Sadness & Rage

Two sides of the same coin

I’m taking a break from storytelling to focus on my contemporary grief.

I was working on an entry about what happened after Alabama, when Bill and I lived in Salt Lake City, and I don’t know if it’s being with family over the holidays, or the general malaise brought on by eating whatever whenever, but I kept getting caught up in exposition instead of being able to just tell the story. So, this essay is about me feeling all of the feelings that accompany loss as time passes, because clearly it’s demanding my attention, and I know that’s just as important of a story as the ones that happened decades ago.

The stages of grief are ENDLESS. They are non-linear, and nonsensical. And there is nothing to do but just cycle through them over and over like a goldfish circling its bowl.

It’s been a little over a year now since Bill died. Fourteen months, roughly. I don’t cry every day, any more, like I did for the first six months or so. Now I cry sporadically, and it’s often a surprise. 

For example, at dinner with some old friends, we were talking about our last conversations with loved ones.

“What was your last conversation with Bill?” one friend asked.

“It was a text message,” I started to explain, and then almost choked on an explosion of tears.

I was at a spa, and Bill had messaged me, “How are you today meow?”

“I’m at a spa so I’m great,” I wrote, punctuated by a rainbow emoji. 

I spent the rest of the day sauna-ing and cold plunging and breathing in herbal steam, and it wasn’t until this conversation at dinner that I realized I’ve been carrying immense guilt about this.

“What do you wish could have been different?” she asked.

I realized my answer was absurd, but heard myself saying it anyway, “Well, I wish he would have messaged me back and said, ‘I’m coughing up blood please send an ambulance,’ and then somehow he would have miraculously lived. And instead I spent the day at a spa while he was dying.”

“What if,” she suggested, “he died knowing that you were in a place he knew you loved to be, and that’s why he asked?”

I had not considered this. I started crying into my hands right there at the table, which honestly is no big deal because I am a professional at crying in public. Everyone sat respectfully while I sobbed, and then I thanked them for listening and giving me this whole new way to think about my last exchange with Bill.

—--------

When it’s not tears, though, it’s rage, and sometimes the rage is so intense I don’t know where to put it.

Bill was cremated, so he doesn’t have an official resting place. Or rather, he has multiple resting places. My mom likes to remind us that this is very controversial, to break up the collection of ashes, but I think that Bill would like the idea of being spread out among various environs.

We’ve scattered his ashes at his favorite beach in Florida, in the yard in Tallahassee, and in his yard in Portland. The rest of his ashes are in the columbarium at our family’s church.

I understand why people want a grave to visit, even though I have conversations with Bill in my head no matter where I’m at. That said, a sense of place connecting you to the person makes the conversations more tangible. 

When I was at Bill’s house in Portland, and I would sit at the table on the back patio, I really felt like he was sitting in one of the battered wooden chairs across from me. I could so clearly see him there, with his old straw Marlboro hat. I would have casual chats with him, while the neighborhood cat Matilda–or, Guillermo, depending on who you ask–came by to sit on our laps. 

In Tallahassee, some of my mom’s friends had a small plaque made to commemorate Bill and I’ve been going to sit by it in the backyard. It’s a painted oval garden stone with a saying on the front embellished by a swirl of green leaves. There’s a personal engraving for Bill on the back. I guess this is our version of a grave.

A few days ago, I was sitting by the plaque and monologuing to Bill. My monologues usually start out wistful, about how much I miss him, but they often devolve into anger, with me telling him how fucked up and selfish it is that he left me and Ed to deal with the rest of life without him. Sometimes I say really mean things to him, and I just let myself say whatever I need to during that moment, because I know he understands that I just have to get it all out.

The thing about leaning into your feelings is that feelings don’t operate in a vacuum. Feelings are more like a vortex that suck all surrounding experiences into them and so all kinds of things get wrapped up in my rants.

“Oh, lucky you,” I snark, “you get to miss the continued war in Ukraine, and people are still dying from Covid, and can you even believe that horrible Florida Man is probably going to be our next president? They’re plowing down trees left and right around here, this whole place has gone to shit, you would really hate it, but you don’t have to deal with it, because you’re gone.”

On this particular day, by the time I got to the part where I was really mad at Bill, I felt the rage rise up in me and I just stood up and screamed. It felt so damn good. I kept thinking of the scene in Steel Magnolias when Sally Field’s character says she wants to hit something. Of course, that was at the funeral, and movies make it seem like there’s just this one funeral where you get all the feelings out, and then you go on with your life, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

After I screamed, I picked up one of the plastic lawn chairs and threw it as hard as I could. I threw it so many times that the legs cracked. This also felt very, very good. Then, I found a stick and smashed it against a tree (yes I apologized to the tree) until it fell to pieces. By this point my hands started to hurt, so I went inside and googled the benefits of scream therapy and learned about rage rooms.

—-------------

These are the two extremes I experience when I’m really leaning into my feelings. I either cry, or I have a very strong desire to put a piece of furniture through a window. So far I haven’t broken anything of value, and I’m not going to include that plastic lawn chair. Both expressions of my grief feel completely valid to me, and both are equally unpleasant to experience. I don’t know any other way to do it, though. I just have to sink into it, and hope that equilibrium becomes my most frequent state.

I think I’m just getting to a point where I can laugh sometimes. The other day, I was with my mom and Ed, and I almost made a joke using my old hippie Bill voice. I stopped myself. But, almost.