i was on a date the other day when someone asked me if many people close to me had died. (i know, i know, not a super normal date convo, but that’s the way i like it.) i thought for a moment before saying not really and listing my step-grandmother, my grandfather, my aunt and uncle. a couple kids who i went to school with.
a little boy who in Z’s class lost his first mother recently. his mom told me about it in passing at pickup as our sons hurtled down the sidewalk ahead of us. i recognized the weight on her shoulders and pulled her into a hug before turning to sprint after our children.
all week i’ve been thinking of their family. the complexity of that grief. considering the weight of that loss and what it will mean now, and in the future.
i’ve also been thinking about how when someone leaves this world their energy ripples out. how sometimes it causes tidal waves worlds away, in the lives of people they never met.
anyway, on the date, we sat in the grass and watched the clouds and put our feet in the water and looked at roses and talked about grief and loss and kindness and beauty. because it is always both. always everything.
it reminded me of a poem (below) i wrote this past winter shortly after my uncle passed away.
sending love always to anyone out there in the waves.
SAD POEM: going to that Marshalls off Fairview to look for funeral clothes
written in January, 2024
when my grandpa died my dad called
from halfway across the world to tell me
he was abroad with his wife, i was in the kitchen
of that little studio on Bedford—the one with
the wall of windows and the yellow couch.
i don’t remember any of the words he used
it was nearly a decade ago now—
—the same year i let my friend live with me
when her own mother and house grew
too heavy and i tried my hand at mothering
for the first time. both myself, and her.
her high school report cards
mixed in with my college transcripts
and letters for study abroad programs.
we tattooed our hands and smoked
cigarettes by the dumpsters out back
and waited for buses that never came only
to crawl back into the Queen sized bed
we shared for months but neither of us
have a single memory of sleeping in.
an unmitigated disaster—the
mothering—but not lacking in care.
anyway, my dad flew in for the
funeral and so did my sister and
her lesbian best friend and i didn’t
have any clothes to match my short
boy hair and and we all went to that
Marshalls off Fairview and my dad
bought me something that didn’t make
my skin crawl when i looked at myself in
the mirror and on the morning of the service
my aunt looked at me and said “you look
like a goddamn boy lillian” and my step
brother who i hadn’t seen in years stood
like a rock in the church doorway and
something cracked inside of me while
some stranger was telling me something
and all i could think of was my dad as a boy
and i couldn’t stop sobbing until my whole
face was and red and raw and streaked.
that aunt died too—the one with the sharp
tongue and strong hands. her funeral was
at the same northeast church a few years
later. she hadn’t talked to most of our family
in years by that point. except my grandma.
but she had come to Christmas the year before
she died and had made me try on her new
fur coat, thinking maybe it would make me
squirm but i didn’t even think about the animal
cruelty because i was so distracted by how
tiny her wrists were—so i just told her over
and over her how impossibly soft the fur was.
anyway, now, this year, this week
my uncle’s funeral will be held at that
same church. and my own sister hasn’t
talked to me in years. and i have short
hair again and again no clothes to match
and instead of mothering a high schooler,
i am mothering someone else’s toddler—
because she couldn’t and i thought
maybe i could—and he is a deep well
of need—like her and me and all of us. and
it is grey and not cold for January and
i am watching him spoon mac & cheese
into his mouth wondering if i should drive
us over to that Marshalls off Fairview
to look for funeral clothes.
The conversational tone of this dances through the dark of it. Those “anyway”s— the way they thread these funeral beads of dead humans, selves, names, furry animals, and those empathy dead-end cul de sacs that the speaker has to turn around in while trying to go to a funeral and just exist. It makes me think how funerals are really for the living- the dying is already done. It makes me think of all the new starts in a life after so many kinds of funerals. I can’t wait to come back and sit with this. And that sounds like my kind of date. 💜 thanks so much for this.
I lost my mom and my only sister within a year of each other, and I am still trying to learn how to grieve. Thank you for these beautiful words, for the normalcy within the chaos, for the memory of who we are to everyone and who they are to us. I remember trying to decide what to wear to my mom's funeral, and I ended up picking something that was so strangely not representative of me. I'm still trying to figure out why. XO