Grief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Clifford thought of the way he had been betrayed by the woman Connie, and in a contagion of grief, tears filled his eyes and began to run down his cheeks. He was weeping for himself. Mrs. Bolton, as soon as she saw the tears running over his blank face, hastily wiped her own wet cheeks on her little handkerchief, and leaned towards him. "Now don't you fret, Sir Clifford!" she said, in a luxury of emotion. "Now don't you fret, don't, you'll only do yourself an injury!" His body shivered suddenly in an indrawn breath of silent sobbing, and the tears ran quicker down his face. She laid her hand on his arm, and her own tears fell again. Again the shiver went through him, like a convulsion, and she laid her arm round his shoulder. "There, there! There, there! Don't you fret, then, don't you! Don't you fret!" she moaned to him, while her own tears fell. And she drew him to her, and held her arms round his great shoulders, while he laid his face on her bosom and sobbed, shaking and hulking his huge shoulders, whilst she softly stroked his dusky-blond hair and said: "There! There! There! There then! There then! Never you mind! Never you mind, then!" And he put his arms round her and clung to her like a child, wetting the bib of her starched white apron, and the bosom of her pale-blue cotton dress, with his tears. He had let himself go altogether, at last. So at length she kissed him, and rocked him on her bosom, and in her heart she said to herself: "Oh, Sir Clifford! Oh, high and mighty Chatterleys! Is this what you've come down to!" And finally he even went to sleep, like a child. And she felt worn-out, and went to her own room, where she laughed and cried at once, with a hysteria of her own. It was so ridiculous! It was so awful! such a come-down! so shameful! And it _was_ so upsetting as well. After this, Clifford became like a child with Mrs. Bolton. He would hold her hand, and rest his head on her breast, and when she once lightly kissed him, he said: "Yes! Do kiss me! Do kiss me!" And when she sponged his great blond body, he would say the same: "Do kiss me!" and she would lightly kiss his body, anywhere, half in mockery. And he lay with a queer, blank face like a child, with a bit of the wonderment of a child. And he would gaze on her with wide, childish eyes, in a relaxation of madonna-worship. It was sheer relaxation on his part, letting go all his manhood, and sinking back to a childish position that was really perverse. And then he would put his hand into her bosom and feel her breasts, and kiss them in exaltation, the exaltation of perversity of being a child when he was a man.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  She had managed even a priest, a wedding mass. She had kept referring to the priest as “Father Dan.” It was only when he stood to actually do the ceremony that I realized that “Father Dan” was Daniel Berrigan, one of the activist Berrigan brothers. It seemed that Daniel Berrigan had been an advisor on Roland Joffé’s The Mission. It seemed that Liam had played a role in The Mission. Tasha had designed the entire event, in other words, as a piece of theater, the very kind of moment Tony liked best in the world. He particularly would have liked Tasha forgetting the wafers for the mass, tearing up long baguettes to pass in their place, but Tony was dead by the day of that wedding. Tasha died in March 2009. This was never supposed to happen to her. On her twenty-first birthday her father had made a film of the lunch he gave in her honor at Linda Lovelace’s former house on Kings Road. John had wished her happy birthday, on film. Quintana and Fiona Lewis and Tamara Asseyev had sung “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” on film. After lunch we had untied rafts of white balloons and watched them drift over the Hollywood hills, on film. These are the lines from W. H. Auden that Tony quoted that afternoon as “the best twenty-first birthday wish you can make for anyone”: So I wish you first a Sense of theatre; only Those who love illusion And know it will go far— Tasha and her father and John and Quintana and the whippets and the parrots and the white balloons, all still there, on film. I have a copy of the film. So I wish you first a sense of theatre— So her father would have said at the wedding in Millbrook. The second such warning, this one not at all sudden, came in April 2009. Because I had been showing symptoms of neuritis, or neuropathy, or neurological inflammation (there seemed no general agreement on what to call it), an MRI was done, then an MRA. Neither suggested a definitive reason for the symptoms at hand but images of the Circle of Willis showed evidence of a 4.2 mm by 3.4 mm aneurysm deep in that circle of arteries—the anterior cerebral, the anterior communicating, the internal carotid, the posterior cerebral, and the posterior communicating—at the base of my brain. This finding, the several neurologists who examined the images stressed, was “entirely incidental,” had “nothing to do with what we’re looking for,” and was not even necessarily significant. One of the neurologists ventured that this particular aneurysm “doesn’t look ready to blow”; another suggested that “if it does blow, you won’t live through it.”

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  The fur mama in me was not having it when I saw animals listed on a lower rung (parents, too . . . really?). I gotta be honest, though, as upset as I was—I know how deeply my heart ached after Buddy died—I also felt a little shame as I briefly internalized this hierarchy, considering this guideline for what and who I should (and should not) be grieving, and to what extent. So I decided to do some digging—did others feel the same? Quite the contrary, I found plenty of folks who felt just like me: alienated. Many bristled at the idea that the loss of a pet (or grandparent) was somehow lesser. One woman shared how the loss of her dog brought up other, old grief, too. The grief train. These sentiments were upsetting but also validating. When Buddy died, I wanted people to bring us lasagna; thankfully I have friends and family who did. In fact, my mother brought all the Italian food in the state of Connecticut. But people don’t always think to do that when a pet dies. The loss isn’t considered grief-y enough to warrant comforting Italian dishes. As any devoted pet parent knows, losing a pet can be just as painful as losing a person. Losing a parent can be just as devastating as losing a partner. It doesn’t matter that they may have “lived a long life.” The same is true for a grandparent. It’s not childish to be shattered when you lose your elders, no matter how old you are. (And no matter how old they are, either . . . a hole in your universe is a hole in your universe.) The idea that I should be able to get over my grief more easily for my grandma, who died two weeks after I was diagnosed, or my dad, because these losses are inevitable—expected even, and therefore less traumatic—is just not true. The same is true for miscarriage. You’re not “overreacting” if you’re devastated. The moment you decided to conceive your connection began. Just as there is no hierarchy of love, the same is true of grief. Instead, grief is shaped by what someone or something meant to you. So if you’ve ever felt shame or judgment around your grief, like you’re just being a big baby for feeling it—or worse, like there’s something pathologically wrong with you—I’m hugging you from afar. In my experience, when people judge you, it’s a reflection of their own wounds and fears, not you. Remember, you don’t need permission to feel your big feelings, for as deeply or as long as you need to. From my big grieving heart to yours, you feel what you need to feel for whatever and whoever has left your world. I’m a grown-ass woman. I’m a feeler. I’m sensitive. I love fully when I love. And damn it, I really miss my dog.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Think Julianne Moore in the movie Magnolia . She loses her shit on the pharmacist who calls her “lady” when what’s really going on is she’s desperately struggling with her father’s terminal illness (sounds familiar). Distraction or projection as avoidance seemingly gives us a free pass so that we don’t have to go into the deep, dark places and risk acknowledging just how thoroughly and completely our hearts are shattered. But that acknowledgment will come anyway—often manifesting itself within our bodies. We don’t even have to be in a full-blown grief-a-palooza to experience visceral symptoms of loss. Depression. Anxiety. Appetite loss or gain. Digestive issues. Fatigue. Malaise. Lower immunity, aches, pains, inflammation, insomnia or too much sleep, heart issues, and so on. We vacillate between nausea and ravenousness. Normal things like going to the grocery store can be totally overwhelming. Showering is an award-worthy achievement. What’s left of our memory goes on the fritz. Before grief, I’d sometimes forget where I put my car keys; now I forget what the car that I’ve owned for 12 years even looks like. As Elizabeth Gilbert so beautifully says: Grief carves you out—it comes in the middle of the night, comes in the middle of the day, comes in the middle of a meeting, comes in the middle of a meal. It arrives —it’s this tremendously forceful arrival and it cannot be resisted without you suffering more. . . . The posture that you take is you hit your knees in absolute humility and you let it rock you until it is done with you. And it will be done with you, eventually. And when it is done, it will leave. But to stiffen, to resist, and to fight it is to hurt yourself. Yet despite these concrete experiences of emotional and physical pain, avoidance remains a favorite coping mechanism. As a result, grief winds up being very, very lonely. The need to avoid our pain can lead to isolating ourselves from loved ones. For some, this may mean isolating from romantic partners, withdrawing physically and sexually, which pulls us further away from healing touch, oftentimes creating hurt and resentment in the other person—especially if they’re also grieving. When we’re struggling to understand our feelings, we may act out in insensitive ways, creating more distance in the relationship. I wish there were a Hallmark card for those cringey moments: Remember when I told you to “Fuck off”? Grief had the mic. I’m so sorry! At work, grief can play out when we get overwhelmed easily and are unable to focus.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  In his book Return to Life , Tucker described a young boy named Ryan Hammons, who could mysteriously recount specific details about a Hollywood agent in a previous life. Tucker was able to confirm that 55 of Hammons’s claims matched the real-life experiences of Marty Martyn, a Hollywood agent who died in 1964. Christopher Kerr, M.D., Ph.D., palliative care physician, end-of-life researcher, and author of Death Is But a Dream , teaches us that end-of-life experiences represent a continuity between and across lives. Through his research with dying patients, he discovered that in their final hours, many people experience peaceful visions. Dr. Kerr tells the story of a patient named Mary: “One day, she starts cradling a baby that nobody can see.” Mary’s first child was stillborn. Mary had confided in her sister about the baby but no one else. Her grief was so powerful, she had to bury it. “Mary, like so many dying patients, had physical wounds that could not be cured, yet her spiritual wounds were tended to. Often these visions—vividly real to the person experiencing them—are of people who have died before them, and they provide a great sense of comfort, peace and even joy.” While it may be hard to understand what’s happening in these moments, Dr. Kerr encourages us to not dismiss them just because we don’t have enough data or tools to explain them. “There’s this assumption that people have these visions because their brains are changing, becoming deoxygenated, or they are medicated and confused, but that’s not the case. We know that by looking at the brain; it’s not changing biologically or functionally. I think people are changing very much spiritually,” he says. When I considered Dr. Kerr’s words, I was comforted. I may not be able to objectively prove that Dad had changed spiritually, but that was what I felt. And when I thought about it, I realized that I was changing spiritually, too. SIGNS & SYNCHRONICITY Two days after Dad died, my mom and I went for a walk on the beach. It was Valentine’s Day, my 18-year cancerversary, and her first Hallmark holiday without him. Dad would have called me and said, “Hey, love, how’s my valentine today?” I miss those words so much. As our feet sank into the warm sand, I secretly searched for signs. Not dramatic thunderbolt kinds of signs . . . just affirming indications of Dad’s continued love. In grief, we often focus on what (or who) is no longer there in front of us. We naturally notice the absence of the person we love. A bed or chair they no longer occupy. Clothes that still hold their scent but hang empty day after day.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  When I considered Dr. Kerr’s words, I was comforted. I may not be able to objectively prove that Dad had changed spiritually, but that was what I felt. And when I thought about it, I realized that I was changing spiritually, too. SIGNS & SYNCHRONICITYTwo days after Dad died, my mom and I went for a walk on the beach. It was Valentine’s Day, my 18-year cancerversary, and her first Hallmark holiday without him. Dad would have called me and said, “Hey, love, how’s my valentine today?” I miss those words so much. As our feet sank into the warm sand, I secretly searched for signs. Not dramatic thunderbolt kinds of signs . . . just affirming indications of Dad’s continued love. In grief, we often focus on what (or who) is no longer there in front of us. We naturally notice the absence of the person we love. A bed or chair they no longer occupy. Clothes that still hold their scent but hang empty day after day. Special moments like holidays or birthdays, where their nearness is so deeply missed. My eyes can still find those places, years later, by simply observing the absence of Dad and, if I’m not careful, telling my heart he’s just gone. But that’s not what I want to believe. So I ask my eyes to see his presence, instead of just his absence. After walking in silence for a while, Mom asked how I was feeling. “Bittersweet,” I said. I’m here. Dad’s not. He’s not here to be thankful that I’m here. He’s not here to see all the changes I will make in the coming years, many guided by his advice, and his voice, which I continually hear in my heart. He’s not here to see me fall and get back up again. And yet, maybe he is . . . guiding me in a new way, I thought. In contemplating his continued presence, I found myself more open than I’d ever been to having faith in that which is unseen. As we walked out farther, arriving at the place where nothing but our grief existed, I saw it. “Oh my God, Mom. Look straight ahead!” There in the distance were two longstem red roses standing at attention in the sand. One for each of us. Instantly, I started to cry. Mom did, too. We hugged, then held hands as we marveled over these beautiful signs from above, staying there for what seemed like hours. He’s still here, I thought. He’s still here. Eventually, we made our way back to the parking lot, roses in hand. As we were getting into the car, I happened to glance into the first-floor apartment next to where we were parked. There I saw a man in his living room, hunkering down in his La-Z-Boy to watch a show on his TV. The title credits read “Surviving Death.” I got so many chills I thought I should take a COVID test.

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  my curtains in a moment. (Jer 4:19-20) His grief is expressed as a public, visible event—the actual invasion and slaughter of his people. He describes with remarkable vividness a near play-by- play of the disaster as it reaches his own bedroom. Nevertheless, that public event is matched by an internal wrenching in which his heart quakes and storms in fear and his very bowels are gripped by terror. In the poetry that follows he casts a cosmic image of the end of creation: I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked, and lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the air had fled. I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins, before the Lord, before his fierce anger. (Jer 4:23-26) But the poetry is more than the end of creation. Recall that I have suggested creation is a work guaranteed by the king. The king is the one charged to order and preserve creation, and thus the return to chaos implicitly announces the failure of kingship and its end. There is no creation because there is no king. The very thing that justified kingship has been lost. So whatever else, the royal folk are confronted with a future in which they do not figure. In the poetry of chapters 8–10, Jeremiah provides a rich supply of metaphors designed to break the numbness. First there is an image about the utter misreading of the situation. There is a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to weep and a time to laugh (Eccl 3:4); but Judah does not know what time it is: Even the stork in the heavens knows her times; and the turtledove, swallow, and crane keep the time of their coming; but my people know not the ordinance of the Lord. (Jer 8:7; see 4:22) It is crying time. It is death time and they imagine such time never comes. After a war scenario of charging horses, the prophet turns wistful: Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored? O that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain daughter of my people! O that I had in the desert a wayfarer’s lodging place, that I might leave my people

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  3. Prophetic ministry seeks to penetrate the numbness in order to face the body of death in which we are caught. Clearly, the numbness sometimes evokes from us rage and anger, but the numbness is more likely to be penetrated by grief and lament. Death, and that is our state, does not require indignation as much as it requires anguish and the sharing in the pain. The public sharing of pain is one way to let the reality sink in and let the death go. 4. Prophetic ministry seeks to penetrate despair so that new futures can be believed in and embraced by us. There is a yearning for energy in a world grown weary: “The age has lost its youth, and the times begin to grow old” (2 Esd 14:10). And we do know that the only act that energizes is a word, a gesture, an act that believes in our future and affirms it to us disinterestedly. In a society that knows about initiative and self-actualization and countless other things, the capacity to lament the death of the old world is nearly lost. In a society strong on self-congratulation, the capacity to receive in doxology the new world being given is nearly lost. Grief and praise are ways of prophetic criticism and energy, which can be more intentional even in our age.

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. At his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, full of sores, who desired to be fed; . . . the dogs came and licked his sores. (Luke 16:19-21) The contrast surely operates at many levels. But among other things, the narrative suggests that the rich man who is numbed by his possessions and social status has no future; there is nothing but an end for him. By contrast, the poor man Lazarus, unencumbered either by possessions or by social status, is beset by grief and pain. And, says Jesus, this is the bearer of the future. The contrast, in the context of our discussion, concerns the numbed one who knows no future except more of the present and the suffering one who receives newness from the Father. In the Johannine story of the raising of Lazarus, we have noted Jesus’ deep compassion in which he shares the grief of the others. We have also noted his powerful action to bring life, an action that seems conditioned by his capacity to enter the grief. The other factor to be noted is that his capacity to invert evokes immediate and sharp hostility from the governors of the old order: So the chief priests and Pharisees gathered the council, and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs.” . . . Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where he was, he should let them know, so that they might arrest him. (John 11:47, 57) Jesus gives signs; he promises alternatives; he suggests newness. His promise represents a correctly perceived threat to the old order. Jesus brings newness in the situation but only in his grief. It is not psychologizing but integral to the narrative that grief, embodied anguish, is the route to newness. The old order that does not want newness keeps it from coming by denying the grief. Where grief for the death of the old order is not faced and embodied and expressed, the old order must go on a while longer, dead though it is. The other act of decisive weeping, to be linked to this act of passion and power, is Jesus’ weeping over Jerusalem: And when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes.” (Luke 19:41-42)

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  persons want so desperately to share and to own but are not permitted to do so. It is obvious that much caricatured prophetic speech serves only to encourage the suppression rather than to end it. This speech requires neither abrasive rejections nor maudlin assurances but an honest articulation of how it is perceived when seen from the perspective of the passion of God. 3. To speak metaphorically but concretely about the real deathliness that hovers over us and gnaws within us , and to speak neither in rage nor with cheap grace, but with the candor born of anguish and passion. [6] The deathliness among us is not the death of a long life well lived but the death introduced in that royal garden of Genesis 2–3, which is surely a Solomonic story about wanting all knowledge and life delivered to our royal management. [7] That death is manifested in alienation, loss of patrimony, and questing for new satiations that can never satisfy, and we are driven to the ultimate consumerism of consuming each other. The prophet does not scold or reprimand. The prophet brings to public expression the dread of endings, the collapse of our self-madeness, the barriers and pecking orders that secure us at each other’s expense, and the fearful practice of eating off the table of a hungry brother or sister. It is the task of the prophet to invite the king to experience what he must experience, what he most needs to experience and most fears to experience, namely, that the end of the royal fantasy is very near. The end of the royal fantasy will permit a glimpse of the true king who is no fantasy, but we cannot see the real king until the fantasy is shown to be a fragile and perishing deception. Precisely in the year of the death of the so-called king does the prophet and the prophet’s company see the real king high and lifted up (Isa 6:1). I believe that the proper idiom for the prophet in cutting through the royal numbness and denial is the language of grief, the rhetoric that engages the community in mourning for a funeral they do not want to admit. It is indeed their own funeral. I have been increasingly impressed with the capacity of the prophet to use the language of lament and the symbolic creation of a death scene as a way of bringing to reality what the king must see and will not. And I believe that grief and mourning, that crying in pathos, is the ultimate form of criticism, for it announces the sure end of the whole royal arrangement. [8]

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  dead child. [14] And God would not grieve that death if there were a way to prevent it. There is no assurance or announcement of hope; there is only yearning that is admittedly hope-filled, but it stops short of knowing too much or claiming too much. Jeremiah has pressed where his contemporaries would not readily go, to the pain of God, to a place where only Hosea had ventured before. Yahweh is no longer an enemy who must punish or destroy but the helpless parent who must stand alongside death, like Mary at Calvary, like David over Absalom, “My child, my child,” but he is helpless and can only grieve. [15] The drift toward death is so far advanced that none—not king, not temple, not even Yahweh—can keep it from happening. Eventually mercy may be granted, but not before death. At most there is here an enigmatic yearning, even by Yahweh, that history would not take its ruthless course. The poetry here uses the language of grief as it is characteristically expressed in the poetry of lamentation. There is a sense of forsakenness with none to comfort, with a yearning for mercy, but only a yearning. Israel must be grieved and not too soon can there be a word beyond grief. Jeremiah spoke to the people with glazed eyes that looked and did not see. They were so encased in their own world of fantasy that they were stupid and undiscerning. And so the numbness was not broken and they continued in their fantasy world: “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jer 6:14; 8:11). They fancied their covenantal stupidity to be royal wisdom (8:8) and they went their royal, self- deceiving ways. The prophets imagined that the yoke was a temporary one but not finally serious or decisive (chaps. 27–28). The kings imagined that to void a word and burn a scroll would make the sovereignty of Yahweh “inoperative” (36:23-24). The kings would do everything but grieve, for that is the ultimate criticism and the decisive announcement of dismantling. We need not press the language of Jeremiah to expect it to be too concrete and specific. The prophet is engaged in a battle for language, in an effort to create a different epistemology out of which another community might emerge. The prophet is not addressing behavioral problems. He is not even pressing for repentance. He has only the hope that the ache of God could penetrate the

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  The last time I saw the house in Brentwood Park before its title changed hands we stood outside watching the three-level Allied van pull away and turn onto Marlboro Street, everything we then owned, including a Volvo station wagon, already inside and on its way to New York. After the van moved out of sight we walked through the empty house and out across the terrace, a good-bye moment rendered less tender by the lingering reek of Vikane in the house and the stiff dead leaves where the pink magnolia and stephanotis had been. I smelled Vikane even in New York, every time I unpacked a carton. The next time I was in Los Angeles and drove past the house it was gone, a teardown, to be replaced a year or two later by a house marginally bigger (a new room over the garage, an additional foot or two in a kitchen already large enough to accommodate a square Chickering grand piano that remained mostly unnoticed) but lacking (for me) the resolute conventionality of the original. Some years later in a Washington bookstore I met the daughter, the one the buyer had said he could picture marrying in the garden. She was at school somewhere in Washington (Georgetown? George Washington?), I was there to give a reading at Politics and Prose. She introduced herself. I grew up in your house, she said. Not exactly, I refrained from saying. John always said we moved “back” to New York. I never did. Brentwood Park was then, New York was now. Brentwood Park before the Vikane had been a time, a period, a decade, during which everything had seemed to connect. Our suburbia house in Brentwood. It was exactly that. She called it. There had been cars, a swimming pool, a garden. There had been agapanthus, lilies of the Nile, intensely blue starbursts that floated on long stalks. There had been gaura, clouds of tiny white blossoms that became visible at eye level only as the daylight faded. There had been English chintzes, chinoiserie toile. There had been a Bouvier des Flandres motionless on the stair landing, one eye open, on guard. Time passes. Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember. Even memory of the stephanotis in her braid, even memory of the plumeria tattoo showing through the tulle. It is horrible to see oneself die without children. Napoléon Bonaparte said that. What greater grief can there be for mortals than to see their children dead. Euripedes said that. When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children. I said that.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Special moments like holidays or birthdays, where their nearness is so deeply missed. My eyes can still find those places, years later, by simply observing the absence of Dad and, if I’m not careful, telling my heart he’s just gone. But that’s not what I want to believe. So I ask my eyes to see his presence , instead of just his absence . After walking in silence for a while, Mom asked how I was feeling. “Bittersweet,” I said. I’m here. Dad’s not. He’s not here to be thankful that I’m here. He’s not here to see all the changes I will make in the coming years, many guided by his advice, and his voice, which I continually hear in my heart. He’s not here to see me fall and get back up again. And yet, maybe he is . . . guiding me in a new way , I thought. In contemplating his continued presence, I found myself more open than I’d ever been to having faith in that which is unseen. As we walked out farther, arriving at the place where nothing but our grief existed, I saw it. “ Oh my God, Mom. Look straight ahead!” There in the distance were two longstem red roses standing at attention in the sand. One for each of us. Instantly, I started to cry. Mom did, too. We hugged, then held hands as we marveled over these beautiful signs from above, staying there for what seemed like hours. He’s still here , I thought. He’s still here. Eventually, we made our way back to the parking lot, roses in hand. As we were getting into the car, I happened to glance into the first-floor apartment next to where we were parked. There I saw a man in his living room, hunkering down in his La-Z-Boy to watch a show on his TV. The title credits read “Surviving Death.” I got so many chills I thought I should take a COVID test. Hi, Dad. Thanks for letting me know what’s doin’. But wait, this story gets wilder. As we drove home, I remembered something. That very morning, Brian had been struggling with whether or not to get my mom red roses, like he’d done for me. “Is it weird to give them to her? What should I write on the card? Will it make her miss him even more? . . . I don’t know what to do,” he said. “Babe, if you’re so conflicted about it, then they’re not yours to give. It’s OK. Let’s just spend time with her,” I replied. Recalling our conversation and looking at the roses, I smiled. As it turned out, Dad already had it covered. Even when we have experiences like this and are filled with comfort, it’s normal to have second thoughts. Personally, I’m a thinker.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions. Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4019-7006-2 E-book ISBN: 978-1-4019-7007-9 Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-4019-7008-6 For Dad CONTENTS Introduction: Never Let Them See You Grieve Chapter 1: I’m Not OK Chapter 2: The Rupture Chapter 3: Fear & Anxiety Chapter 4: Becoming Unbecoming Chapter 5: Grief & Trauma: The Golden Repair Chapter 6: Acceptance Chapter 7: Rest in Love Chapter 8: Beyond the Stars Chapter 9: Awkward Times, Awkward People Chapter 10: Love Is Love, Grief Is Grief Chapter 11: Self-Care in the Storm Chapter 12: Listening to Your Life Acknowledgments About the Author Empower You: Unlimited Audio Mobile App Continue Your Journey with Hay House INTRODUCTION Never Let Them See You Grieve Only cry in the shower. No one will see you, and you won’t wreck your mascara. This bit of wisdom was given to me by a family friend when my father was dying. At the time, overwhelmed by emotion and desperately trying to maintain some semblance of control, I thought it was a brilliant tip. Not only did I attempt to follow this guideline—I also added a few of my own. Things like: Stuff yourself into the nearest closet and scream into a pillow (or any dense fabric that muffles agony). Dig your nails into your palms so the physical pain overrides your emotional distress . Think gruesome thoughts to distract yourself from your grueling feelings. These strategies worked for a while, until my pent-up sorrow took on a life of its own, refusing to abide by any rules. I remember the exact moment the dam broke. My dad had just received news that his cancer was progressing and there were no more treatment options. Numb from the arresting prognosis, I walked through the aisles of my local drugstore, having offered to run an errand to pick up more Ensure—the only nourishment he could stomach. I stood frozen, staring at the chocolate-flavored protein drinks, incapable of deciding how many to buy. Will he live long enough for a case, or should I just stick to the four-packs? That question hit me hard. An emotional tsunami was about to unleash itself on me and all the innocent shoppers in my immediate vicinity. Shit! Here come my feelings. And no shower in sight. I blinked heavily through the checkout line, fighting back the deluge of tears that were mere seconds away, until I was able to rush to the safety of my car and sob uncontrollably. Let me tell you: the parking lot at CVS is no shower stall. My once-compartmentalized grief was now on full display. Hunched over my steering wheel in a teary puddle, I happened to notice an older woman, probably coming to fetch a prescription or buy toilet paper, glancing my way.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  I couldn’t handle that. Flashes of all the things I was going to miss doing with Dad rotated through my brain. Searching for treasures at the flea market on Sundays, phone calls to tell him about my latest creative endeavor, needling each other on election nights with playful text threads, hikes with our dogs, sunset boat rides on the lake where my parents lived for over 30 years in their dream house. The ordinary pleasures that make up an extraordinary life. Experiences I would no longer have after he left me. . . . Shit. There it was, the heart of the pain I’d worked so hard to heal or avoid—abandonment. Once again, I would be fatherless. Through my desperate gasps, I heard what sounded like a moan. Was there someone else waiting to restuff their pain in the privacy of a dark ladies’ room? After a disorienting moment, I soon realized the moans were coming from me. I’d never made sounds like this before—foreign, guttural, primal. They were the sounds of agony. The real, kind, and stable Dad I’d prayed for, to both Jesus and Santa (to cover my bases), the one who was present and loving, the one who accepted me for who I was, not who he expected me to be, the one who stayed —I’d finally found him, and now cancer, the very thing I’d worked so damn hard to accept and cohabitate with, was taking him from me. Suddenly, I was furious with myself, my disease, and the entire world. Fuck you, cancer! I hate you! Stop it, Kris. Don’t ruin his birthday with your hysterics. Pull yourself together. I ran the sink and submerged my hands in ice-cold water to shock my system back into submission. Still no composure. I prayed to the God who had clearly forgotten me, but that only made me wail more. I tried deep breathing. The air refused to fill my lungs. With each sob, I felt like I was being ripped apart from seam to seam. Something had to save me before total annihilation. That’s when rage kicked in. Before I knew what hit me, my hand was slapping my face. What the hell are you doing? Finally, the pain from my stinging cheeks overtook the anguish in my heart. At last, relief. Field note from grief: always carry a good tube of concealer and some powder. You’ll need it. I fixed my makeup and returned to the table. Shocked, stunned, but pulled together. I acted like nothing happened. I made light conversation. How good is this lightly floured zucchini blossom? I laughed when appropriate and drank wine (but not too much, fearing I might lose it again).

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  By late adolescence Paulo talked frequently of suicide. “Life is too hard,” he had repeated numerous times. Adam made sure that his son was never left alone during his darkest times. He had been fatigued by this decade-long ordeal, but he persisted in his committed vigil. Despite Adam’s exhaustive efforts to save his son, Paulo—no longer able to bear his pain—hanged himself in the bathroom. It was there that Adam found his limp, lifeless body. After the shock of Paulo’s suicide, Adam found that for the first time in his life he could not push ahead. Rather than feeling shattered by grief, Adam felt nothing … a state familiar to him even before losing his son. But this time, the numbness rendered him so fully shut down that he could not function. Life for him just stopped. After several months of paralyzing inertia, Adam made an appointment to see a psychiatrist. He was prompted to do this by a family friend who advised him to get some medication for his despondent condition. After taking a personal history, the psychiatrist suggested that Adam’s past was preventing him from grieving his son’s death and gave him the diagnosis of “complicated bereavement.” Although the idea that his early life was “traumatic” or even implicated in his current malaise perplexed Adam, he agreed to talk to me. Adam was born a motherless child. A massive heart attack during labor necessitated an emergency cesarean to save her only child. She died just as he was being born two months prematurely. Since his father had been conscripted into the Russian army, Adam was given to his father’s brother to be raised by his uncle and his wife. The aunt, who was supposed to care for him, was instead a cruel, likely psychotic, woman who repeatedly beat him. Beyond the torment of this treacherous beginning, rife with abandonment and abuse, Adam’s life moved through a series of further trials and sorrows. At the age of four years, his uncle and two older stepsisters were deported and exterminated by the Nazis. He was then passed on to a series of Christian families who tried to hide his Jewish origins. During this time he would, according to these families, scream in the middle of the night—just as Paulo had done when he was the same age.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  I built her memorial from a train case from the thirties, white leather with red patent trim. It cost me 50DM, but it opened to watermarked mauve moiré silk, like the grain in wood, like a funeral in a box. Inside the lid, I’d glued pieces of white-painted record vinyl to resemble the wings of butterflies. Each tiny cache drawer had a secret inside. A reticulated, miniature fish. A drawer full of pills. A strand of pearls. A fern fiddle. A sprig of rosemary. A picture of Audrey Hepburn in Two for the Road. And in one drawer, twenty-seven names for tears. Heartdew. Griefhoney. Sadwater. Die Tränen. Eau de douleur. Los rios del corazón. It was the one Oskar Schein kept wanting to buy. All my mothers. Like guests at a fairy-tale christening, they had bestowed their gifts on me. They were mine now. Olivia’s generosity, her knowledge of men. Claire’s tenderness and faith. If not for Marvel, how would I have penetrated the mysteries of the American family? If not for Niki, when might I have learned to laugh? And Yvonne, mi hermosa, you gave me the real mother, the blood mother, that wasn’t behind wire, but somewhere inside. Rena stole my pride but gave me back something more, taught me to salvage, glean from the wreckage what could be remade and resold. I carried all of them, sculpted by every hand I’d passed through, carelessly, or lovingly, it didn’t matter. Amelia Ramos, that skunk-streaked bitch, taught me to stand up for myself, beat on the bars until I got what I needed. Starr tried to kill me, but also bought me my first high heels, made me entertain the possibility of God. Who would I give up now? And in a blue suitcase with a white handle, the first and last room of the Astridkunsthalle. Lined in white raw silk, edges stained red, scented with violet perfume. I sat on the floor in the gathering dusk of a gray afternoon on the threadbare carpet splotched in paint by generations of art students. This was my mother’s time, dusk, though in Berlin winter it was dark by four, no timeless western twilights, surf on yellow sand. I opened the lid. The scent of her violets always made me feel sad. The vial of tinted water was the exact color of the pool on Hollywood Boulevard. I sat in front of my mother’s altar and built a set of drawings on clear plastic, watched the disjointed lines come together, until they formed the image of her in profile. Letters tied in barbed wire nestled in the suitcase bottom along with a spread of tarot cards, the queen of wands prominently featured.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Many of us were raised by parents who thought it was best to shield us from the topic as a means of protection. But when we’re shielded from conversations or even the acknowledgment of death, we wind up filling in the gaps with our own imagination, which is rarely accurate or helpful—especially when we’re children. One reason adults might be hush-hush about death and mortality is that they have their own disordered relationship to it, so we pick up their baggage, too. So often, it’s not that kids can’t handle the truth but that their caregivers are illequipped to communicate openly about it. One of my first experiences with death was that of my grandpa passing when I was nine years old. I was lucky to have a mom who sat me down and opted to brass-tacks his departure to me. She lovingly stated the facts. And for reasons I can’t fully explain, I understood that he was gone, but that didn’t mean my feelings for him were gone. To me, he was still Pops. I still loved him, and he was still with me. No one needed to explain that to me; it’s just something I innately felt. At his wake, I was so convinced of his continued presence that it was business as usual. I did what I always did when I said goodbye to him after a visit. I leaned over the casket to give him a kiss. Before I knew what hit me, my horrified neighbor swatted my ass. “That’s disrespectful!” Thankfully, I had enough maturity (even though I had yet to reach double digits!) to know that this was her issue, not mine. FYI, grief expert Julia Samuel shares many wonderful approaches to talk to children about death in honest and age-appropriate ways. Her book Grief Works is for all ages and among the most helpful I’ve read. Can someone please drop one off at my old neighbor’s house? Honoring death as the natural and sacred passage it is goes against the grain of most everything we’ve been taught by our age-phobic culture—especially as women. We spend billions of dollars to prolong our lives and look as young as possible forever. Girls as young as 13 line up for Botox as a “preventive” measure against natural aging. The message: your worth goes down as your age goes up. Aging is a visual reminder of where we’re all going—which scares the pants off us. Our fear of death is why many find comfort in religion and are endlessly fascinated by the cosmos. We desperately need to know the unknowable (or feel like we do) in order to feel a modicum of security in the vast uncertainty of our magnificent universe. So, we slather on the antiaging eye creams and focus our telescopes to the night sky, but when it comes to the inevitability of our mortality, we stubbornly stick our heads in the sand.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  GRIEF IS GRIEFThe bond between animals and their humans is real, so when an animal dies and their daily dose of unconditional love becomes a memory, it’s brutal. After Buddy died, Brian and I were devastated. Our boy was gone. The porch had no mayor. The air in our house was thick with sadness. Lola sat by the front door, waiting for Buddy to come home. He wasn’t coming, though. As with all grief, the only way out was through. Unfortunately, a lot of the grief literature and resources out there often overlook pet loss, or pay minimal lip service to it. But our furry, feathered, and scaly babies deserve better. And so do we. I recently read a book that lists an actual “hierarchy of grief,” as if the excruciating ache of loss can be simplified into neat categories of “importance.” The fur mama in me was not having it when I saw animals listed on a lower rung (parents, too . . . really?). I gotta be honest, though, as upset as I was—I know how deeply my heart ached after Buddy died—I also felt a little shame as I briefly internalized this hierarchy, considering this guideline for what and who I should (and should not) be grieving, and to what extent. So I decided to do some digging—did others feel the same? Quite the contrary, I found plenty of folks who felt just like me: alienated. Many bristled at the idea that the loss of a pet (or grandparent) was somehow lesser. One woman shared how the loss of her dog brought up other, old grief, too. The grief train. These sentiments were upsetting but also validating. When Buddy died, I wanted people to bring us lasagna; thankfully I have friends and family who did. In fact, my mother brought all the Italian food in the state of Connecticut. But people don’t always think to do that when a pet dies. The loss isn’t considered grief-y enough to warrant comforting Italian dishes. As any devoted pet parent knows, losing a pet can be just as painful as losing a person. Losing a parent can be just as devastating as losing a partner. It doesn’t matter that they may have “lived a long life.” The same is true for a grandparent. It’s not childish to be shattered when you lose your elders, no matter how old you are. (And no matter how old they are, either . . . a hole in your universe is a hole in your universe.)

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  her served, as she sits opposite to me at table, with the skull of that ingrate instead of a cup, in order that she may see living- him whom she has made her mortal enemy b}- her crime, and dead, for her sake, him whose love she preferred to mine. In this way, when she dines and when she sups, she sees the two things which must afflict her most, namely, the living enemy and the dead friend ; and all this through her guilt. In other respects, I treat her as I do myself, except that her hair is cropped ; for the hair is an ornament no more appropriate to the adulteress than the veil to a harlot ; therefore her cropped head denotes that she has lost honour and chastity. If you please to take the trouble to see her, I will take you into her room." Bernage willingly accepted the offer, and going down stairs with his host, found the lady seated alone by an excellent fire in a very handsome chamber. The gentle- man drew back a curtain which concealed a great press, and there he saw all the bones of a man suspended. Bernage had a great wish to speak to the lady, but durst not for fear of the husband, until the latter, guessing his thoughts, said to him, " If you like to say anything to her, you will see how she expresses herself." " Your patience, madam," said Bernage, turning to her, " is equal to your torture ; I regard you as the most unhappy woman in the world." The lady, with eyes filled with tears, and with incom- parable grace and humility, replied, " I confess, sir, that my fault is so great, that all the ills which the master of this house, whom I am not worthy to call husband, could inflict upon me, are nothing in comparison to the grief I feci for having offended him." So saying she wept profusely. The gentleman took Bernage by the arm and led him 302 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE \_Nm)el ^i. away. Next morning he continued his journey upon the king's service ; but on taking leave of the gentleman he could not help saying to him, " The esteem I enter- tain for you, sir, and the courtesies you have shown me in your house, oblige me to tell you that, in my opinion, considering the great repentance of your poor wife, you ought to forgive her ; the more so as you are young and have no children. It would be a pity that a house like yours should fall, and that those who perhaps do not love you should become inheritors of your substance."