(Elisabeth Kubler-Ross)
Jessamyn always said blogs should have links. So I'll start there, because I don't know where else to start...
Invisibilia: A Friendly Ghost Story.
This ghost story is so well told that I missed my stop on the Metro.
I ghosted someone this summer and I was ghosted. And they are both haunting me. I'm grieving the loss of both friendships.
Yesterday my therapist laid out the truth: if she wants to reach out, she will. (The friend who ghosted me.) And we also talked about the fact that I needed to say goodbye to my other friend, because it was affecting my mental health.
I've already written about this...but grief isn't just one blog post. Grief comes and goes. Grief is not taking showers for days on end, and letting the dishes pile up. Grief is crying and not being able to cry. Grief is watching Jane the Virgin on end.
Grief is wearing an actual mask every day, but not taking care of the skin underneath it.
And grief is living in a country where everyone knows someone who died this year, from friends and lovers to parents and so many children's writers and illustrators.
The rest of the quote in the title from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross?
"The reality is you will grieve forever. You will not 'get over' the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to."
I'm at a loss for any more of my own words, so I'll share one of my favorite poems:
Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies
Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age
The child is grown, and puts away childish things.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
Nobody that matters, that is. Distant relatives of course
Die, whom one never has seen or has seen for an hour,
And they gave one candy in a pink-and-green stripéd bag, or a jack-knife,
And went away, and cannot really be said to have lived at all.
And cats die. They lie on the floor and lash their tails,
And their reticent fur is suddenly all in motion
With fleas that one never knew were there,
Polished and brown, knowing all there is to know,
Trekking off into the living world.
You fetch a shoe-box, but it's much too small, because she won't curl up now:
So you find a bigger box, and bury her in the yard, and weep.
But you do not wake up a month from then, two months
A year from then, two years, in the middle of the night
And weep, with your knuckles in your mouth, and say Oh, God! Oh, God!
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies that matters,
—mothers and fathers don't die.
And if you have said, "For heaven's sake, must you always be kissing a person?"
Or, "I do wish to gracious you'd stop tapping on the window with your thimble!"
Tomorrow, or even the day after tomorrow if you're busy having fun,
Is plenty of time to say, "I'm sorry, mother."
To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died,
who neither listen nor speak;
Who do not drink their tea, though they always said
Tea was such a comfort.
Run down into the cellar and bring up the last jar of raspberries;
they are not tempted.
Flatter them, ask them what was it they said exactly
That time, to the bishop, or to the overseer, or to Mrs. Mason;
They are not taken in.
Shout at them, get red in the face, rise,
Drag them up out of their chairs by their stiff shoulders and shake
them and yell at them;
They are not startled, they are not even embarrassed; they slide
back into their chairs.
Your tea is cold now.
You drink it standing up,
And leave the house.
Thanks for stopping by.
