The Ugly Side Of Grief

Before our kids were born, I told Mark that even though he wasn’t Catholic I wanted the kids to be raised in that faith. As we made moves for his career, I got to know different churches where I would take the kids and we would sit front and center so they could see what was going on and hopefully behave. When they were in grade school I enrolled them in religious ed. It was every Monday after school and they absolutely hated it. There were other Catholic kids on our street who went to the same church but also attended school there. “You’re not really Catholic,” one of the girls said to Will one day, “you’re only half-Catholic because you go to a public school.” When Will came home and told me I was first enraged and then thought it was hilarious. Talk about casting stones at the ripe old age of nine. “How you behave and how you treat people,” I told Will, “determines your faith and values and not where you go to school. Now go back outside and don’t give it another thought.” But I gave it plenty of thought, dug my heels in, and got more involved in that church and then another. I was committed to teaching my kids about a higher power and showing up weekly to make deposits into the Bank of Faith.

Last Monday I called a friend and it went right to voicemail which was odd. I tried again an hour later and the same thing happened. Later that night he called and told me he was in the hospital with six broken ribs and a concussion after falling down the stairs. He would stay there until Friday and is now in rehab. My hairdresser, whom I adore and have been going to for twenty years, sent a text that she was also in the hospital after her immune system went haywire fighting off bronchitis and a sinus infection. She’s still there. My neighbor signed off to finalize a divorce after 44 years of marriage. Another neighbor whose life fell apart exactly when mine did, who has sat with me many a night as we both cried and made dark jokes that I’d dare not repeat to anyone else, has to move because the house she has been renting for 15 years is being sold.

All of those things made for a strong case of heartache but the week had another trick up its sleeve. Last Thursday the med center Mark worked at announced the purchase of a cryogenic electron microscope. This was a huge win for scientists in the Midwest who have had to rely on sending images to research facilities on the east and west coast. Six years ago when we were visiting Mallory, Mark scheduled a meeting with a scientist at UCLA who had access to a cryo-em. Mark wanted images of proteins he was working on, and besides being very expensive, the wait to get them was close to a year. After many emails and phone calls, he was hoping an in-person meeting would bump up his wait time. “So you’re going to schmooze him,” I said, and he told me he was pulling out every stop to get things moving along. It didn’t work and he would impatiently wait, call and check in, and shake his fist that such an incredible research tool was only available to a few. The initial happiness I felt when reading the news quickly turned into something different.

On the flip side of the grief coin is raging anger. I hate feeling it, I hate when it takes over, I hate it. It rears its ugly head when life goes on in ways that are the new normally crappy, and it awoke from its slumber and barged in the door over news of that microscope. At my regular appointment I unloaded on my therapist who said anger was fine so long as it is directed in the right way and asked me what I did with all those feelings. “Well,” I said, “I dug in my garden until my knees throbbed, and the next day when it was too cold to do that I cleaned my basement. I ruthlessly got rid of things, gave Mark’s very expensive treadmill away, mopped the floor.” “This is good,” she said, “this is a healthy way to handle these emotions.” So how come it doesn’t feel good? And why does drunk dialing when you’re pissed off get such a bad rap? Because my dead husband dreamed of that microscope being at the university where he worked so I need somebody in charge to answer the phone and explain to me why he isn’t here to use it.

On Friday I sat on my porch until midnight talking to my neighbor about her impending move and cryo-em. “You know what,” I said, “it should have been Mark that came home months ago to tell me the inside scoop, it should have been Mark showing it off because he was the one who was writing the equipment grant to get it. He was the one who saw the value in it and now all of that is gone.” “Here’s the thing,” Jen said, “Mark was the kind of guy who could build the room. There was nobody else who could envision what he could, nobody who was able to see that far in advance. He could create it, build it, he could even put the roof on it, but he couldn’t run it alone. He needed everyone else to do their part. They’re running the room that would have never existed if it weren’t for him.”

My first big attempt at gardening has in recent years been neglected for other spaces. As we sat on the porch, I told Jen I needed to work on it, needed to amend the soil so everything had a better chance at thriving. A few days later I carted a wheelbarrow of compost from her house to mine but first had to dig up my chocolate vine. It was healthy and filled up a lot of space but it had become invasive. It wrapped around other plants and choked them off, traveled then would root and shoot off in a new direction. I didn’t know how much until I started digging and two hours later got it all up. It wasn’t lost on me how similar this vine was to how grief travels, how just when life seems steady and I think I’ve got a handle on things, a tendril reaches out, grabs me by the ankle, and pulls me to the ground.

In the many things I’ve read on loss, the common thread is that you become another person in the after, you hone in on what matters, and simplify. You can’t help but be different but the rest of it I already knew. I knew Mark was the best thing that ever happened to me. I knew that how we raised our kids was our most important job. I knew how we treated each other inside and outside of this house mattered regardless of deposits made. I knew very early in my life that when it came to a foundation of love and faith I hit the jackpot.

I don’t know that so much anymore.