An Open Letter to Grief

There's no getting over you

Dear Grief,

I’ve really hated you. 

You show up at the worst times, which is to say you are never invited. I haven’t wanted to welcome you, acknowledge you, name you, look you in the eyes.

In March I watched my heart leave my body, kiss me on the cheek, walk out the room, and gently close the door.

I woke in April and I wrote and I wrote and I just knew I could write you off.

In May I woke and walked and walked and walked and I just knew I could run you out of town — get away from me!

In June I pretended it worked, the writing and the walking, and I started planning. God I love planning— scheduling new classes and preparing for a trip away— planning for joy, for something new, anything but you.

In July I sat on the beach alone and wept, for the beauty of new scenery and the fucking anger that I felt at being unable to escape the weight of my broken heart, and you, grief, just… there.

All of my efforts to avoid you or master you or run you out and write you off were good. They were really good, actually. They worked, mostly. Until they didn’t.

God, you don’t know when to catch the hint. When to read the room, when to sneak out the back door, when to leave.

You stick around. You linger. You wait. You tarry. You show up unannounced.

The day is fine, the job is fine, the life is fine—everything. is. fine. Why can’t it be?

I’ve hated you, especially with this loss, because it seems so unfair and absolutely unnecessary and there is no cure for the heartache and no reasons to find under pillows or stuffed in drawers. Only the stupidest things: tupperware containers from the time we were all together and his Mom gave me her homemade jalapeño ranch dip, notes with nicknames I find in drawers when I go looking for my checkbook, photos of us when I try to show friends my cute nephews and niece.

What can tears do? Are they cleansing out a wound? Releasing another?

I keep giving you a little space and you keep asking to move in. It seems you’re forever rearranging my life—me— my heart, my desires, my hopes. Who will I become if you never leave?

The tears are making me lay still enough to hear other, gentler questions:

who will I become if I never befriend you? and why would I hate you?

---

The Cure by Albert Huffstickler

We think we get over things.
We don’t get over things.
Or say, we get over the measles
but not a broken heart.
We need to make that distinction.
The things that become part of our experience
never become less a part of our experience.
How can I say it?
The way to “get over” a life is to die.
Short of that, you move with it,
let the pain be pain,
not in the hope that it will vanish
but in the faith that it will fit in,
find its place in the shape of things
and be then not any less pain but true to form.
Because anything natural has an inherent shape
and will flow towards it.
And a life is as natural as a leaf.
That’s what we’re looking for:
not the end of a thing but the shape of it.
Wisdom is seeing the shape of your life
without obliterating (getting over) a single
instant of it.