**this piece deals with loss, grief, and mentions a terminal cancer not in my family**
I was fortunate to have three living grandparents into my early 30s.
We visited my Nonno and Nonna in Connecticut at least a couple of times a year for most of my life. My Nonno’s boat was the first I sailed on (that I can remember) and my Nonna used to make us silver dollar pancakes in the mornings before everyone else woke up. We ate and drank at holidays around their dining room table where Nonna taught us to keep the parmesan cheese close by so you could grate a fresh layer onto your pasta as you went.
We visited my Grandmother often too, in upstate New York with her cats. She used to buy frozen waffles and Mac n’ cheese especially for our visits as kids and we’d do trips into town or spend our days playing board games and eating cookies. She was always sad when we left until the last few years when she moved into my parent’s house and my childhood bedroom. I don’t remember her ever being as happy as she was living with my mom and dad even through sickness.
This year we lost all of them in a span of six months. My Grandmother most recently a couple of days ago.
All three lived long, full lives.
And loss is still difficult.
One hard lesson I’ve learned about grief is that without proper closure, the wound it creates will become infected and can’t heal properly. So I’m grateful that about a month ago, we had a small, private interment for Nonno and Nonna beneath a tree with a view of the sound. We’ll mark Grandma’s life together in the coming weeks.
And since closure is not so simple with loss and death (or maybe anything), it will likely never be “finished.” The ongoing process of grieving will be there whether we plan for it or not. It won’t be linear. It won’t be pretty. And it probably won’t be easily managed (and certainly not when attempted with force and judgement).
But there are some time markers we could use to tether us to remembering. Some specific to our loss and some collective.
National Grief Awareness Day is in a couple days on August 30th. I like the idea of a day like this. A container to hold our complicated feelings no matter how they morph and change. It’s a day to feel numb, restless, melancholy, joyful, bittersweet, heavy, connected, and alone. To know that however it shows up is exactly ok. For me it’s tender this year, the wound is new, but it will be different next week and next year and five years from now.
The process of grieving makes me think about the gentle art of Swedish death cleaning. The show is one long lesson in processing the passage of time. Each episode focuses on a different person with a different circumstance and not all of them have to do with capital G grief that comes with the loss of a loved one, though some do.
I remember one in particular. A woman, probably in her 40s, cared for her young husband in their home from the time he was diagnosed with a late-stage cancer until he passed in a love seat in the corner of their living room. When the Swedish death cleaners arrive, the house is full of his items, football paraphernalia on the walls, a crowded dining room table, and the chair in the corner carrying the weight of a life and especially a death.
What I love about the show is that the cleaners (one of whom is a psychologist) don’t press people to move on too quickly or in any way that feels inauthentic (they carry that chair out of the house together exactly when the woman is ready and exactly in the way she wants).
Instead, they help people find a way to tidy the grief, to pack it into a beautiful box somewhere to be visited often. A box just small enough that it leaves space and breathing room for the rest of their lives. And though it seems like the beautiful box might make the lost person smaller, it actually pays more homage to their memory than when their presence is both thick and paradoxically diluted, seeping into every corner of their space and mind.
When this woman on the show thought about how she wanted her life to look now, she dreamed of hosting friends and family around that dining room table, having brunch together, bringing laughter back into her home. She hadn’t imagined it without all of his things until then.
Of course, the best part, as with any renovation-style show, is when she steps back through the threshold from the past to the present. The woman sees the house full of natural light, pale wood, greenery, and space, so much space. In this episode, the cleaners dedicate a place on a shelf to the memory of her husband. It’s not the center of the shelf, but it’s there, easy to choose to visit and remember however often she wants.
She is moved when she sees it, but what strikes me most is that she seems both free and tethered at once.
So much of grief and memory has to do with material things. I think of my Grandmother every time I look at the metal water pump that my grandfather converted into a lamp. It sat in the corner of their living room as long as I can remember until I brought it home here. I think of my Nonno when I look at his nautical charts on my walls and my Nonna when I put a hot dish on her ceramic trivet shaped like a fish. They’re still present here and so easy to visit.
I imagine processing grief internally might look like that too. Being held and free at once. Finding a spot for the memories, not too big and not too small, that you set aside time to visit and feel how you feel.
And however that looks is exactly ok.
What I’m loving right now:
“Last night before falling asleep, I was listening to a podcast in which someone was telling a story about their Near Death Experience. They said something I’ve heard many other people with N.D.E.s express over the years––that when they were in the next realm it was revealed to them that they had chosen their parents. And not only that, but they had chosen the hardships they would have in this life, specifically choosing ones that would aid in the evolution of their spirit. Whatever’s true, that’s been one of the most helpful tools for me in engaging my diagnosis and every other challenge in my life these past two years—engaging it as if I chose it before I was born, as if I muscled down the birth canal, willing to face whatever I had come to face, while raising some hell, and a little bit of heaven too.”
-Andrea Gibson
“It’s something I can’t say out loud—because whomever I say it to will inevitably reply, “No, no, no, that won’t happen.” I don’t fault them; it’s human instinct. But from my early 20s and that difficult decision to delay chemo for the egg freezing, motherhood has been intrinsically linked to my mortality; and given the threat of another relapse, my mortality is never far from my mind. It’s isolating to have such a looming fear that can’t be stated out loud. I don’t want to silence this fear or even conquer it, but rather to make some kind of peace with it. To accept it as a possibility and move forward with it—even if that conversation can only happen in the privacy of my journal.”
-Suleika Jaouad
“All of this to say: I knew I was writing a book with a strong flavor. But I love strong flavors! Blue cheese. Smoked kalamata olives. (Smoked anything, really.) Very dark, bitter chocolate. Very black, bitter coffee. Chili crisp. Rose lemonade. Dill pickles. Hot curry. An imperial IPA. I find these things delicious, but I also completely understand how they might taste terrible to other people.* Taste is subjective.”
-Maggie Smith
Beautiful. "Tethered and free"—what a perfect summary of grief. And thank goodness the "tethered" part of us is never fully free. I think our hearts need it in order to allow the memories to evolve our loving and living.
I loved this Rachel. What a beautiful reminder that our loved ones never really leave us and it's the memories that keep us alive.
I received a message from my mum on Friday as it was three years to the day since my grandad, her dad, died. Him and my nanna also died in the same year and as you can imagine, my mum went through a challenging time. We scattered their ashes this summer as it was only after three years she was ready to let go.
"Being held and free at once" is a beautiful way to describe how my mum, and the rest of us, felt this summer 💜