A day less sunny

In which our Hero goes out for a long drive on a cold winter day to visit someone who isn’t there

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about grief. It’s where my mind goes when things are quiet, worrying at the little dangling thread end in my head, tugging on it, chewing on it, trying to make it line up, or go away or just make sense. But grief doesn’t make sense, does it. It’s not a rational thing, because the rational thing is to accept that mom is taking the sippy-cup away from me (especially since the one she’d picked up belonged to another child), and figure out what to do next. But then emotions jump into the fray, all those wonderful feelings and instead of moving to the next thing, we avoid the issue, or we deny it, or we process it, or we distract ourselves, or, if we’re as honest as my little niece, we bunch our fists, close our eyes and bawl our eyes out.

Whatever.

I know things about sorrow. Intellectual things. Like the stages of grief, and the importance of finding that vanishingly thin line between wallowing and avoiding. I know statistical things like the average recovery time from a relationship ending is about a third of the length of the relationship. I know that grief is a process, that we handle things as individuals, that we can’t benchmark ourselves on anybody else. And I know that we can’t allow other people’s expectations of our grief to shape us either. You can be sorrowful in a drum circle or at a concert. Pain is magic that way, it’s so very portable.

I know emotional things about sorrow too. I think it’s inevitable that as an adult, you gather the experience of loss about you almost the same way that you collect your favourite things. Not so much in the choices but in the way they are gathered in a menu of moments and stories that can enlighten you or just make for funny stories at a cocktail party. And then there are the deep hurts, the ones that rock your perception of yourself, that alter the reference points that define yourself, so that every single second of your life is now a relative measure of “before” and “after.” And even that might be tolerable if there was only *one* before and after, but we get to have many.

I know things about sorrow. Intimate things. Things that you learn when it’s the middle of yet another night when you can’t sleep after a day of not noticing that everything tastes like ashes. I know that agonizing knot in the back of the throat that you can’t speak to get out and you can’t swallow to keep in. I know the wind and the rustle of the branches under the night sky and it doesn’t matter if it’s winter or summer, it’s always cold and lonely.

So I know sorrow, maybe without authority, but with credibility. And yet, equally, despite some griefs that cut me to the core, I’m equally aware that I’ve also been sheltered from things.

My family comes as immigrants to this continent, and I was reflecting on the fact that this time around, at the parties, there are grandchildren. There have always been babies, but now those babies have their grandparents in the room. My generation have no grandparents. I mean, we do, and collectively, I can safely say that we love them, but I haven’t seen my grandmother in many years, and she’s the only one I have left. I know a few of the great aunts and uncles, largely from pictures or the occasional memory of a visit of a few minutes, but… we’re orphans of distance here. And that’s kept us safe, in a way, because we’ve been so young here.

But my uncle passed away, in the small hours of the morning. And that’s the first time that I can truly say there’s been a death in the family. I mean, we’ve had relations die before, but they were distant, and strangers. Where this is a man I’ve known since I was a teenager, married to an aunt I love, who gave me three cousins, including the very first Bob of us Bobs. That still doesn’t make us exactly close, I only saw him a few times each year, and we didn’t talk so much, but he’s family.

His family was with him, waking without an alarm or being called or anything, just collective insomnia and bathroom breaks and such incredible trivia that allowed them to be with him when his breathing just got slower and shallower until he was done. Of all the crappy things about this, I’m glad for that one miserable gift. And this has been a progression, over the last few years, so there’s been time to… well maybe not make peace with it, but to at least get past the wrenching shock of it.

The fucked up thing is that alarms were already set, we were planning an early morning pilgrimage to just see him at least once more before he left us, so it was just a matter of hopping into the car and driving.

Me, I’m okay. As I’ve said to the Mouse on occasions, that’s mostly the only flavours I come in, in any case. Today it’s been pretty easy going with cattle-prod spikes of pain, just at moments. Thinking of his kids on the way there, seeing the empty hospital bed in the house. And one other thing.

His family is… okay. My aunt, a pretty lady whose face must surely have been born smiling, is smaller and coping despite her obvious loss. But she’s been preparing for this for a long time. The kids are… tired but also able to smile and laugh. Again, I think circumstances allowed them to prepare for the moment a little, though I worry how they’re going to keep that steadfastness over time; I doubt I could. I’m sure I could be as functional, but I doubt I’d keep any of my already few remaining social graces. The older Bob played Taboo with me and his smiles were genuine.

His parents are the ones taking the blow the hardest. In its way, it makes sense, they’re the ones who have lost their baby boy. I speak a little of their language, but I know how to ask them if they’re hungry and have no words to even describe grief. All I could do for them was run for anything I saw them need, and just have a tissue that was near enough for his mother to notice and dab at her eyes.

Mostly, the main value of my presence was just in being a lightning rod for the youngest Bob, who I’m reminded that I like a lot. He’s an 11 year old boy, the day after Christmas and today I was what he needed. Someone to talk to, someone to explain gently with patience his big sisters don’t have today, why he won’t be going to the funeral home (he was excited to go). He’s such a troublemaker, such a little boy, such a sweetheart. And he wasn’t being insensitive or thoughtless, he just needed the reminder that he needed to keep quiet and look serious for today. Other than that I was just running and getting chairs or doors or doing some primo field-photoshopping to get a nice clean solo photo of my uncle.

Later in the day the families with babies arrived. I think it was good because it gave most people a reason to add just a little silly, in the faces, in the winks and blinks and ruffled hair.

I don’t need or mean to dwell on today. But I do want to note something I saw, that one other moment where I felt the loss most.

My dad found my aunt in the kitchen, by herself. I mean there were others around, but they were facing away, or doing other things, and I think I may have been the only one to witness the moment they were in. And he hugged her tight, kissed her cheek and said… something. And she held ontohim and cried, just a moment.

I don’t know what he said. I don’t know what he could have said. I’m honestly too shy to ask, when it was a moment when he comforted his wife’s baby cousin; I feel too small to intrude on that. But I wish I was like that. I want to be brave and compassionate like that. Because I think that after her sisters, he was one of the few who reached through her pain today.

Goodnight Uncle. I’ll keep an eye on your kids.