Here in the Tide of My Ocean of Grief

I didn't want to write this. I tried and tried to think myself out of it, but while I have other things I could write about today, other things I have been thinking about, other topics that dwell in my mind... I couldn't bring myself to even start them. Because this topic stands in their way. It needs to! This one is important and it needs to be faced, as painful as it is.

On this day in 2012, I found out my friend Shannon had passed away from complications with anorexia. I have struggled with anorexia too, not nervosa or bulimia, but just a lack of desire to put food in my face. It was stress, honestly the PTSD that was already lurking and probably Autism in places as well. So the way she died hit me hard, but also just... losing Shannon.

Shannon was the first person to call me brave. She saw through my outward calm and bravado to the core of trauma I was fighting and she called me brave. It took me a long time to accept what she had said, but I also wanted to live up to it. I wanted to have the courage she saw. I didn't know I already had it. We fell out of touch after high school, as is often the way, but would chat sometimes on Facebook. I took her loss hard. That night was the first – and last – time I tried to get drunk to deal with loss.

It didn't help. It just made it hurt worse later. I'm glad I decided not to do that again.

Fast forward eight years, and my grandmother died of pancreatic cancer on February 16th, and also Covid. She was one of the only members of my blood family to love me for myself and not out of obligation. I took her loss hard. We had always been close. I woke up at 4:30 in the morning with a charlie horse and not long after my mother called. She was gone. We had known she would be, but it still hit me like a fist in my chest. I cried then, but it was a hollow cry. It wouldn't be until that December that I could feel the pain enough to have the hysterical cry of horrific loss that I needed.

She died on my grandfather's birthday. I don't know how he felt about that but... I assume not great. He was never the same and I knew we wouldn't have him much longer.

January 19th, 2024, he followed her. In some ways it was a relief. He was in so much pain, those four years. I knew he missed her and I knew he was more lost in himself than he was in this world anymore. And I had just narrowly missed death myself, I knew exactly how much it hurts to hang in the balance. It was four and a half months after the aneurysm burst and I was still in pain, in fog, still struggling back from the balance myself.

I was almost jealous. Still fighting, but starting to wonder why I was bothering. After he died, absolutely none of my blood family came to offer me comfort or support in that grief and I could not go to them. I could barely stagger out of bed to the bathroom.

His celebration of life ceremony was on his birthday, February 16th. I couldn't go. I held and hold my grandfather in the highest respect, with the deepest regard. I loved and love him. We never quite found a way to talk to each other in words? But we spoke a common language of affection and love and I never doubted him for a moment. I hope he never doubted I loved him too.

This day is an ocean of grief and memories of pain for me. Last year I tried to ignore it, but I ended up collapsing into a quivering puddle of grief. It was rough on me both physically and emotionally. I don't want that again this year. I expect there will still be tears, I'm not foolish enough to think I can avoid them, but maybe more controlled release.

So I am not trying to avoid the grief this year. I am sitting with it. Feeling that tide and its currents roll and swell around me. Letting myself feel the melancholy. Reminding myself that I love these people. Even though they are years gone from this world, that love still beats in my breast. I like to think it always will, even if that means that every February 16th I spend some time crying.

Grief is all the love we wish we could give. And as it turns out? I still love Shannon, Nana, and Boompa with every inch of my heart. So today, I will wear a newsboy flat cap for Boompa, with a dragon pin for Nana, and I will face this grief bravely for Shannon.

And I'll probably cook something too, and eat it with someone who loves me.