All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir(59)

At the end of the day, I crawled under the covers with my two sisters, uncomfortable, anxious, longing for my own bed. I’ve read that in grief, families come together or break at the seams. In that moment it felt obvious what sort we were.

That night, late into the wee hours, I asked Meagan about what Dad would have thought about our first holiday effort without him. I knew he would be beyond disappointed, maybe even furious with the results. But I couldn’t seem to get any closer than I was, sharing a pillow. I watched the ceiling as I waited for Meagan to answer. We might have been alone as we worked our way through the night, but at least I could try to be as physically close as possible.



     Trying to smile and get through our first Thanksgiving without him.





33


    Sad Girl’s Guide



“Woke up last nite thinking about you—did you know you are always on my mind?”



Before my father’s I had only witnessed death in disparate flashes, mostly through social media. A girl from high school was running in the park at exactly the wrong moment and part of an oak tree splintered off and hit her. She died instantly. My high school mourned her through a Facebook post, and it caught my attention. My mind recalled another death that made little sense. Outside the tutoring place where I worked, a girl named Michelle told me that her sister, a twin, had died speeding down a street in our town at one in the afternoon. The twins were identical, and I immediately imagined the parents looking at her, exactly the same as the child they had lost.

These disruptions in space and time rattled me. Why did these young women die? After college, the Facebook posts started coming every couple of months, notifications that one friend of mine or another had lost a parent or grandparent after a long illness. I melted into the pictures, looking at the toothy smiles of proud relatives no longer here. I scrolled my way through the tapestry of their relationship. The big moments that they’d been there for and would not be in the future. It shocked my system. Now it was my turn.

As a millennial, I tend to crowdsource everything. So why not grief? I wrote to the three women I knew who had lost a parent, revealing that I had lost one, too, and asked a series of inane/oversimplified questions:

     Were there any books or movies that helped you?



     What was absolutely not helpful to you?



     Did you gain weight? Did you lose weight?



     How do I wake up in the morning and not feel insane? How do I work?



     How do I cope (without using wine)?



     How do I deal with the self-pitying thoughts that are on a loop in my brain?



     How can I talk to my dad still?



     Did writing help?



     What do I do when I feel irrational rage when people are talking about their parents?



     How do I communicate about it with people that I do not know?





My friend and fellow namesake Erin was the first to respond. Her words floored me. But first, a little about her: Erin is captivating in looks and in spirit. She is the former girlfriend of a boy I loved. She has dark, shiny brown hair with large oval brown eyes. Freckles line the top of her cheeks. She looks like an actress Warhol would have hung out with. Porcelain skin with a penetrating gaze. I felt immediately jealous as I secretly crawled through her digital existence. I heard that she could be mean and sharp. I met her and kept a distance, jealous but also intrigued.

A close friend of hers moved to the city, and I offered to take him out to a VICE party. I wore a black fitted dress with my jet-black hair, never making a move and understanding that I should not because I was likely to be rejected. I got a message from Erin, early the next day, saying I should stay away from her friends. We were so, so similar, it was painful. Years later, she apologized and asked for a meeting. The stars aligned and we saw each other for what we were, kindred spirits and drinking buddies. When I first got sober she supported the cause.

Her mother died in a personal tragedy (her story to tell, not mine) that I watched unfold through the Internet. I felt awful for Erin but didn’t know what to do or say, so I said nothing. This was before my dad died, and I knew little about the etiquette of grief.

The next time I saw her, her skin was paler, almost translucent. Her face looked thinner. I asked her what the most difficult thing was. Zeroing in on the question made me feel stupid, but I could not speak the dreaded words “How are you doing?” She closed her eyes and said, “Everything.” I nodded.

But when I needed her, after my father died, she was there. This is the response she sent me.


To: Erin Lee Carr

From: Erin C

Date: 02/24/2015

Subject: Sad Club





Have you ever read East of Eden? I think it’s the first thing i read after losing my mom that really got close to me. For me, self-help books or books on grief don’t get through to me. Maybe because they threaten to make your pain universal? You know? Like no one in the world feels exactly like you do right now, and although so many come close, you have to naturally find the stories that come to you, without coercion. Just pick up anything that piques your interest, through divine force it will have something in it for you. But omg I’m basic, because Wild made me sob uncontrollably. I think it’s easy to relate to avoiding that pain and loss and what it will do to you. I think both you and I are the “type” to push those feelings as far back as we can…but it will destroy you. Gotta ride those waves up and down. Do not fight the weeping just yet. Let your body move through it.