On Badass Moments

Since the session of the Writing Your Grief course was over last week, I have been writing from random pages in Looking for Alaska. Reading has been difficult for me since Alaska died, and in the last few months, I haven’t been able to finish any books that I have started.

It’s not you, books, it’s me.

Audiobooks help bring me the stories that I crave while I can busy myself with cleaning or cooking or playing solitaire so that I focus on the story rather than read several pages and have to go back (or more likely quit). Tonight I chose my page by turning on a timer and stopping it quickly .48 seconds meant that I would turn to page 48. This turned out to be one of the pages that I don’t have marked; it’s a fun scene in the novel, though. This book makes me laugh and cry (always has), and this is one of those pages that had me laughing. Two words stood out when I read it the second time tonight: badass moment.  

It seems a bit silly to write about those words, and I’m not entirely sure why they stood out. When I think of badass moments in my life, I come up blank. I could maybe find something if I really let myself go there, but tonight I want to say that this community of writers that I have come across through WYG is full of beautiful badassery. Really the simple act of breathing during grief is badass some days. The simple act of breathing. Did I just say that? Breathing used to feel simple, a natural process that could become laboured with stress or exercise. Breathing with grief is a new task altogether, and sometimes it’s the only thing that gets done in a day. Just breathe while the heart goes boom (like in that terrible, awful, icky “Sledgehammer” song). That song. I’m not sure I’ve heard a worse song. Sorry. I’m a hater.

Sledgehammers are badass, and I don’t think they actually go boom boom boom like a lust-struck heartbeat. Sledgehammers tear through walls. Sledgehammers destroy and clear a path to build something new. Is that what we’re doing here with our grief writing? Tearing through walls that will keep coming back? Sometimes with ugly patches and sometimes made with better materials but always, always destined for the sledgehammer.

(Maybe I’ve been too narrow with my opinion on uses for the sledgehammer; apologies to the sledgehammer operators out there.)

Empty Persists

“Do you know what happened to you?” (from Looking for Alaska by John Green) 

I just read about this character who experienced a concussion, and it makes me wonder whether there are any similarities to when I found out that my daughter was dead.  He suffered a physical trauma that was intense for a couple of moments, and he knew that he was concussed. I suffered the emotional trauma first, and then the physical trauma, and finally the trauma of Empty. The trauma of the blank space where there--just moments before--grew one of the most important people in my life. And Empty persists forever. This Empty cannot be filled.

You ask whether I know what happened to me. I do. But I don’t know why or how, and I know that why and how don’t matter. Why and how don't change anything. Perhaps knowing those answers would help in the trek to have an alive baby, but why and how do not bring my daughter back. My babies back. I don’t know when either. I don’t know when she died. 

When doesn't change anything either. When is not what matters.

Invisible and Visible

#writeingrief Day 28-I will be posting out of order. I'm not reading to post what I wrote on Alaska's birthday or on Auburn's due date.

"The invisible causes changes in the visible.The visible gives evidence of the invisible." ~Megan Devine

This. Yes. I am forever changed by my sweet babies who were all but invisible to the world. How do I give evidence of the invisible? This is where I’m blocking. I feel like I don’t give evidence. Strangers look at me when I’m out with my boys and see a mom of two. People who know about my daughter, my babies even, probably mostly see me as the mom of my boys, the teacher, the wife, the whatever I am.

The world can see the shape of you in me by the shape of my flabby tummy. My empty bump that persists thanks to my wavering motivation to exercise my body. Sometimes I want to sweat it all out, and sometimes I want to stay in the hole. Screw this body. This failed temple. This burial ground. This mass of bones and blood that does not quit. Just sometimes.

The world can see the shape of you in me by the way your brothers wobble in orbit. Do we call them bereaved brothers? I suppose so. Words are difficult for me in this space. Your brothers are resilient. They thrive even as they miss and love you. That’s all. (It’s not, but words aren’t sufficient here.)

The world can see the shape of you in me by the way I interact. It’s not a new development that I much prefer a quiet gathering of close friends or family to anything to do with a crowd, but I think missing you has made me more protective of this preference. I have no guilt when I choose to stay home and offer no apology for saying no.