What Grief Feels Like

For years, I harbored the great conceit that I knew all there was to know about grief.

I have an early memory. It was summertime in a bungalow colony in the Catskills. The room I recall is not familiar. My mother stands in front of a mirror, stripped to the waist, feeling a lump in her breast. I think another woman was there and my mother was showing her, but I cannot be sure. I think I asked if I could feel it and she bent over and let me touch her. 

There's another memory, though the details are probably warped by time.  It was on the day Bonnie and I entered kindergarten for the first time.  I am convinced that is the day my mother entered the hospital to have her breasts removed, though I cannot be sure.

These two events are forever combined in my memory. Even if these occurred weeks or months apart, I remember them happening simultaneously.

Sometime in the autumn of 1954, my mother entered the hospital for the last time. My father visited her but we never did. Children were not allowed. Then one day my sisters and I were told we were going to see mommy. I think Sharon was allowed upstairs because she was 11, but Bonnie and I, just 8, were parked in the lobby for what seemed like hours. Someone, I forget now who, came down to the lobby and told us to go stand on the sidewalk.

We did as told and looked up at a particular window. A figure that I barely saw, waved at us. “Wave back at mommy,” someone said. That was the last time I saw my mother alive.  

My father died at home while watching a “Pete and Gladys” sitcom. It was a Monday night in January. I remember the day of the week because he and I had been arguing all weekend. I don't remember why, but I do know that it was Bonnie that insisted I make up with him. He was seated before the TV in the living room and I told my father I loved him and I was sorry. I returned to our bedroom and the next thing we heard was a thump. He had fallen out of his chair dead. Sharon was about three weeks shy of her 18th birthday and Bonnie and I were 15.

I became quite smug about death after that. For decades after, whenever someone died, I might feel sad, might even miss them, but I took it in my stride. I was, I thought, immune to deep sorrow.

And then my sister died.

Years of my defenses were obliterated. This sorrow is not something I can endure in my stride.

I know she would expect me to mourn her; if only because we often joked about it. But I also know, almost hear her voice in fact, that it is time to stop crying. I hear her telling me that she's quite fine and hates seeing me so miserable.