Grief on the bathroom floor.
I remember being a young girl, 7 or 8 years old, sitting by my grandfather’s bed in my grandparent’s house. It was a big, mechanical hospital bed that had been brought in for him. I remember him reaching his wrinkly hand over to me and saying.. Hey sunshine, how was school? I remember, rather quickly, seeing his health diminish. And even in my childish immaturity I remember knowing that he was dying. His funeral is a blur, I wore a blue dress and shiny mary janes with white socks. There were what seemed like hundreds of old people there, some of them crying, hugging me with their heavily perfumed smells.
That is the first death I remember experiencing. Over my life, I lost aunts and uncles, mostly related to my stepdad. I remember losing my cat, a horrible grief. Then, as I entered adolescence, death seemed to disappear from my life. It wasn’t until my sister’s biological father passed away that I was slapped in the face with the reality of human mortality yet again. Then my grandmother, then Dave’s aunt.. and on it went.
Death is a reality of the human condition. I, too, will one day slip from my own life and die. It’s the ever present, non-negotiable truth about being a body of flesh and bones and air. We will all die. Some losses hit harder than others. My sweet friend Michelle’s son was killed late last Fall in a motorcycle accident, and to date, has been one of the most painful losses of my life. I hardly knew Matthew, he was a young man, but the reality of his death still makes my heart lurch with pain.
Following Matthew’s death, Dave’s mother suffered a massive brain aneurysm, she died shortly after. Then Dave’s dearly loved boss died from cancer. Then his aunt died. Now, this week, my friend Cary died from brain cancer. And the collected losses and their prescribed grief feel like a dump truck I can’t get to move. I have had small, brief interludes of crying. Just earlier this week I woke up and was caught in bed sobbing. I don’t grieve extensively, I never have. For me, grief is best processed in the busy-ness of just keeping going. I’m not one to curl up and be stoic.
But this morning, I stood on the bath mat after my shower and the flood of all the loss hit me. I felt my body shake in the all-too-familiar onslaught of shivering sobs. I am so tired of death. I am so weary of it. There on my light green bathmat, surrounded by bath toys and bottles of shampoo and the trappings of my life, I finally crumbled. You can’t run fast enough or long enough to really escape grieving.
I cried for a while, put on my clothes, washed my face again, and re-joined my reality. Maybe this is why people cry in their bathrooms. Maybe it’s just far enough away from real life to make it survivable. I want it to be over and to stop and I want to go back to not feeling like I have a bowling ball on my chest. I guess these are things only time can do.
