sadness and wild freedom

 from the rules of inheritance by claire bidwell smith

"grief is like another country, i realize. it's a place." (94)

"my grief fills rooms. it takes up space and it sucks out the air. it leaves no room for anyone else. 

grief and i are left alone a lot. we smoke cigarettes and we cry. . .

grief holds my hand as i walk down the sidewalk, and grief doesn't mind when i cry because it's raining and i cannot find a taxi. grief wraps itself around me in the morning when i wake from a dream of my mother, and grief holds me back when i lean too far over the edge of the roof at night, a drink in my hand.

grief acts like a jealous friend, reminding me that no one else will ever love me as much as it does.

grief whispers in my ear that no one understands me.

grief is possessive and doesn't let me go anywhere without it."

"her death leaves me both depleted and emboldened. that's what tragedy does to you, i am learning. the sadness and the wild freedom of it all impart a strange durability. i feel weathered and detached, tucking my head against the winds and trudging forward into my life."

"when it comes to boys, i've always been the same. i;ve always been the girl who gives too much too easily and expects the same in return. i don't remember which boy was first. in the beginning they were all the same: smooth and hairless and vulnerable, emulating or disobeying their fathers -- there was nothing original about them yet.

maybe there never is."

"when people ask me what i do and i say that i work in hospice, they often recoil in a horror that ushers forth a series of well-meaning exclamations.

oh, isn't that hard?

that seems so sad!

i couldn't do that.

the truth is that i don't find it sad at all. when i talk to grieving people, it's like looking at a negative image -- the deeper the grief, the more evidence of love i see.

after my father died i let the follow-up calls from the hospice bereavement counselor go unanswered, and sought out my own coping methods. sometimes these involved drinking and losing myself in the people around me, but i was also driven to learn as much about grief as i could.

i read everything from scientific texts to memoirs about loss. i found myself drawn to movies about death and to information specific to my particular parental loss. i read about trauma and its effects on development. i studied anxiety and how to overcome it. i read about attachment theory and tried to link it to my current relationships. 

i couldn't help wondering if what i felt was normal. and each time i came across someone else's story, each time i found reassurance that i wasn't alone in my grief process, i relaxed a little more. . .

the bottom line is that there is simply no one way to define grief, but the irony is that almost every grieving person i've met seems concerned about whether they're doing it right."