Present Me, for Grief. Instead of filling my gas tank, I walked in Upper Park for almost three hours with Dottie. We walked from the parking lot to the end of Yahi Trail and back up Middle Trail. We were mostly alone aside from a jogger, a cyclist, the man who cleans the portable toilets, and a dog walker with a blind dog. The cloud cover hung low and I could not see the top of the canyon. The creek was silty from the recent rainfall. Leaves were finally succumbing to cooler temperatures and dashes of crimson and gold and chocolate accentuate the oak and sycamore trees. Birds rang the alarm as we entered their territories. A breeze whispered. Dottie smelled everything and kept alert to any sound behind us. I listened to a podcast and kept walking. One foot in front of the other. I’ll know when I’m done and it’s time to turn back. One podcast ended and I turned on another. I could have walked forever except eventually the spiderwebs got thicker than I wanted. We turned around. As we walked out of the canyon, blue skies framed the landscape. There is a metaphor there somewhere, but I do not have the creative bandwidth to know how to better articulate it.

    My grandmother, my mom’s mother, died on Wednesday evening. On Tuesday, my mom called me while I was throwing a tennis ball for Dottie at the dog park that is too small for meaningful acceleration but will do the job. It was 3:29pm. I never heard my mom sound like that before and I knew she was not in her body. She has 24-48 hours. Edita was with her, a close friend. I’m glad she was not alone. I knew I needed to get Dottie home and immediately go visit Grammy. My mom was not in town attempting to visit my sister, my nieces and nephews, and friends before completing a training in Texas. That psychic said my mom would not be in town when Grammy died. I knew I needed to be there with my uncles while my mom and Phil figured out getting her back. I put Dottie in the house and drove to be with them. I hugged them and witnessed them reassure their mother it was okay to go, that Jesus would hold her. That her siblings and mother were waiting. Tears lurked in all of their eyes. The last time I saw one of them cry we were at breakfast after his house burned down in the Camp Fire. Flashback. I hung back when they left so I could have a moment with her alone. I told her I was proud to know her. That mom was coming. That Hailey wanted to thank her for being a safe place when we did not know we needed it. That I wish she could help me understand what I am navigating with losing you. That I love her.

    My mom did make it back on Wednesday morning. She wanted to go directly to the place my grandmother was cared for. I met her and Phil there. I knew it would be difficult for Phil. We were in the week that Phil lived exactly one year ago. He lost his mother, Marie, the lady who loved yellow, on the 25th last year. My parents were going to face losing their mothers the same week one year apart. Eventually Phil left and my mother and I spent Wednesday afternoon with my grandmother. There is poetry there somehow. My mom’s brothers came in and out as time allowed. Eventually needing a break and to wrap up some work things, my mom wanted to go home. We watched a Leanne Morgan sketch on Netflix and I remember watching the same one while in a hotel room driving from Seattle to Chico the week you died. Leanne Morgan is funny and I will not let my sadness and trauma over you taint that. After watching, my mom and I went back one last time. We were tired, but there was not a good reason not to see my grandmother. I kissed her forehead before we left one last time. It’s okay, you got this, I said to her. We knew this was coming. Dementia was there for ten years and cancer most recently. We read the text on Thursday morning. My grandmother passed on Wednesday evening after we left. God keep her. I’m not even religious, but God keep her.

    I do not know how to place these two griefs in the same universe, let alone in my body. As I watched the body of my grandmother labor to keep breathing so we could all say goodbye, I kept thinking about how much this was the way death is supposed to be. This is the loss we prepare for. The loss we expect because of age, because brains cannot function forever, because bodies eventually get cancer. And your death, your loss, is not the way death is supposed to be. People are not supposed to die at 41 because of alcohol used to medicate their mental illness. We were supposed to grow old together, or at least reach five years old. Today, we would have been five years. What am I supposed to do with that?

    I have wanted to ask my grandmother so many questions since you died. How did she recover when Lloyd passed away? Lloyd was a soul connection unlike many of the others. My grandmother and Lloyd were so in love. Hailey and I could feel it as kids. There was this radiant kindness to him that saturated the way we grew up. It matched Grammy’s in a delicate way, still holding the strength and subtle beauty of gossamer. What did that feel like to her? To have him one moment, then not the next? Did they talk about it together? How did he reassure her about life after him? Or did he? I came back from the class trip from Washington DC and I knew immediately by the look on my mom’s face something was wrong. Lloyd passed away while I was touring this country’s ode to patriotism. My mom, sister, and I lived with Lloyd and my Grammy after my parent’s separation and eventual divorce. I watched what happened to Lloyd and felt it, even if I was across the country when he graduated to the next experience. But I was in junior high, too young to know what that could feel like for his partner. For her. And I wonder all the time now.

    A year ago, you guided me through the butterflies at Pacific Science Center. We turned four years old. It was a day that made me feel hopeful, that reminded me of the good parts of us. The parts of us who were curious and wanted to know things. That wanted experiences. That knew we could be so much more than the life we were living. You opened a part of me that let you lead me through the butterflies even though I dislike the idea of their wings brushing my skin. We talked about what we wanted for our wedding, the idea of eloping in Muir Woods for all the obvious reasons. Even with everything going wrong, I trusted you completely. I knew we would navigate it together.

    I knew I would need today off work as I try and grapple with what it means that we could have been five today. We could have been living in this apartment I am in now, together. We could be going to family dinners on Friday, together. To the California coast on weekend trips. Walking Dottie in the park. But you died. In twelve days will be the anniversary of when I found you on our dining room floor. We were four and then we were nothing. It took my family years to get used to the idea of my grammy dying. Will it be the same way with you?

    I have been so terrified of the ways in which losing you will alter who I am. Will I ever trust anyone again? Will I always be afraid they are lying to me about their alcohol use and die? I keep telling myself I would rather be alone than settle for less than I deserve, but did losing you unreasonably raise the bar? I am working so hard to heal. And then my Grammy died. And I do not know how to hold both things at once. I feel like I am in a snow globe trying to decide which flakes to notice. There is glitter everywhere. My attention is fragmented.

    On Saturday, I completed an already scheduled Grief Art Therapy session because I knew I would need time to understand what it means that we will never turn five. I processed what it means to be in two different griefs, to not understand them as both being part of my life and how I am supposed to function. I was so in my head. My mom named on Sunday morning that her feelings need to be processed privately, not in front of others. I instantly understood something I have always felt: there is not always space for our feelings all together, the energy of our feelings together is too overwhelming. No wonder I had not cried while staying with my mother. There was somehow not space. Not on purpose. But how does one process this loss? After Grief Art Therapy, I raced back to my mom’s because her brothers were coming over to reminisce about their mother and help me write the obituary. My mom had signed me up for the obituary which makes sense. I am the writer. I had to write my Grammy’s obituary the same week we would have turned five. What is that?

    It is one of the most distinct privileges of my life to sit at my parent’s dining table with my mom and her four brothers as they remembered who their mother was, how she made them who they all are. I am upset I did not record the conversation for us all to remember. Not one of my grandmother’s children has the same experience of her. There is two decades age difference between them. My grandmother was fifteen years old when she became pregnant with the oldest, and thirty when she birthed my mother. All five of them have individual experiences of anger at my grandmother for abandonment, for the ways she did not always perfect motherhood. And those experiences are incredibly valid. Yet, all of them told stories of her kindness, of her generosity, of her quirkiness. All of them articulated how she impacted them, taught them to not judge others, to hold the complexity of multiple stories, to have Faith. For all the flaws, for all the ways she might have hurt them because we all eventually learn our mothers are humans dealing with the weight of human problems, she modeled always loving them. And they all see and feel that love. There really was nothing my grandmother was prouder of than her children. As I sat documenting and witnessing all of them tell their individual experiences of her, and add more kindling to the story-fire, I felt so aware of how proud she would be of her legacy: these five humans and the love they continue to show everyone else was her gift to all of us and to everyone who knows us. To me. And to you. It is because of my grandmother that I eventually met you. She taught me the generosity, and the love needed to hold the storyteller in us that wanted to grow past four years old. I feel I suddenly understand the answers to all the questions I wanted to ask her. It is her values that allow me to know I will survive losing you. It took losing her to learn that. Because if she could survive all that she did and still have these beautiful children, my family, to show for it, then I can survive losing you. Grammy taught me Love leads everything. And loving you is something I will always be proud of. It’s what she would have wanted.

    When I got back from the park, I made myself breakfast and then committed to being a blob all day. Except to write this, today is for feeling sad about the fact we will never turn five. Tomorrow can be for everything else.

    Grief for Grammy
    Grief for You