Grief – Page 2 – Laura Stavoe

March 5, 2021March 5, 2021

Granaries of Grief

Tending to Endings (fifty-three)

When I make cowboy coffee cake at Christmas, I still feel the warmth of my grandma’s presence. When I think of her brushing my bangs out of my eyes and pulling me towards her, I still feel loved. And when I think sometimes of my grandmother’s struggles with addiction, and what I suspect was body image issues and shame, I still feel sadness and grief.

When my grandma died in 1983, I was 18 years old, and just beginning to address similar struggles of my own. I grieved over the loss of her and the chance to open up to her. I would have liked to have had more opportunity to let her know I understood. I am still sad she didn’t have the chance to experience a world that was more supportive and realistic and welcoming to women. I would have loved to have more time to tell her how deeply she was loved.

There have been times in my life where I thought progressing through grief meant that I would no longer feel those kinds of losses. There would come a day when I would only remember the good. I would not have regrets. But that has not been the case. And today, it is no longer what I even want.

Of course I cherish the warm memories of my grandma, but remembering her pain helps me to connect to her adult self as I’ve gotten older. I feel even closer to her today than I did as a child, and this is true though she has not brushed bangs from my eyes for at least four decades. And that soft pain of regret over what was left unsaid is something valuable that nudges me towards openness and vulnerability with those I love.

Vic, Jean, Jane (my mom, with the braids!), and Carol circa 1945; My Grandma Jean when I knew her.

I’ve been rereading Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning, a book that begins with the recounting of the years he spent in Nazi death camps and moves into a beautiful, wise theory for living in any conditions. I was especially struck by this passage which I hadn’t remembered:

In the past, nothing is irrevocably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. To be sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the ones loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity. From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. Instead young people should envy them.

This speaks to one of the things I was surprised by after my mother’s death as well. I thought I would only want to remember the good times we had before her illness. The time of her illness was so difficult and so heartbreaking. And it is what we say, isn’t it, I want to remember her when she was well.

But my mother’s hard ending also is a window into her strength. It is a mystery to me how she remained so much herself even when she no longer could express that self easily due to weakness and Alzheimer’s. It is something I never want to forget. I want to remember all of her.

The passage from Frankl’s book prompted me to begin a list of things I have done during this pandemic year, which has also been a time of change and loss in a different way. I have often felt unfocused and wondered where the days have gone. Have I lost them?

My list included everything from caring for my husband post surgery to writing every morning (finally) to holding yoga practice with friends in my front yard. I quickly realized, this wasn’t a list accomplishments, but rather a list of experiences. I had so many valuable memories that I quickly ran out of room on the page.

We tend to honor forward momentum in our culture, and I think in in doing so, I have often missed treasures.

Will they ever forget the year mom made them eat Christmas breakfast outside?

Upcoming Workshops

I will be teaching another workshop with the McCall Arts and Humanities Council tomorrow, Saturday March 6 from 10-1 on Zoom. Beyond the Obituary will explore end-of-life writing projects. We will engage in a variety of writing exercises that can lead to legacy projects, family memoirs, letter collections, or online journals. If you would like to join us, we can still squeeze in about two more!

The course is funded by the Idaho Humanities Council at no cost to participants. Donations to the McCall Arts and Humanities Council are appreciated. Thank you to Kerri Stebbins at MAHC for all of your support!

I also encourage you to visit the page for Cub McCall’s series, Looking Ahead: Conversations about Aging and Dying. The online events I attended have been excellent, and it looks like there is an upcoming panel on Advance Directive Health Planning. The page also includes a list of links to resources on end-of-life matters. Thank you to Renée Silvus for organizing this excellent series and for inviting me to be a part of it.

Three Films and More Please

I’ve been receiving so many excellent recommendations for books, films, courses, and other resources about end-of-life. I had originally planned to focus this post on sharing them with you, but then I began thinking of my grandma and longterm grief and went that direction.

But this gives me a chance to put a call out for more. If you have a book or podcast or film that you have found helpful related to caregiving or death or grief, I’d love to hear about it! Email me at laura@laurastavoe or leave comments below.

And since it’s movie season, I do want to mention three films that speak beautifully to end-of-life themes. I will write more about each next month, but I didn’t want you to have to wait! They are very different from each other but each is brilliant and creative and moving. The first I’m sure you’ve heard of is Nomadland, directed by Chloé Zhao. The other two are not nearly as well known or new, but are equally stunning: Departures, directed by Yojiro Takita and Dick Johnson is Dead, directed by Kirsten Johnson.

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February 5, 2021November 29, 2022

About This

Tending to Endings (fifty-two)

My mom’s last clear words were, “You know, we’ll probably need to laugh about this.” She said them days before she died, when she was no longer eating or drinking. When the most we usually got was a wince for pain, or a puckering of lips when she wanted us to come in close for a kiss.

That morning, upon awakening, she noted our dismay at the state of things—her wound, the need to turn her to relieve bedsores, our pain at seeing her pain when we did. The words sounded exactly like what my mom would’ve said pre-Alzheimer’s, pre-cancer, pre-dying. They were a balm for my despair. Mom was still herself.

Mom never ever forgot that life for all its sacredness was also very funny and she worked hard to not let me forget it either. My tendency to be sensitive and serious–or as she would say it, to feel things very deeply–was what she liked best and least about my personality.

When I was young, and my sister Sandy (two years younger) was being difficult, she would tell her to go play out in the middle of Highway 83. Sandy, would grin, eyes sparkling. And I would burst into tears because my mom never told me to play in the middle of Highway 83, which I took as evidence that they had a special something.

When my mom would recount this story later, she said, “I couldn’t say that to you because you would’ve gone and done it!”

Sometimes when I think of the writing I do about my mom and how she would feel about it, I think she would remind me to include more funny parts.

I am better at laughing at myself and at life than I was as a child, but it has taken a village to get me there, a village led by my mother.

This was true even throughout her illness. When we were caregiving, and she would notice my father or sisters or I getting serious and sad, she would emerge with some quip. Part of this may have been distraction from pain. But, more than that it seemed she was saying, hey, it’s me. I’m here!. My mom was never one for melodrama, and I suspect our moments of intense emotion made her feel a little lonely.

On the morning my mom died, we called our hospice nurse, Noelle. She came and helped us bathe my mom one more time. It was an unexpected task that felt emotional and sacred. Also, I am a kinesthetic learner, and it was good for me to have something physical to do, something that held me there in the room while the fact of my mother’s death caught up with me.

Afterwards when we had mom dressed in a silky blue top and the shorts she liked to wear, and covered her in a prayer shawl Amy brought, Noelle said she would call the mortuary and we could either have Mom’s body picked up right away or we could spend some time with her. Amy and Dad and I kind of looked at each other. It was one of those moments where we weren’t sure what we were supposed to want, much less what we did want. Did we want more time with my mom’s body?

And then my dad looked at the clock and saw it was 9:30. And the three of us remembered, the dishwasher installer was coming sometime between 10 and noon.

“Let’s wait a bit,” my dad said, “I need to figure out what to do about the dishwasher delivery.”

I wished my dad didn’t actually named the reason. It seemed wrong to have a decision about my mother’s dead body hinge on an appliance repair schedule. But, Noelle had been our hospice nurse for five months now, and she knew and accepted us with all our quirks. Also, she was aware our mom and wife had just died, so we might not make much sense.

Before Noelle left to visit her next patient, she told us to turn the air conditioner on high. She said she would never ever forget my mother, and I could tell she meant it. She hugged each of us.

At first my dad and Amy and I decided since it was likely on its way, it would be simplest to just close the bedroom door and wait for the dishwasher. We knew how hard it was to get things scheduled in Maui, and admittedly, we were tired of doing dishes by hand. Given all the care my mom needed, it had been the least of our worries, but now, was it wrong to want one thing to be easier?

Amy, as though reading my mind, said, “Mom would definitely want us to have a working dishwasher.”

But as soon as I went to pull the bedroom door closed, the whole thing felt wrong. Like I was hiding something. (Maybe even a dead body!) Like the incongruity between having something as mundane as a dishwasher installation in one room while my mom’s body was in the other might make me explode. Would I even be able to keep the secret? Or would I burst like some character out of a story by Edgar Allen Poe?

I returned to my dad and said, “Maybe we should track this guy down and see if he can come this afternoon?”

My dad was even more bereft than I and thus open to suggestion. He called to get the number of the driver and left a vague message about a death in the family (not specifying the death was in our condo). He said, “I know it’s probably already on the truck, so maybe come right away or late this afternoon?”

“Should I call the mortuary?” I asked.

“Let’s give them a couple minutes to respond,” my dad said, setting down his phone, staring out to the sea.

I made phone calls to family members and found myself compulsively explaining to my Aunt Gail the complication of the dishwasher delivery being scheduled at the same time as the mortuary pick-up.

Gail, a nurse, is good in a crisis. “I don’t want to be bossy, Laura,” she said with a small laugh, “But cancel the dishwasher.”

“I know,” I said, making a firm commitment to myself to do so as soon as I was off the phone. Who cares if we ever have a dishwasher? My mom was dead.

Then the doorbell rang and its seven tolls echoed throughout the condo. “Well, hello! You’re here, come on in!” my dad said in his cheery midwestern voice, as if this was any old day.

And then a man wearing a Blazing Saddles baseball cap introduced himself as Rocky, and made his way towards the kitchen followed by a quieter, skinny man rolling a dolly with the giant box containing, I assumed, our new dishwasher.

I leaned the guest bedroom door closed and crept to the very back corner of the room hoping my aunt didn’t hear and wouldn’t judge us for not immediately cancelling the dishwasher delivery the moment my mother died.

After my conversation with Gail, I made calls from the lanai, where I could compete with the sound of the surf rather than the sounds of the old dishwasher being extracted.

I called my aunt Carol who had been in Maui helping to care for Mom the month before. We were both teary and somehow unbelieving of the news we had known was coming for months. While we talked, my eyes were trained on the water the way they always are in Maui, and I told Carol when a sea turtle swam to the edge of the coral reef in the water below.

“A good sign,” I said.

Then two men walked from the beach up to the seawall and as one stepped up the stairs, I saw the other reach for him to turn him around. At first I thought an argument, and then the reacher dropped down on one knee in the sand, extended a hand with a small (not-a-dishwasher) box.

I narrated all of this for Carol.

“Your mama is loving all this life happening,” she said.

I turned around to the bedroom to my mom’s body on he other side of the glass slider. Saw her chest not rising or falling with breath. Saw her not laughing or wincing or wondering or talking, not thinking, not breathing.

I said goodbye to Carol and slid open the glass door and went to sit with my mom. Or rather, I sat in the room where my mom’s body was and where I looked from pastel corner to corner and then out at the blue water and then asked, Where are you?

I talked to her wherever she was. We laughed about how my dad was playing host, probably offering the worker guys iced tea. I told her my sisters and I would make sure my dad was ok. I sat and breathed next to her not breathing body.

Then I went back out into the living room to be with Amy who had also finished her calls. Rocky was swearing and then grumbling in the kitchen. Finally he announced to my dad, “This opening is not made to specs.” In other words, the new dishwasher—guaranteed to fit —did not fit.

Amy looked to me and we sank lower onto the couch laughing quietly shaking our heads at the strangeness of it all.

“You know this is Mom,” Amy said. “She really didn’t want us to be sad!”

Eventually Rocky and his partner wheeled the old dishwasher out of our condo. It had taken some dismantling of tile work, but the new dishwasher was humming quietly, its red signal light on.

I called the mortuary.

My dad went to the bedroom to sit next to his wife. Or rather, to sit one more time next to the body of the wife he lived with and slept next to and laughed with for fifty-six years.

Mom would’ve liked that the reason we kept her body close to us longer, was not because we couldn’t bear to let it go, but rather, because we couldn’t bear to do dishes by hand one more day. That is how she would have told the story, preferring that detail even more than the sea turtle or the marriage proposal on the sand.

Maybe this is one of the things my mom and I did for one another in our longstanding love. I eventually learned to laugh at myself, and she made space for more deep feels, and we each reaped the benefit of wider vision, a better story, a fuller life.

More Resources

Last weekend I facilitated a workshop on writing about grief and a woman in our group told us about a podcast I had not heard of called Griefcast. Each week, the host, Cariad Lloyd, talks with a different comedian about someone that person has lost. The conversations are honest and often sad, but also of course, they are people who have a talent for seeing the humor in everything. As Cariad says in the introduction, “It’s bleak, but you’ll laugh too.”

Alice Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Tragicomic (2006) was one of my favorite reads last year.

My next writing workshop, Beyond the Obituary: Writing End-of-Life Stories is schedule for Saturday, March 6, 10 am-1 pm. The workshop is free and is offered with support from Idaho Humanities Council. Donations to the McCall Arts and Humanities Council are welcome.

That writing workshop is also part of McCall’s Cabin Fever Series: Conversations on Aging and Dying which includes workshops and panels on a variety of topics including grief, end-of-life planning, and caregiving. All events are online and participants do not need to live in McCall to join.

Thank you for reading Tending to Endings. I would love to have you as a subscriber! Leave your name and email below, and Tending to Endings will arrive in your inbox on the first Friday of every month. Thank you!

December 11, 2020December 11, 2020

Missing Jane

Tending to Ending (forty-nine)

Dad and I talk about my mom often, but it feels particularly poignant here in Maui in December, two years after mom’s last Christmas. Here I can stand where her hospital bed was. I can lounge in the chair where she watched for whales and wondered each day at how she ever got to be so lucky. Here, I walk the same floors she and I paced together on the nights when she was agitated and too afraid to sleep.

And here, in the living room, I remember sweet moments like when my parents sang a duet, each holding the other’s gaze, my mom so weak her words came out as a whisper. I assumed it was a love song or maybe a solemn hymn, until my dad explained later, “No, that was the Whiffenpoof song! We sang it in college at the bars!”

It has been a year and a half since my mom died. Memories from that time bring up such a mix of emotions. I found myself saying to my dad recently, “Everything went so well, considering how horrible it all was.”

Which was something my dad but maybe no one else would understand. Horrible makes sense. Alzheimer’s and cancer are horrible. But when I think back to how many people showed up just when we needed help, and how many things magically came together in ways I couldn’t have planned, and how much love and gratitude we were able to express. Well, it is an intense mix. A season full of ache and grace.

I want to share excerpts from our recent conversation here which include Dad’s perspective on familiar themes: grief of losing a spouse, the value of community, and some of the more confusing aspects of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s. I want to also take a moment to acknowledge and thank my dad and my sisters. This journey is theirs too, and they have been so very gracious in allowing me to write openly (all year!) about our family during such a tender time.

The question I get most often from my friends these days is, How is your dad?

And you don’t know what to say, do you? (laughter)

I tell them you are doing well. But I always feel like I should explain more because of course this has been a profound loss. I think you’re doing well because you talk about missing mom and you are playing tennis and you aren’t isolating.

I think in many cases people find it hard to continue to do things they used to do as a couple. I talk with both my tennis friends and also our joint friends, and for that matter, mom’s friends. I even went to the ladies Saturday breakfast. I knew they would want to talk about mom, and of course they asked how I was doing. I’m not uncomfortable in that kind of setting.

That was the breakfast that used to be a book group that you went to with mom?

Yes, when the Alzheimer’s was getting bad, the only way she would go was if I went along. So, her friends made an exception for me. I was the only guy there.

I’m so glad because now it seems like it helped keep your social fabric somewhat intact too. Also with the Brennan’s. You had Sunday breakfast with them before mom was sick and when mom was sick and still now. I think there’s a temptation to back away from social situations when someone is sick, probably for lots of reasons, and especially with an illness that affects cognitive abilities.

Well, even when mom couldn’t go out anymore, that Caring Bridge site made such a difference. People could feel involved without feeling like they were intruding. People felt more included.

And you didn’t have to catch everyone up on what happened when she died. I think it meant everyone felt closer to you and after mom was gone, that probably helped.

A strong community has definitely helped. You know when Dennis’s wife died a month or so later, I told him we were going to start having a widower’s BBQ once a month with tennis guys. Whoever wanted to come. Sometimes we had six guys and sometimes twenty. It was good for him, but it was good for me too.

It’s been harder to find ways to get together since the pandemic. But I can still play tennis, still have lunch outside. Zoom with my daughters.

What else has changed during this time of grief? And what has helped?

I am not as teary as I was. I certainly was emotional during mom’s transition. I’m not one of these never-cry guys. But the activity of caring for her, that part was really helpful. You don’t want to need to do it. But in those circumstances, participation felt like—at least I can do something. It’s not worth very much, but I have a purpose here.

You often say, “Jane wouldn’t want me to mope.” Did she say that?

Yes, that came from your mother. She actually used that word. And it was towards the end. It wasn’t like she used that word often. It was when she knew she was going to die—later on, she didn’t know—but there was this time she was aware. She said, “You know everyone dies, Ron. I don’t want you to mope.” It wasn’t like she repeated it. But that one morning she said it and I hung onto it because…

…it was one of the clear things she said when she was aware.

Yes. Very clear. Ok, I thought, I’m not going to mope. I hear you.

What does the grief feel like these days?

I still always feel like I should be checking with someone. Your mom and I, well, we weren’t dependent, but we were interdependent. We operated by consensus. Whenever I have decisions, I still turn around to ask her things. I feel I should be asking someone.

Last year when I was redoing the condo, I would wonder what she would think about the new rug under the table, about whether we should move the couch. I would still ask her. And then I’d laugh, because I always knew exactly what she would say. She’d say, “Well, it’s ok. It’s nice.”

Things were never important to your mom and so she didn’t have strong opinions about them. When we redid the Pine Street house years ago and had this professional decorator help us, Barbara would come over with sixteen different ideas for the bathroom. Mom would say, “Ok, that one.”

And Barbara would say, “Well, you could…”

And mom would say, “No, that’s good.” She was done. Barbara couldn’t believe she didn’t want to think it through more.

When was the hardest time?

At the end of her life during the last weeks here in Maui. It has got to be. Every day it was the question of whether it was going to be the last time I was going to have any form of communication with her. And her pain and there being only so much we could do about it. That was the toughest, but the rest was not easy either. It was hard to lose her. It was hard when we learned the cancer came back.

I have a question for you. Did you think she decided to come to Maui, or do you think we did?

Both, or a combination. At the end she agreed that it was a good idea. Before that, she was unsure. Because sometimes she thought I just wanted a free trip.

(laughter)

Really, she was so good at reading people. She knew we were trying to get her to do things like go into the ridiculous hyperbaric oxygen chamber. And because of the Alzheimer’s she didn’t understand the reasons. So, I don’t think it was that she didn’t want to go to Maui, I think it was that she couldn’t figure out why we wanted her to go to Maui.

Because she always liked to go to Maui.

Yes, so it seemed weird. Also, she was in tremendous pain. It was before hospice.

I actually think I know the moment mom made the decision. It was the night after we found out the cancer was back and there were no good treatment options left. Sandy and Amy and I brought over pizza. She knew we were all sad.

I was very sad.

And mom turned to you and said, “We are going to go to Maui and it’s going to be just fine, Ron.” I don’t know if she said that exactly, but I felt like that was the moment.

Yes, that was my sense, she ultimately agreed with us. It was good we got here when we did.

There were so many things like that, that seemed to just barely work out, just in the nick of time. Like the memory book. And different people getting here to see her. You had some really sweet moments together, rainbow sightings and your dance marathon.

(Laughter)

You know your mom never liked dancing quite that much before. She usually was a one dance kind of person. We danced for hours that day.

Do you still feel close to her?

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I do too.

I don’t see any reason why I wont always feel close with her. After you count the time we dated, we were together more than 60 years. I’ll always be close with her.

Also Related

My dad mentioned a couple things that I have written about in previous Tending to Ending essays that I want to link to here.

In Bridges, I wrote more about our experience with CaringBridge, a nonprofit social media service designed to help people communicate with family and friends during medical journeys.

If you want to read about our memory book project, Love in the Room covers that project and other ways to bring people close at end-of-life even, when they are far away.

If you’re curious about what a hyperbaric oxygen chamber is, you can read more in Not Knowing, which is about the beginning days of my taking on a caregiving role.

Thank you for reading Tending to Endings. If you would like to make sure you don’t miss a post, please subscribe! I began Tending to Endings to help build community and conversation around end-of-life matters.

November 27, 2020November 28, 2020

Give Away

Tending to Endings (forty-seven)

I am in Maui after a quick decision to fly here a little over a week ago when travel to the island became possible with a negative COVID test. It’s still a strange holiday with other family members in various other small pods. But it’s a beautiful place to be thankful, and I am most thankful for seeing my dad again.

I find a book on the shelf that I gave to my mom a few Christmases ago and decide it will be a nice thank you gift to bring to Tom and Steve who are hosting us for Thanksgiving. Bright Wings, a collection that includes sketches of birds adjacent to poems. I am excited to bring it to them. They loved my mom. Steve shared at her Maui celebration of life and he and Tom continued to reach out to my dad all last spring when the island of Maui was on lockdown, and my dad was alone. I think, yes, this is just right! The perfect gift!

I flip through the book and read some of the poems, and then, the impulse to give this book catches on something. Not this book, I think. I really like this one. What if I want to read it when I’m here in Maui? What if I want to hold it and imagine my mom holding it and the way she would talk to birds who came to dine on the lanai during breakfast. The way she would brush crumbs their way, so they knew they were welcome and loved!

And I think, maybe they don’t even like poems. Or birds. Though this second seems especially unlikely.

I might mention here, that I have a copy of this book in my own bookcase in Boise. Also, my dad still has shelves heavy with books at his home in Illinois. Mom created a resource room so she could loan books about the environment or social justice or parenting or just good writing to anyone who was interested. She tried not to be pushy about her opinions, but she never hesitated to share a good book!

I have an abundance of things from my mom. I am wearing her white and blue jacket with palm trees on it, and I have the dozens of photo books she made the kids over the years. The whole ocean is currently in front of me, which, being her favorite color, never fails to remind me of her. I have her wide feet and pointy chin and love of children. Anyone who reads this blog would agree, I’m not at risk of forgetting my mom. A year and a half after her death, she is still a daily presence in my life, a touchstone.

So I wonder at this slight anxiety, this hesitancy about handing over this one book?

Ron and Jane Stavoe at Mala in Lahaina, January 20, 2019

When my friend Pat died in 2015, her daughter Sandy and I continued our tradition of having lunch together on Pat’s birthday, which also happened to be my birthday. When Pat was alive, it always delighted her, the symmetry of each of us having the joy of buying lunch for the other.

It was during lunch, about a year and a half after Pat died that Sandy brought with her a folded blue sweater and handed across the table. “This sweater of my mom’s made me think of you, and I thought you might like to have it.”

I pulled it to me and buried my cheek in the pale blue weave. I thanked her. I know exactly where that sweater is in my house in Boise now, folded on the top shelf of my closet. I don’t wear it often, but when I do, I feel especially close to Pat.

Now I remember Sandy handing me that sweater and think I notice that same catch, that instant of hesitation, as if a small ache was woven into the joy at gifting me the sweater. Or maybe I am inventing that and adding it to the memory now that I know what it is like to lose a mother.

Giving is also releasing. It is an act of generosity, and it is also an act of trust.

I know I will bring the book with me to dinner. And I know Tom and Steve will cherish it. This will be true even if they aren’t a fan of poems or birds. Even more, I know that I will be ok. And that my mom will continue to return to me just as waves continue to roll ashore.

Have a beautiful Thanksgiving weekend,

Laura

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November 20, 2020November 20, 2020

Naming Loss

Tending to Endings (forty-six)

I read articles on grief about the importance of naming losses and I think how hard it is to do that for 2020. Not all of course. Some are utterly clear. Just yesterday I talked with a friends who lost their father at age 57 to COVID. He lived in Guadalajara and they are in Maui. They could not travel to see him when he was in the hospital, nor could they or their children (his grandchildren) make the trip to attend the services.

I have lost two friends to heart attacks and a childhood neighbor to Alzheimer’s since the pandemic began. We did not gather. I have to keep reminding myself that these people are gone. Which is heart wrenching and wrong. There is the loss of the person, and then the loss of the ways we have had to walk through that loss. We don’t get to fall apart together and it his hard to know how to comfort each other.

Liesl and Bailey’s wedding, May 2018. Dylan singing at Mom’s celebration of life, April 2019.

And celebrations are lost too. We missed a long awaited reunion with my extended family and the annual trip to San Diego with John’s. His niece’s wedding was postponed, and graduations were skipped. The retreat I attend each October was canceled for the first time in 21 years.

First we postponed everything until we could do it right. And then as COVID lingered or surged, we found work arounds—zoom funerals and birthday parades. But we haven’t grown into our new ways yet, nor have we been able to return to the old, and so much is lost in the cracks between. Grief has always been awkward in our culture, and now it feels almost impossible, COVID one more reason to avoid facing what is already hard.

And then there are the everyday losses that seem small, but strung together change the way I live and I suspect change my body chemistry as well. Hugs. The ability to know what we do for the holidays. Pulling friends’ kids onto my lap to read stories. Walking side by side close enough to bump shoulders. The freedom of deciding to do anything without having to weigh COVID risks. Seeing strangers smile.

I miss going to live theater with the grand girls and our annual November birthday lunch with dear friends.

I’m low on laughter this year. I think back to lunches in restaurants with friends, and it is not the food I long for— it is being with smart, funny people who I can count on to make me laugh. I am not nearly funny enough on my own, and the comedy channel is not the same. It is communal laughter I miss most. All of us in the same room with tears streaming down our cheeks.

It’s so easy to shift here to the I’m actually very lucky. Shelter in place came at time in my life where we have the finances to withstand it. No one in my immediate family has gotten sick yet. In my extended family, all have recovered well. I like having time alone to write. I live in a place where I can walk outside on trails daily. John and I have a loving marriage and we are good friends. I get to see friends from far away now because we all learned zoom. There is a vaccine on the horizon!

All of this is true, and it is also a trap, this slight-of-hand, this socially acceptable attempt to outmaneuver grief. To call sadness by another name—to call it whining, or not being grateful—as if grief and gratitude are not intertwined.

Grief held at bay does not wait patiently behind the gate. It comes out sideways when I speak sharply to the pharmacist and then feel terrible because isn’t her job hard enough? It emerges as me scrolling on my phone instead of going for a walk. Grief settles in my chest and I swear if I wait long enough, in my bones. It aches at night. Slips through in nightmares and then insomnia or stomach aches. I don’t avoid grief. I avoid acknowledging it and letting it have its well earned place.

Last Thanksgiving our kids tiled our kitchen and then napped under the piano after Indian take-out dinner.

As the nights grow longer, I think of my friends who used to gather for winter solstice each December. We would drink hot mulled cider and eat beignets and toss sticks of wood into the fire with words written on them. Things we wanted to release.

I enjoyed the evening, but held some skepticism for letting go ceremonies. Surrendering old hurts or old loves has always seemed an act of grace that happens when I’m not trying, rather than something I do. It never happens for me when I drive to the top of a mountain to outstretch my hands to the sky or toss crumpled paper into the flames.

But I would join in and laugh with friends, watch their golden skin flicker in the light, see their smiles from across the ring. Some years winter came early and we would lean against each other to keep warm and stand so close to the fire my jeans would feel hot against my shins. I would dutifully write my word or phrase and when it came my turn, toss it into the fire like a prayer.

And now I see I may have had it wrong. It is in the naming that I acknowledge the empty spaces that have shaped me, those things that matter most, those things I love. To deny loss is to deny love.

And so in 2020 it is good to begin early, a full month before the longest night. I write the losses on wood or on paper. Paint them on stone. Type them here.

For I suspect it is not the tossing that transmutes great loss into something else. Rather, it is in the loving hold and the walk up to the fire: I see you—loss—I see you. You were here and now you are not. Much love.

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