On What I Don’t Know About Grief

Oct 12

Written By Carla Monroy

Ruminations on the difference between absence and grief or mourning.

*A Painting Photographed and Edited by Carla Monroy*

Does death breathe down your neck.

Does it tip toe.

Shock you.

It has been showing up in

different corners of my life.

In the desire to pick up, The Year of Magical Thinking, or rather, to finally listen to

the spirits of writers past who kept putting this book in front of me.

Beautiful.

And sad.

In the reminder that my friend just lost her mom.

When I check in on her, she says she’s not doing well.

Grief…

Is not something I know a lot about.

Is it something we’ll all know about one day?

You can only hope?

Could it be soon?

Is this why the grim reaper keeps showing up right now.

I try to calm my nerves.

You don’t want to will something into existence,

and make it accidentally happen.

The Year of Magical Thinking

is really the year of delusional thinking.

He died.

But she kept expecting

him to come back.

She kept some of his clothes and his shoes,

by the door. Because even if he was dead,

she thought he would come back,

and when he did, what would he wear?

She thought.

So, she hung on to some of his things.

Absence,

is a feeling I’m all too familiar with right now.

I can relate to missing

the warm comfort of home with my loving husband.

When he goes away, the house gets quiet.

I’m left alone with my thoughts and sometimes,

in his absence, I think I hear him.

His voice.

And then I realize he is away, but

the echo of his words remain.

It’s what I hear when he’s not there.

Maybe it’s what he hears too.

Absence is not as intense as grief.

A presence usually succeeds

an absence and that

makes all the difference.

*Photographed and edited by Carla Monroy*

Death Kept Following Me

I guess you can say it started when I began watching The Shards. Suddenly, I remembered Joan Didion’s book, The Year of Magical Thinking and I knew exactly where it was in my storage so I pulled it out and started to read it.

I’d purchased the book, right after she had published it and it went into my “to be read” pile for years. Until the author and the book started to show up everywhere I looked, haunting me like a ghost.

I hadn’t realized that the book was about the death of her husband.

I started to realize that up until now, I haven’t really experienced true, earth-shattering loss. I had lost grandparents to old age before but never shocked by something unexpected.

The mere fact of it all making me feel uneasy, as though I was being forced to pay attention to it on purpose.

Suddenly people everywhere around me were dealing with loss. From a friend who lost her mother recently, to my co-worker’s sister, or a relative’s recent brush with a life-threatening medical condition and a hospitalization.

I couldn’t help but shake the eerie feeling that I was in for something too.

What can you do to prepare for death? I’m not sure there is anything you can do but have faith in who you are and knowing that everything in life is borrowed and not everlasting.

What is left?

To be brave enough to look the grim reaper straight in the eye when he does come knocking down your door.