Grief, Briefly Interrupted

I've been thinking a lot lately about how it is I will feel when my mother is gone, how I will deal with her absence, if I will crumble or if I will rise, etc., etc. It does absolutely no good to play this game, because that's what it is, a game of magical thinking, trying to imagine one's reaction to a life changing event. But I still play it anyway, and in turn, think about "grief" in the same abstract way, what the word means to me, what images come to mind.

Usually it's my grandmother I see first, at my grandfather's funeral in 1984.  I was 12, she was 65 and he had died of a massive heart attack while driving home from winning a golf game.  He literally died laughing, I remember her telling me, since he'd really stuck it to his buddies out there on the course and was chuckling  to his friend in the passenger seat about it when he slumped over the wheel. At the funeral, she stands stiffly by the grave and does not cry and I hold onto my mother's hand for dear life. After the funeral, instead of mourning, my grandmother cooks and serves for what must have been hundreds of people who showed up at her house: pigs in a blanket, asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, mini pork sandwiches, and buckets of white wine and martinis. Later, I see her the year she took me to New York for Christmas and my birthday I was 25 and miserable, single and hating my corporate job and I had been; she was 75 and antsy and looking for something to do.  Despite being a widow for over a decade and her current paramour's gestures of paying for our trip and sending such things as martinis and miniature Christmas trees to our room at the Times Square Marriott every day, what she missed most about being in that city was my grandfather.  Not that she said this directly, but she would tear up in cabs as we traversed the city, whether we were on our way to see Chicago on Broadway or returning from a showing of Kundun, the Martin Scorsese movie about the Dali Lama.  "Bob Greig would have loved that," she might have said, or simply, "Bob--" and she would clear her throat and put on her dark glasses and cry.  She would take my hand in the cab and squeeze it fiercely and I would squeeze back, unable to do anything else to comfort her as I watched the tears leak out and run down her cheeks. 

Just Monday, she helped define grief for me again, albeit accidentally.  That afternoon, Ma, Jim and I were headed to the cemetery where Ma will have a headstone. She's going to be cremated but some of her ashes will be sprinkled there, and she likes the idea that we will all have a place to go when she's gone. I hadn't seen the plot yet, hadn't really wanted to.  I also have yet to take her up on a tour of the crematorium.

Ma goes to this particular cemetery every year on Memorial Day because her dear friend Christie, who committed suicide in 1999, is buried there. Recently, and strangely enough, Ma managed to procure a plot only few feet away from her friend. "Couldn't be happier knowing I'll be near someone I know," she said. I wasn't really looking forward to the cemetery visit (my mother is the only person I know who likes cemeteries) but I wasn't dreading it either. I just figured it would be sweet and weird, which is exactly what it was.  When I texted my friend Lynn about the day's activities, she sent back a message reading, "That sounds like my worst nightmare."  I guess in all reality it should've been mine, but for whatever reason, it wasn't.  I guess that's what you get when your mother works with old folks and dying people her whole life.  It just isn't all that scary.  Sort of.

Anyway, the morning before we went, I glanced at the bookshelf in the living room and happened to see a book titled, "Up From Grief." Given my current fascination, I picked it up and started thumbing through it.  It belonged to my grandmother and she had written in the front, "Given to me 20 (underlined) days after Bob died, and three months since Edward." Edward was her friend Edith's husband; Edith gave her the book. Edith's accompanying postcard was inside and the last line read, "I don't like this book, but everyone else does. Read it if you want."

From what I can tell my grandmother maybe got through the first chapter, busy as she was correcting its author's theory on grief at every turn, evidenced by her marginalia.  Screw survivor guilt and feelings of shame and loneliness. Shirley Greig wasn't having it. Just so you don't think I'm making this shit up, here is a particularly amazing page.

Granted, her husband had died incredibly recently, but I'm imagining my grandmother's position on all this psychobabble didn't change so much.  From about 10 minutes after his death, she traveled, she traveled some more, she had dinner parties and she avoided that gaping hole in her heart the best she could for nearly 20 years until she passed away. How does this change or help my vision of grief?  I read the passages out loud to my mother and my sister, and we laughed so hard we cried.  Her commentary was just so perfect; irreverent and exactly the way she lived her life.  As my sister put it, "Fuck yeah, she put on those sunglasses and didn't let that shit ruin her day."

And neither did we on Monday.  I've never visited a cemetery on Memorial Day, and it's actually a beautiful day to visit.  Graves are bursting with flowers and flags and there are actually other people around, so it's not as lonely and creepy.  We drove up there under the threat of rain, yet by the time we'd gotten Ma out of the car, the sun was breaking through long enough for all of us to close our eyes, tilt our heads back and feel a few rays on our faces.

She's picked a nice spot in the middle of a hill, just south of a sweet little tree.  I had never seen Christie's grave before and it was lovely, with a reddish headstone etched with a mother surrounded by her three children, and a quote about how the light will shine on anyone who remembers and loves those who are gone.

"Where exactly will you  be?" I said, after a few moments of silence.
 
"Right here," she said, pointing at the ground beneath her wheelchair.

Jim had wheeled her directly over her plot. 

"Great," I said. "Perfect.  Right there." And then Ma and I cracked up, because we find such morbid things pretty fucking hilarious.

When I recovered, I asked, "Will your headstone look like hers?"

"Yep," Jim said.

"Nope," Ma said. "Smaller. Level."

"Not sticking up? Ground level?" I said and she nodded. 

"Oh right," Jim said. "Well, close enough."

Not that it really matters. Then I asked what was going to be written on the headstone and when Jim told me, I realized I already knew what it would be. "It's a beautiful day and I love you," he said. This sentiment was almost more than I could bear in that moment, but I held it together. 

"So --" Ma said, gesturing into the air around her wheelchair. "So---"

"If we come, you'll be here."

"Right."

"It's good you'll be here, Ma."

"Huh?" she said. "What?"

"Not good that you'll be dead! That you'll have headstone.  I mean, that you'll be here in a way. You know what I mean."  She nodded.

Seeing the plot and thinking about all of it in this way comforted me, as did a piece of an old interview I'd heard with George Burns on the radio recently. He said that even though Gracie had been gone nearly 30 years, he still went to visit her at Forest Lawn once a month. He talked to her there he said, told her what was going on in his life and this made him feel better, helped him miss her a little less.  Here's hoping.