full of grace
My voice is arthritic and stiff, rust spider-webbing through my veins and my language to eat away at my insides. I hope to god this is not what dementia feels like. My voice is unsure, stammering syllables out of place and out of line which I cover every time with forced laughter and a rapid change of subject. The only familiar rush I get these days is when sadness comes cascading up my esophagus to blanket my chest in fire and bile, to wrench my tender heart anew.
Everything hurts right now.
The things I called home are no longer that, so I’m living in the suburbs this summer. It’s lonely out here, secluded and strangely still, though there are houses for miles — the mail is all delivered to one giant box for the whole street. Mail still comes regularly for my mother, though she’s been dead six months.
The well-worn warnings of all the “firsts” are true, and I hate that they are: the first birthday without them will be rough, as is the first family gathering without anyone mentioning her name; the first Mother’s Day, first vacation, first season to pass in entirety in her absence. Today is just another day.
Once, when I was younger and more foolish, I was told by someone I loved that I had acted “with grace”. I wore that grace like a glowing emblem as if the world would know my goodness because of it. I cloaked myself in it with pride for months and years to follow. But why is grace what we should be striving for?
Grace in the face of grief is absolutely nothing to applaud — pretending to bury your feelings (or at least to park them on the back burner) to save everyone else around you from discomfort when all you want to do is anything that is not socially acceptable. Yet grace is expected and encouraged, all the time, everywhere, even from those who care. Maybe it’s healthier to lose that finely curated control a little more often — every one of us, in some way big or small, will relate.
I cry on the highway stuck in traffic, and also driving. I cry when my real estate agent says the apartment I applied to rent wants me to offer more money. I cry when I accidentally end up at the mall in Burlington, gazing up at the escalator in front of me and at all the open empty space and at all the money going nowhere. When I cry after drinking too much, my friends and family tell me they’re worried. (Mostly, I cry in my car.)
I believe grief to be an echelon of this life which we must all dabble in. Let it not be hidden and cast aside or promptly painted over with smiles and joviality. This, too, has its time.
Youth, large, lusty, loving — youth full of grace, force, fascination,
Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?
Day full-blown and splendid — day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter,
The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.
-Whitman
