Death does not become me…

Posted by jessica on April 10th, 2008 filed in Oh Just Hell

I hate grief.

I know, it’s a natural process. Yeah. Okay. Fine. Doesn’t make it any more fun for the people struggling through it. And right now I feel like I’m being knocked over with it. Can’t open my eyes in the morning without confronting some memory or moment that is hell bent on making me relive all grief from the last 33 years.

And that, my friends, is a lot of fucking grief.

Loss happens to everyone. You lose a pet, a grandparent, a parent, a friend… death is inevitable. As my dad likes to say, “None of us get out of here alive.”

Yet we continue to go on, day to day, pretending that it doesn’t exist. We don’t dwell on it, because that makes it too real. People don’t like to remember that they are mortal. They see Death looming in a corner and avert their eyes, thinking that will somehow save them from the eventual scythe.

But there are times when you can’t look away. When it comes up and smacks you across the face. Leaves your ears ringing and your heart breaking.

And I hate it.

I’ve hated it ever since I lost my grandpa. He had cancer. I remember the night he died. We got a phone call that he was in hospital and not going to make it through the night. I pulled on my jeans under my nightgown and we all tumbled into the car, rushing to Auburn to deliver my mother to her father’s side in time to witness his passing. I remember being angry that they wouldn’t let me go in to see him.  I was only nine, I wasn’t supposed to see death yet.

Seeing him in his coffin made it no more real. It was the most dressed up I’d ever seen him. He was a gardener and a fisherman. Suits were not his preferred wardrobe. They should have buried him in his overalls.

Then I started losing friends. One to cancer in the 7th grade. Another to anorexia in the 9th grade. One to a car accident, another to suicide, yet another to cancer… all in the space of four years. Too many funerals. And those were just the children.

More family members. My grandmother to cancer. Paternal grandmother to neglect (but the doctors called it pneumonia). Paternal grandfather to whatever takes rat bastards in their seventies… An uncle to cancer, another to suicide, and yet another to a heart attack.

Then there was my mother-in-law a few years ago. Now my father-in-law last month. And a family friend this month.

And here we go again. Reliving all the messy, ignored grief that I’ve been bottling all these years. So I’m crying, and raging, and wanting to scream and hit and harm. Because I don’t know what else to do. I am overwhelmed and helpless in the face of this monstrosity. I am powerless. And I fucking hate it.

Yes, it’s healthier to let it happen. To allow these feelings to pour out when they’re happening. Sure, I know that now. But I didn’t know it then. And I still have all of that muck and sediment built up, waiting for a crack in my armor to come crashing out. Making me into a mess. Making me cry. Making me want to beat my fists bloody against a brick wall so I can feel on the outside what I can’t stop feeling on the inside.

Everybody dies. And we don’t get to choose the when and how. There is no control, no choreography, no script. I suppose there is some comfort in that.

It’s the aftermath I don’t want to deal with.

So, as a favor, I would appreciate it if the people I love and care about (and you know who you are) would please give me some respite from grief. A few months. That’s all I’m asking for. Just don’t die or get terribly injured for a little while. Give me a chance to get centered again. Give me a chance to vomit up all the misery and loss I’ve been holding in forever. Give me a chance to stabilize. No more death. Just for a little while.

Please.

And don’t make me beg.

Because I hate begging almost as much as I hate grieving.