"Death of Child" Was There...

(Being hurt means we were trying)

Being able to "be the therapist of almost everyone, as often as you could" [as your friend Sam once put it] was one of the greatest honors of your life…

The past life you led...

And you'd do anything for that gift again.

‘Tell me how shitty I am,’ I wish I could say over coffee to anyone I’ve disappointed in my past, and I’d truly mean each word.

‘Let me try to fix it.’

Or, if I can’t fix it, I just want to hear it so I can apologize when they’re ready.

Or, if they’re never ready for that ‘I’m sorry’, I just want to listen… because they deserve to get that off their chest and onto mine.

Let me hold it to my heart like a little dove and keep it there, softly in a nest. Let your wounds become mine. That’s what good teachers do. That’s what good Mommas do (or I did, anyways, for most of my life). That’s what we do for those we love… right? Even if, in the end, we architect a nest of notes scribbled and ripped from tear-soaked therapy sessions, or weighted words that will never be said.

No matter how quickly stories can spin and webs can weave and systems can break down in this world: Being hurt means we were trying.

And trying will always be something to be proud of. Even when we fail.

You (the you that’s reading and the ‘you’ that’s writing) will fail.

You HAVE failed. You have swung on the fish-hook of your own design for months and months, long after your mistakes (some real, some lugubriously and quite-provably untrue); Skewering yourself again and again with sentences and judgements mostly imagined… Silence the greatest needle of all.

We can fail by being humans who are in over our heads (not always at our actual job, but often at all the jobs tacked on top of the job itself)… And we can even fail at failure.

I thread myself with hypodermics habitually to make sure I never cut away from the ways I’ve felt I’ve failed… which is sort of like failing at failing, in a way?

(OR… Is that WINNING at failing? You be the judge. But only if you subscribe to the type of irony not described by Morissette.)

Mourning is the silence of the ‘pennies’ you thought were friends. Or the ways you wish better for the quiet ‘quarters’ who actually saw you for "you”, and you for them.

If asked 'What Does Grief Make You Think Of?" the answers would be easy for ‘you’. They would be Gemma, or Zachary, or George and Uncle Way and Aunt Winnie and Uncle Donnie and Bird and on and on...

We all have our own list of names.

But how often do you think of yourself on that list? (Not the "you" of this letter, but the other you’s out there. The you that has your own name, even when you feel kind of nameless.)

Life Loss is something I never knew about.

I knew about losing lives and witnessing deaths and worrying for the proximity to my own, time and time again...but I did not know that Life Losses can count as grief. And more so, they can make griefs from your past in all varieties (the kind with names and the kind without) flood back up again; Icy water, no door.

I had to check the boxes of recent Life Losses and the metaphoric-bodies began to stack before I could even do the math.

Job, Money, Mobility, Hearing- check, check, check, check.

Abstract Losses like "loss of dreams, loss of independence, loss of dignity, loss through physical illness, loss through geographic move, loss through former trauma". Check.

Then the type of grief I knew about, but names I didn't think to name within myself or "count" as the North Atlantic ocean filled my lungs; Southeast of Newfoundland… 375 miles from its destination.

"Death of Child" was there (Gem would be pissed if not counted, of course, as she should be. "Hi Mum", we say, her brother and I, "Hi Sun”).

"Death of Friend" was another, and then:

"Pregnancy Loss."

PART FOUR. Continued tomorrow.

(Part One, Part Two, and Part Three)

Almost done with the week. Thank you for being supportive Word Nerds, friends and confidants in this ongoing memoir project and promise!