Issue #39
Now that I’m a grown-up I don’t look for monsters under my bed or for the boogeyman in my closet, though I have been known to check the locks on the doors more than once. Nowadays, it’s grief that sneaks up on me like a ghost and taps me on the shoulder. Though grief may try her best to scare me, I’ve come to expect these Autumn visits.
If I were writing this eight or nine years ago, I’d most likely be telling you about how I lost my Dad in the middle of Tennessee’s fiery season. I’d tell you how it took years for me to stop shielding my eyes against the Fall colors that were once beautiful and had instead become a painful reminder of my Dad’s absence.
It’s been twelve years since my Dad died and that grief has settled down to a whisper, instead a more recent loss has pushed its way forward. During the pandemic our family experienced the end of a particular friendship and the close community that we shared life with on a daily basis. Our break-up was a side effect of the implosions that spread throughout churches and school communities and families during the pandemic.
Grief from that loss came knocking this month because October was a time of revelry in our community: autumn-flavored feasts, a fall birthday, a costume party, a mob of families trick-or-treating through the neighborhood together. When I thought about celebrating the season in all its glory, I thought of this community.
Our family’s connection with the group abruptly ended and when it did it felt like we had been cut out of the group photograph with sharp scissors. The rest of the community seemed to continue on, their rhythm unchanged, while our hearts hemorrhaged. In the months that followed, one particular question haunted me.
Was it real?
Was the connection we shared before it all disappeared—real?
On the countless days that our families played together from ten in the morning until dusk, when the husbands showed up to join us for an impromptu dinner, was the friendship real?
At the costume party each year, when a bunch of adults grew young and silly again and we all felt safe enough to laugh at ourselves and be laughed at–was the safety real?
That birthday of mine, the night when I finally opened my heart enough to believe these women were gathered around me because they truly cared about me—was their affection real?
At first the ghost of what we once had filled me with such an ache that I wasn’t able to answer the question. Enough time has passed now that although this grief has not yet settled to a whisper, I can see an October coming when it will.
As for my question, with time for reflection I’ve landed on my answer. The ending doesn’t have to erase or nullify the beginning or the middle. The friendship was real. The laughter was real. The safety was real. I can hold onto the eight years before we lost it all and I can also grieve the change.1
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Over the past few years, I’ve learned that grief is not actually trying to scare me, she’s trying to show me what I care about. Poet and essayist, Louise Glück, died last week and her poems have been spreading like seeds far and wide in the world. Here’s one of them:
First Memory
Long ago, I was wounded. I lived
to revenge myself
against my father, not
for what he was—
for what I was: from the beginning of time,
in childhood, I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved.
“I thought that pain meant I was not loved…it meant I loved.”
Although the focus in this poem is the poet’s relationship with her father, I think it names a truth about broken relationships. I have previous experience with losing friendships, with that familiar feeling of rejection, with believing because of the pain that I’m someone “who was not loved”.
This poem flips the message on its head and offers a different way to remember those eight years. It hurts because I loved this group of families and the space we created when we were together.
I am someone who loved.
I am someone who loves.
This version of the story doesn’t have an ending.
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(This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Haunted".)
Free Wallpaper
Other Posts About Friendship
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Blessings from the Guest Nest,
-Aimee
P.S.—Have any ghosts come to visit you this month or in other seasons of the year?
The pandemic pulled us into a Vortex of Weird. May we have mercy on each other for the mistakes that were made, the hurt that was done. As for this story, there has been mending over the last year or two with people from that community. We haven’t reversed time but some of the members of our family have been able to make something new with their old friends. For the rest of us we remember what we once had and find ways to still show up when our paths cross.
Whew, yes, resonating with your wrestling with grief and the feelings of "Was it real?" ❤️
Oh my, I really feel this October/autumn grief in reference to some relationships. I’ve heard the saying too that grief is “love with no place to go” and it reminds me that it is not a pathology but a proof of the importance of what we lost.