I have gotten to the point in my grief where I’m numb about it.
It weirdly enough feels like the stage in a heartbreak where you wake up one day and realise you didn't think of them yesterday and you didn't hurt last week, and when you walk outside, the sun is yummier and birds are chirping louder.
This, however, feels like I’m still very aware of it. That could partly be because I have a picture of the one I’m grieving in my living room, propped up on a glass table, a photo of him and me in my childhood. It's right next to his eulogy, an animated toy that reminds me of him, and random little things like gifts he got me – that I still manage to have, because when you have not experienced loss, you aren't aware that you are supposed to store everything safely; plastic seal them if you can, even –
“…Should've kept every grocery store receipt
'Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me…”
~Taylor Swift in ‘Marjorie’
And a receipt from one time when I took a shuttle to go see him. His grave. Him. His grave. His home. Fuck. Him. Yeah.
I am wary, though, of feeling like this is that sunny post-heartbreak point.
Because I’ve been somewhere like this before in this 16-year journey of grief, believing I was okay, then it came at me like those ‘accidents’ in the Final Destination franchise. Quick, sudden, gruesome, but not unexpected. You knew it was coming; you just acted like your humanity could trump death.
Fool.
And I don't wish to be that foolish again. To think that my journey is different and I am now truly healed of grief.
I don't wish to be caught that unaware again; I am much comfortable in the certainty of grief.
I find certain things about it laughable, though. Like how once it's the week of their anniversary, everything becomes bleak, and once the clock strikes midnight on the day they were taken away, your tears flow freely. What about all the other days and weeks of the year? Why is it that our armour is strong on other days, but we turn naked once these days come about?
Which brings me to my next musing. People who have multiple griefs in them, bone-deep griefs, not like finding out an old schoolmate of yours has passed away or that fellow employee you said hi to when both your moods aligned.
Tear-you-apart grief. Grief that you had to be collected from, either literally by being dragged away from their graves that you tried to jump into, or figuratively, by alcohol then sobriety, fucking then clarity, depression then peace, denial then the kind of acceptance that hits only the same as stubbing your toe and having to live in that numb pain till it subsides.
How do you do it?
As a kid, after I lost, I repeatedly told anyone who would listen that I pray I die before any other loved one because God knows I am not going through grief again. I still feel the same.
So how do you do it? How do you handle loss after loss and keep showing up to rejoin the world?
I would spiral into the kind of insanity that my late uncle subscribed to: walking shirtless and barefoot, sisal rope for a belt and jeans unzipped until the day my mom told him, blushing in shame for her younger brother, to zip up because the whole world and its children could see his dick. That kind of insanity where his response was a giggle and walking off mumbling incoherently. That kind. Where his walls were his tissue paper, and his bed his fireplace.
No one wants to go through ugly things twice. So I don't know what to say to you but ask you how, because we all know sorry ’ does not help a grieving soul. It helps when your partner slips on a banana peel onto someone else's warm body (although it will have to be many sorries, but still, sorry). It helps when the driver who ‘alikuingia’ apologises. It helps when your neighbour snorts a line of coke and decides a scream at 3AM is appropriate.
But not with grief. At times, it feels like a polite spit. Like instead of someone going, “Hawk tuah!” on you, they instead slowly let out a bouncy, thin line of saliva and only let a tiny drop touch your face.
Still, spit.
I don't know how long this phase will last. Where I haven't gone through his photo album in some time. Haven't cried except for the obligatory anniversary tears. Have skipped a day or two without thinking of him, and when I do, it doesn't pang.
I know it will come, though, and at least this time, I will be aware.
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
~ Simon & Garfunkel in ‘The Sound of Silence’
"hello darkness ..."