Five years ago, I stood on stage, blacked out, and gave what would end up being a viral TED talk called We Don’t Move On From Grief, We Move Forward With It. It was an act of passive aggression (I am, after all, from the midwest) not just for myself but for every griever who feels alone in their loss, whatever that loss may be. For everyone who has been afraid that their grief and their happiness are somehow at odds with one another, that to enjoy the life they have now is to betray the life they lost.
I did not think in that moment that I was going to be talking about this topic for years to come. I could barely think in that moment, which is how I went four minutes over my allotted time and how I incorrectly pronounced the word “measure.”
But I think about and talk about this -- the imaginary wrestling match between what happened and what is happening right now -- all the time. It’s a job hazard -- my work on Terrible, Thanks for Asking places me square in the path of other people’s pain on a regular basis -- and a life hazard. I will forever be in a cosmic throuple with the man who died and the man who hasn’t died yet (knock on wood).
The below piece is kicking off a new monthly installment for paid subscribers of She Tried, exploring the questions I get from people who are living in their own multiverse; moving forward at their own speed, in their own way.
He is writing to me from the graveyard, where he visits his husband. It’s the day before Thanksgiving, and he is alone.
I have never seen this graveyard, have never been to Vermont, so I can only imagine it: mossy headstones, an icy breeze rattling the last of the autumn leaves, a lone figure in a wool topcoat standing over the land where his beloved was buried not even a year ago.
It’s Thanksgiving -- his first as a widow -- and there is nothing to be thankful for. This is hyperbole, but it’s also reality. Because the blessings you have to count don’t feel like blessings when you’re alone: the roof over your head isn’t a home anymore, it’s a haunted house. The bed you try to sleep in was the bed you slept in together. The food on your table tastes like nothing at all, and you don’t want to eat it anyway.
The first Thanksgiving after my husband Aaron died of brain cancer happened two days after my husband died of brain cancer. Two. Days. 48 hours after he took his last breath, I was in my mother’s living room in a wool skirt and a turtleneck for what was a truly miserable attempt at even a regular meal, let alone a Holiday Meal where Gratitude is always at the top of the menu.
On the inside, I was screaming and writhing, my hand fused to a burning hot stove. On the outside, I scooped mashed potatoes onto my plate and refilled my wine glass.
There was no grave to go to, or I’d have been there, pressed to the earth or perhaps burying myself within it. Maybe this is why Aaron insisted on being cremated.
Nine years later, I can sense this same energy in the widow writing to me from the graveyard. I can feel the sting in his throat and the rage in his heart. He tells me that his husband’s family has moved on, that nobody else is sad, that they’re enjoying the holiday and he is alone in a cemetery and his husband is dead and the pain is so sharp he can barely breathe.
What he wants to know, he writes me, is will it always be this hard? Will it always feel like this?