Sometimes My Grief
By Jennifer Inglis
PROMPT — Despite ...
Sometimes my grief is traumatic, like when my daughter pointed a Nerf gun at my head from across the room and my face immediately flushed, my belly filled with what I call my “rage ball” and I almost yelled at her to “get that gun out of my face.” I’ve spent nine years trying not to yell at my daughter and I have mostly succeeded, but this frightened me. She left the room, startled by my reaction, and I stared at my husband. I shook my head at him and I told him “Never again.” And then said “I don’t know where that came from” but he and I both knew that of course I knew where that came from. We have been a staunchly anti-toy-gun household but caved recently when we saw giant Nerf guns and bought a handful for Elouise and her friends to play with outside. I didn’t think bringing a Nerf gun into my house would cause that reaction, but I didn’t expect for it to be pointed at my head, the location of the gunshot wound that killed my aunt and that my brother inflicted on himself.
Sometimes my grief is like a sucker punch to the belly, making me double over in physical and emotional pain like the night I randomly walked into a local sub shop, just planning to get some dinner, and I saw a fundraising can on the counter for a suicide walk. I looked around and I realized that Jamie’s Roast Beef, the new sub shop in town that had gotten rave reviews, was named after Jamie, the brother of the owner, and Jamie killed himself. There were plaques on the wall in his honor and paintings of Jamie in Patriots gear, and my brother loved the Patriots, and it was so unexpected and overwhelming that I bent over at the waist and felt like I couldn’t breathe. I turned away from the counter and started crying one of those ugly cries that I couldn’t control and I had to walk out of the shop to try and catch my breath, but I was hungry so I rushed back in, threw a $20 in the can, grabbed my bag off the counter, and fled.
Sometimes my grief is expressed through and on my body, like when I had to separate my brother’s ashes, portion his remains to give to people who loved him, and my heart was racing so hard I literally thought it might break. My Apple watch told me that my heart rate was 147 beats per minute so I wasn’t just imagining it. It felt like grief was carved into my heart, forcing it to work harder to do its job and it took hours to get back to “normal.” Or when I intentionally draw my grief on my body, one of my tattoos a mother’s knot and memorial to my three lost pregnancies, and another tattoo a stack of books to commemorate the book I was writing about me and my brother, and the artist made a comment that when the book was done he’d be willing to ink in the title for me, and then my brother died and I stopped writing it. A third tattoo was added recently, a falling star, in memory of my brother who committed suicide and now I don’t know if that memoir will be written and my book tattoo will always be unfinished.
Sometimes my grief makes me feel brittle and uncaring and unforgiving, which are not traits I want for myself but I can’t help it. I was leaving Whole Foods with a bouquet of wildflowers to put on my aunt’s grave on the 30th anniversary of her death, and this guy almost hit me with his car when I was walking across the parking lot. He honked at me, and I stopped, turned, and almost started screeching at him that this was not the day to mess with me, that I was fragile and might flip out, but I found a way to just keep walking. This was while my brother was still alive, so I worry that sometimes my grief might just push me over the edge, and I might turn into my mother who would scream and yell when someone pushed her over the edge. Or when people didn’t want to accept my brother’s suicide, and wanted it to be murder, and I wanted to shout “murder isn’t better!” because I know what murder feels like too but I didn’t shout or get angry because I know their grief is different from mine but also the same.
Sometimes my grief interrupts me when I’m having a perfectly good time, like when we threw a back to school ice cream party in our driveway and we ran out of the main ingredient, so I walked to the local convenience store and bought extra chocolate and cookie dough ice cream at an exorbitant price, and a long ago friend messaged me on Facebook because she had just learned about my brother’s death. I leaned up against the wall of the store and texted for a while, answering questions and crying because I wished we didn’t reconnect for this reason. And then I had to go back to a group of sugared up kids and their parents and pretend everything was OK for a few more minutes. The ice cream had softened too much in the meantime so the whole trip was almost a waste.
Sometimes.
But not all the time.
Because sometimes my grief gives me compassion for people who look like they’re brittle and uncaring and unforgiving, who look like the slightest offense will set them off, because maybe they’re grieving too.
Because sometimes my grief is bittersweet, like when I’m in the moment with my daughter or my niece, and I am proud of the beautiful and strong women they’re becoming and am then sad because my brother won’t see them grow up, but I am grateful for the time we all had together and for the memories I am creating.
Because sometimes my grief is shared, and that makes it easier, like when a hundred people gathered at my brother’s memorial service, where my best friend asked me what she could do to help, and I asked her to make sure that I always had a water in my hand, and she did, because that is what friends do when you’re hurting.
Because sometimes my grief is lost in a crowd, like when I went to “yoga for grief,” and I was nervous because I’m not particularly good at yoga, but I am good at grieving, and it both surprised me and didn’t when I heard people cry. And I cried while on my back during Savasana, the final resting pose, tears rolling down the sides of my face into my ears. We cried together, mourning our individual sorrows, our bodies near each other but not knowing each other, and it was healing.
Because sometimes my grief takes my nearly exploded heart and expands it instead, giving me room to take pleasure in the moments where I can laugh and play and cry with joy and not sadness, like when I go to a concert and allow myself to be swept away in the music.
Because sometimes my grief gives me expertise, and gives me the tools to help other people who are new to grief, like my friend whose younger brother died from a drug overdose, because there’s definitely one thing about grief, and that is that it is universal and inescapable, and that anniversaries of deaths can be hard, and he was thankful that I warned him so he could help his own parents with their grief too.
Because sometimes my grief puts small details in hyper focus so that the memories don’t fade, like my aunt’s giggle, and the wildflowers she gave me the year before she died. Like the way my brother held books he read and seeing him in the way my daughter holds her own books. Like how my brother was so happy for me when I finally had a baby because he just knew I was going to be a “good mama” because we knew what it was like to not have supportive parents, and we wanted to be better for our own kids.
Because my grief is always with me, and it’s never going away.
Because I have to find a way to have it live alongside the things and people I care about.
Because even though I might feel like I’m drowning in it, I’m not.
Because it’s forever changed me.
Because of music, because of flowers, because of ice cream.
Because of friends, because of laughter, because of hope.
Because of love.
Jennifer Inglis is a graduate of GrubStreet's 2023 Essay Incubator and 2022 Memoir Generator programs. She lives in Salem, MA with her family and pets. She works full-time supporting public libraries at the state level. When she’s not writing, she enjoys playing board games, searching for the perfect donut, and showing tourists the best of her city.
