I often describe myself as cerebral over emotional, so I find myself exploring emotions in my novels. This past year, I’ve been drawn to grief. It’s an emotion we all experience, a sense of loss, whether it is a person, a situation, or even societal. The familiar sadness is relatable: the quiet crying, a heavy chest, the slowness as if any motion is met with resistance. It’s what we are conditioned to name when we see it in movies, read sad stories, or listen to a devastating song. We learn about the universal ways of sorrow.
Then there is the experienced grief. It’s not neat and doesn’t come with its own vocabulary or rules. It is messy. Incongruous to societal norms. You might laugh at a funeral. Or forget that the person is gone and give them a call. There are times when you get so immersed in your day-to-day that you almost feel less heavy. Then you smell something familiar or order a meal and it wallops you in the stomach. You freeze. And relive that loss all over again, as acute as the first moment.
Grief doesn’t follow a script.
Sometimes you tell stories to make it make sense. Over and again, the same stories to keep what once was, alive in your mind and heart. So as not to forget.
For me it’s Vicky’s lime green dress. We were shopping because she needed a dress for her godfather’s wedding. She chose a stretchy, spaghetti strap, form fitting, dress in neon green. I told Vicky, her mother would never let her wear it. She told me, “you only live once” and bought it. That night she went to the hospital with back pain. By morning she was gone. That was thirty years ago. Yet on February 1st (her birthday) and June 9th (her death day), I find myself telling that story even after three decades.
Sometimes, you look for signs, sense their presence, or hear their voice. I was listening to a podcast a few months ago where a neuroscientist was talking about her husband who had recently passed. She firmly believed that he was with her, that she could feel him in their home. And who is to say that he wasn’t?
There are other emotions tied to grief that can take root. Fear. I decade ago, a young, vibrant colleague of mine named Beth, lost her life to stomach cancer. It was devastating and irrational. For the next year or so, every stomachache, bout of nausea or even indigestion, caused me to panic.
Sometimes you disassociate. This has become more common as technology allows us more ways to turn our minds off. Video games, doomscrolling, or binge watching, offer an escape from feeling, processing, and living.
Through it all, for most, you keep going. The one thing I’ve learned is that every loss teaches me resilience. There is no right way to grieve, but the mind finds a path, even when it’s non-linear.
If you’ve made it this far, this is a sneak peek into the theme of my next novel, The Truth about