Grief
a ten year old facing tragedy
Grief is a complicated thing. That’s why we made this chart with neat little phases to track our journey. It makes us believe there’s a way out.
But once grief sinks its teeth into you, you are never rid of it.
My pop (grandfather) was young for a dead person.
Tragic. Surreal. I’m so sorry. Do you understand?
These words were thrown around, some landing at my feet, others swirling over my head meant for the ears of someone older.
Like most ten year olds I relied on laughter as an indicator I was making people happy. An awkward chuckle in the face of uncomfortability. A funny face. An odd tone. These were the tools in my wheelhouse.
Except those don’t work with the grieving, well not consistently.
I never cried for my pop.
I think that week of my life was my first taste of apathy. The first step towards regrettable decisions made in future social interactions. It was when I discovered the first mask of my collection.
Grammie is sitting on the edge of my parent’s bed. Her face doesn’t seem right to me. She isn’t exactly crying, but she isn’t not crying either. My mom is pacing before her, saying things to make her feel better. She doesn’t seem like mom right now.
My tummy hurts in that same way where I don’t know what to say but everyone keeps looking at me. I wonder if Mom’s tummy hurts too. I wonder if she feels like me–helpless. I want everyone to pause. To laugh. I did it before, just a second ago.
“Now I’m an orphan and a widow!” my grammie shouts. Well not really a shout like she’s angry. More like she can’t believe her bad luck. A curse locked and loaded at the entity that dared to cross her.
Grammie can’t be an orphan.
That’s the first thought that goes through my mind. Grammie is old. Orphans are kids. Lonely, unwanted kids with no family. Grammie has us. Grammie must be making a joke, because mom is almost smiling.
We should all laugh.
But it’s only me that laughs.
Grammie’s face shifts from disbelief to rage in a split second. My mom sees it. She reprimands me before shooing me from the room. I don’t understand because we all laughed just a second ago.
Later I’m in all black in a line for the casket, to say a goodbye, that’s what everyone keeps telling me. I keep asking if I have to, in my head, not out loud. Everyone else is doing it and it seems important.
Tears are being shed, and comfort given. I don’t understand why though. Everyone in this room believes in heaven. Everyone in this room keeps telling each other (me) God has a plan, but I’ve been paying attention, and God’s plan doesn’t make sense.
I wish there were cookies. I wish there were games. Something to do with my hands. A tangible thing to talk about instead of more I’m sorry and I just can’t believe it. But people are laughing now, and how is that fair?
I cling to the puppy Grammie gave to me at church. Pink with a heart on its left paw. I’m left handed, and so was Pop. Now no one else here is left handed. Just me, and I don’t know how to explain why that makes me feel so alone.
I fixate on my Grammie’s face so sad and mad and I think Pop would have laughed at Grammie calling herself an orphan. I think he would have said “Oh Barb, I know it’s sad, but we still have the kids,” or something.
I don’t cry here, at the casket. I don’t say goodbye in a real way. I keep thinking I’m doing something wrong. That some door is locked, but I’m supposed to have the key. That there’s some magic I’m missing, and all of the adults just keep looking at me with tight smiles. Like this is some test.
I’m not scared of the corpse, or god’s wrath, or death. I don’t cry when everyone is telling their favorite Pop story. I don’t even smile. I just watch and look and wonder if I’ll say the wrong thing again.
About a month later planes hit the Two Towers. I’m at school and the sound of adults hushing frantically as they roll the TV out lures me into the media center. No one looked concerned with a kid being there, for once. And I watch burning people jump from windows. I run. Run to my mom’s classroom. She scrambles to the TV just in time to see the second plane.
Evacuation begins.
While a tragedy I didn’t quite understand unfolds before me, I sit on the edge of a memory. A kid like me staring at a corpse in a casket wondering if it was time to be funny yet. Time to pretend yet.
I thought of my mom protecting us from grief’s wrath despite losing her dad. Not just any dad distant and smiling. But a dad she’d cry too. The dad who gave her a nickname that stuck long into adulthood. The kind of dad that made up a song to tease her and make her giggle until she forgot the sadness of the day. A dad like my dad.
And I knew as I watched the TV and felt the grown ups hold their breath, that someone else was going to feel everything my mom felt.
And the grief seed sprouted, a silent thief of joy and pain. And nothing has felt real since then.
Not you.
Not me.
Not this world.
And then I was drowning in puberty.
Now with the perspective of an adult and the capacity to give children grace I know that the anger wasn’t for me. I’ve known that for a long time, but it left a crater all the same.
Disappointing people has always scared me to the point I pretend I don’t care. To the point where lying was the better option. Sneaking into the pantry from the basement. Binging the processed crunchies and hiding away from everyone. Having friends, but never really sharing anything about myself. Just playing a part and waiting for the uncomfortability to pass.
Then I discovered Nihilism and it gave my apathy an excuse to flourish. Live in the moment because it’s the only thing that matters. There’s no point beyond pleasure. There’s no point in trying to understand this life when it is all beyond our comprehension. That was my creed. Even when I cried from broken hearts, and dead friendships, and the seed throbbed back in my mind. None of this mattered anyway.
I’d be a corpse in a casket soon enough.
Living in the temporary moment seems so important, a sage piece of advice we cling to. Unless you’re manic and obsessed with this guy who has big dreams, and you are along for the ride of it, but then euphoria passes and you realize that you could end up living in a van down by the river so you self-destruct.
You forget to breathe from the white hot fear crashing into you at the oddest times only for cold calculation to sweep in. The apathy drowning the rage, isolating you with another layer of ice until it’s so thick that one thought keeps poking you, am I close with anyone?
I’m friends with a lot of normal people. Normal brained, sunshine attitudes, and they plan their retirement as if it’s guaranteed. I try to be normal now. But grief has been with me for a long time. A friend in the dark, in the mirror, in my heart.
I know my brain won’t ever function like most. I know I’m drained just by entering a room of emotional leakers. But that seed of grief has starved for a while now. Each time I share a piece of myself the roots are exposed.
Maybe it can’t be plucked. Maybe it goes too deep. But I feel the sunshine a little more now. Bask in the dirt and wind of this world. And maybe one less nihilistic prick in the world will radiate creating small ripples of something real to take its place.
Share your grief with me, with a stranger, a loved one, or pen and paper. Let it out before the decay you deny exists spreads.