Years ago, right after I moved to NYC, one of my grandmothers died. I was still new in town and didn’t have a lot of people to talk to to process this loss, so a few weeks later I wound up calling someone I’d dated briefly just before leaving Michigan. “I’m not really in a grief space right now,” he said when I told him about my recent loss.
I didn’t need much more than that to tell myself I didn’t need to speak to him ever again, of course, but that phrasing just jumped to mind as I started writing this post.
I am in a grief space right now. I’ve seen it coming for weeks, ever since the mid-January date when my father had his brain hemorrhage two years ago while driving back from Home Depot. I saw the memories flash past and the hopeful signs and then the radio silence as we passed his birthday (January 30) and things took the worst possible turn. My mother called it “death by hospital,” and indeed it was the cruelest possible end for my father, who had worried about precisely such an outcome.
The death anniversary does not fit neatly into one day, however. February 1, just about fifteen minutes past midnight, is when my father took his last breath. His funeral was February 2. His death anniversary on the Hebrew calendar, though, falls this year on the 11th. And we will say Kaddish for him not tomorrow, but next weekend.
When you are working between two calendar systems that are only loosely connected, grief space expands, it spreads over you like a temporary shelter. You carry it with you, and it surrounds you.
When the loss of my father was a fresh wound, signs of him materialized everywhere, in unimaginable places and times and objects. Those manifestations have slowed way down over the past year, and I miss them. He doesn’t make appearances in my dreams. So I was hoping for a sign from him tonight as I neared the fateful hour.
J and I settled down to watch a movie after the kids went to bed. It was one we’d borrowed from the library. Almost the first scene was violent, and I have very low tolerance for that, so we looked for something else to watch. We wound up choosing a film which I didn’t realize may be the only film written up on a website for SAAB fanatics.
My father was a great admirer of many things Swedish — furniture design, Ingmar Bergman films, even IKEA apple cake — but his devotion to SAABs was legendary. And here we had chosen a film which not only portrays the now-forgotten SAAB-Volvo rivalry, it also travels across decades and provides an example of nearly every SAAB model ever produced (including at least five different models my family owned). I couldn’t believe this was random coincidence.
The movie ended and we headed up to bed. I found myself reaching to the top shelf of my closet for this flannel nightgown, which belonged, improbably, to Pa. My parents had his and hers red flannel nightgowns with polar bears on them. This was an aberration — they simply weren’t the type of couple to ever dress alike. I rarely saw them wear these. But it’s chilly tonight and I figured if I had any hope at all of some dream contact with my father, this might help bring it about.
Look what a New Agey weirdo I’ve become since you left, Pa. Looking for signs and taking a phrase like “grief space” seriously. I sure wish you were here to make fun of me so I wouldn’t have to do it myself. I’ll count the polar bears, and hope to meet you in my dreams.
I'll Live 