The Many Faces of Grief
On July 13th, it will have been exactly five years to the day that my mother left this earth.
How “long” a certain time period feels or sounds is relative, though. When I was 22 and swimming through the fog of those first few days of shock, I could never imagine that I’d have even an hour of peace, joy, or contentment in my life again. Only time strengthened the muscles that held my grief so it didn’t feel like I was crushed under that weight anymore.
But today, I’m 27 and I feel I need my mom more than ever. Sometimes it feels like 22-year-old me is still stuck inside my brain and takes over sometimes, screeching to be let out. I feel I can’t grow up without my mother to guide me.
The problem is that 22-year-old girl is still me, and would be no matter what. All of the women I’ve ever been and ever will be live inside me. I cycle through each of them every day. They exist together, because time is not linear.
My memories only fall into two categories now: before and after. With Her and Without Her.
I recently saw a show by Michael Cruz Kayne, Sorry For Your Loss, and he had some poignant thoughts on grief and losing loved ones. One thing he said that stuck with me was, “They are always just in the other room.”
Five years, ten years, five minutes — however long it’s been, she’s simultaneously here and not here, with me and with my father and with my brother and on the beach and in heaven, all at once. She’s just in the other room.
Because time is not linear.
A thought that struck me and replays in my head often is: One day I’ll have lived longer without her than I did with her.
It’s hard to imagine how these memories will feel to me then. I’m inclined to believe it will feel like yesterday.
People often compare grief to waves, but I don’t see it as an ebb and flow. That feels too clean, too linear.
And because time is not linear, the awkward teenage girl, the party sorority girl, the lost recent college graduate, and the grieving young woman who never imagined she’d make it this far, are all parts of me at once.
A man at a bar the other weekend said I seem like a happy person, and that’s when I realized just how disconnected and oblivious people can be; some people just aren’t attuned to the signs of that aching sadness. They aren’t wired to see it so plainly: it’s like infrared vision.
Or maybe that’s just a reflection of me and how I project myself into the world, shoving the darkness into the corners. I put on a mask to force myself to forget.
Or maybe it’s not an act, but just one of the many women that live inside me. Perhaps I am a kaleidoscope, a prism with a different face sparkling at any given moment.
There are multitudes in all of us — trauma will have us believe this is a problem. Mental illness will force one of those faces to the forefront, make us pick one.
While trauma forces us to grow up, grief can elicit the inner child in all of us.
It helps to remember that my mom didn’t just disappear. I know her well enough to imagine her here with me. What I’m learning to realize is that when that inner child needs her, I can always just go into the other room.
