An experimental and exploratory newsletter on grief and loss, nostalgia for what was or could have been, and the way it all comes back to us in our sleep.
Do you know who you become when the people you love start to disappear? I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I don’t have an answer but I do know a few things to be true. There is BEFORE loss and there is AFTER loss and I’m trying to make sense of it all; the nostalgia for what was, the knowledge that nothing stays the same, the imminent growth that emanates from the darkness. I have so many questions and so few answers. So much to hold and so few hands. Do you think you could hold it all with me?
When I think of loss, I think that each grief was different, called me by a new name and watched me change. There have been deaths I’ve witnessed and ones I’ve missed. Deaths that were inevitable and ones that were shocking. The last one almost broke us all in its electric and dark delivery. How do you recover from something you never saw coming? How do you get back up after that first phone call?
I don’t know the answers but I do know that I dream of dead people more often than I don’t. Each time my grandfather shows up, he is 10 years younger than when we lost him and he is happy. My grandmother, she shows up, too. In some dreams, she is as I remember her and in others she is kind. She died alone in a hospital somewhere in Staten Island and it is something I’m not sure I’ll ever get over. Did she call out for someone she loved? Did she know her own name?
Look, I know you feel it, too. Isn’t it funny that missing is missing no matter the person? Grief is a thing that belongs to all of us.
I don’t know what it all means. I don’t but maybe I do or at least I am trying to. I know that bodies are only here until they fail, that lives only go on until they don’t and I know that sometimes you miss the end. Yes, this sounds morbid, and no, it isn’t. This is the overflowing, this is full of living. You see, I love the sorrow in the same way I love the joy, never does one exist too far from the other and never is a person whole without both. And I am so full of joy. I am so full of grief.
This place between joy and grief is one I am always trying to dive deeper into. Two things can be true at once and I am nothing if not a stickler for reminding you of this. Elizabeth Alexander says, “perhaps tragedies are only tragedies in the presence of love, which confers meaning to loss. Loss is not felt in the absence of love,” and isn’t it glorious that you can love someone so much as to be absolutely undone by the loss of them? There is no simpler way to put it: the grief hurts so much because the joy was once so present. What does it mean to welcome it all?
When it gets to be too much, I think of Ada Limon saying “you can’t sum it up. A life.” And of the Head and the Heart saying, “If you don't know what to make of this then we will not relate,” and of Joy Harjo saying, “at this table, we sing with joy, with sorrow.” I take comfort in the fact that maybe someone, somewhere, knows what I’m talking about. And maybe that someone is you.
Still, I have so many questions and still, so few answers. But I do know this: 6 years ago, I held my great grandfather’s old and tired hand while he lay dying. He took his last shaky breath and I swear I heard him say, “it was beautiful and now, it’s time.”
Mentioned above: The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander (book), “The Hurting Kind” by Ada Limon (poem), Rivers and Roads by the Head and the Heart (song), and “Perhaps the World Ends Here” by Joy Harjo (poem). They are all beautiful and tragic and worth your attention.
Our first featured ghost is my grandfather, Maurice (Bompa), elected by my mother since the anniversary of his passing happens to be tomorrow. Here’s something I wrote to be read at his funeral that I missed while I was living in Denmark:
When I find out that my grandfather has taken his last breaths while I am approximately 7,000 miles away, I spend a lot of energy cursing the Great Big Thing called Time. I ask the universe why, of all the hard years he’s faced, this had to be the last one. I ask why over and over again and all the universe has to say for itself is this: it is what it is. I wish it could be different but it can’t be. I’m sorry. And as I settle into this truth, I stop cursing Time and start reveling in Memory.
I remember how standing next to him felt like standing next to the strongest shield imaginable, one that would never let anything bad touch me. I remember all of the funny faces sent to me across the dinner table and his deep belly laughs whenever I sent one back. I remember how he cried at my first gymnastics meet. Me: tiny and tumbling through the air. Him: huge and blubbering in the stands.
And I spend a lot of time remembering the game we used to play. The one where he would count down in Flemish while we clanked our hands together. His: the largest I’ve ever seen. Mine: seeming smaller than even the nail on his pinky finger. When he would get to the end of the countdown, something I could only tell by the way his face would light up since the whole chant was in a language I did not know, we would put our hands behind our backs and cover our teeth with our lips. The first one to laugh and show teeth would be deemed loser, making it a game of great silliness; something my grandfather was a master of. So we’d get to the end of the chant and desperately wait for someone to crack. And then, the best moment of all: when his face would break wide open, laughter rising from somewhere deep within him, picking up steam as it rose through the whole big length of him, so much so that when it finally erupted from his throat and left his mouth, it shook the entire building.
I think of that laugh now and how I will keep it in reserve for all of the hard moments. And while the loss of it makes me ache, I feel unbelievably filled up by the fact that I have been loved by this man with the wild laugh. A love that so resembles his laugh - big and full and brimming at the edges, starting at the deepest, truest point of him. Always there, not always heard. But oh, when it was heard, it became a marvelous, moving thing.
Maurice Cornelissen, February 11, 1931 - January 21, 2020.
Here’s a conversation I had with my grandma (Meme) about her time as a hospice social worker.
Me: What was it like to be with someone at the moment of their passing?
Meme: It was such a fascinating thing. It seemed that one moment they were really alive and then it was as if their life force, their soul or whatever you want to call it, truly escaped their body and they were just a shell. Where they had once been warm and alive and vibrant, in an instant, they ceased to exist. I always really wondered, where did those souls go?
Me: Where do you think they go?
Meme: I think that they’re all around us. I don’t know about heaven but I do feel like they’re all over.
Me: Did you ever have any mystical or spiritual experiences with the people you were with?
Meme: Many. There’s a transition from complete stranger to intimate companion that’s necessary in that kind of work and it was a kind of spiritual experience for me. To feel love and compassion for someone who just a moment before was a stranger is so intense.
Me: Do you think the years you spent doing this work prepared you for the loss in your own life?
Meme: Not a bit. I knew the physical signs of death but do I think a person is ever really prepared? No.
Me: Were you with Bompa [my grandfather] when he died?
Meme: No, I left for one second and he died holding your mom’s hand. I think he wanted to shield me from witnessing the pain of his last breath. And I think he chose mom because he loved her and knew she could handle it better than me. And he was right.
Me: And after all these experiences, what comes to mind when you think about death?
Meme: I think that if you’re really curious about life then you’re curious about death. And I do feel curious. I was never repulsed or fearful and I always wanted to feel like I was learning something new, in greater depth. If you understand how short life is then you live it differently. You connect with as many people as you can.
Amidst all the grief, here’s some joy from the past two weeks:
I'm bawling, this is really beautiful. I admire your grace with language, it is evocative and expressive and clear. It really touched me, thank you for writing so honestly.
This is so lovely and special. It's such a treat to read your writing, you have a way of letting people in your world that's both super comforting and evocative. I bet you'd write great YA, or whatever you want to write. Filling out your questionnaire was shockingly healing and full of feelings thank you<3 <3<3