Grief is a complicated emotion; it arrives to the party too early, stays too late, and almost always brings unsolicited friends along for the festivities (guilt, anger, hatred.) Grieving people are unrecognizable to their friends and family because pain warps and destroys almost everything in its path, including but not limited to the way people enjoy themselves, the way they digest information, and the way they express even the tiniest emotion. To make matters worse, no two people grieve the same way. With no hard and fast rules to follow, no protocols to adhere to, how are we supposed to handle such a surly, unforgiving emotion?
My parents had me in their early forties, which brought with it as many benefits as it did irregularities; a smaller family meant fewer funerals and, until I turned 15, my life was blessedly free of death. It was around this time that my grandfather's health took a turn for the worst and we all convened in our hometown of Lubbock, Texas, to say our last goodbyes to the Joiner patriarch. I was prepared for the funeral. My carefully selected black dress was one of only five articles of clothing in my suitcase, and I could feel the dig of my ultra professional high heels as they jabbed my lower back through the panels of my backpack. My mind was clear and decided: I would be a rock, the unmovable, dry eyed daughter at whom my family could direct their grief. After all, I was good to go; Granddad was old, and old people die. I was prepared. I was ready.
But my father grew increasingly agitated during our stay in Lubbock, because his brother Joe had been unreachable by phone or email for several days. Joe was the prodigal first born son, an academic lawyer with a head of red hair that almost explained my relation to the Joiner gene pool. He was an aggressive liberal, a constant source of consternation at the Thanksgiving dinner table, and consequently, my favorite living family member. As Granddad's health worsened and the end drew near, Dad became desperate and placed a phone call to the Santa Fe Police Department, instructing them to visit his brother's house. Though Joe had a tendency to go off the grid, his absence at his father's deathbed was becoming suspicious.
The news came in the next morning: Joe was dead. The police had found my uncle dead in his bed, the victim of a blood disorder. For five days, Joe Joiner was dead, alone in his house, and not a soul had even driven by to knock on his door. My father told me the news in our backyard as I dangled my feet in the pool and I remained steadfast and tearless, just as I'd planned. We started making calls. The first went to his ex-wife Lynne in California. The second went to his son Scott, who was serving a term in Iraq with the Marine Corps. The final notification was made in person.
I remember the hospital very vividly; the long glass hallways, the diminutive West Texas nurses, the dusty floors, the flickering florescent lights. My grandmother, whose mind was plagued with dementia, seemed aware for the first time in recent memory and held her husband's hand as my father delivered the news with the help of our longtime family preacher. My grandfather could barely speak at this point in his life and could only cry; his hands were too weak to wipe his face and his tears fell neglected onto the pillows. And still, I did not join him with tears of my own.
This was the first time in my life that I had been profoundly sad. In my musical brain, grief was a fermata, a note held for just a little too long; surely, normalcy would return as soon as I got back to my routine. There was no change in my attitude over the next few days, or even the next few weeks. My cousin Scott received a ten day leave to come home and handle his father's affairs, which he and my father did as efficiently as possible in the time allotted. I plodded through the beginning of my sophomore year, throwing myself into writing and soccer practice. I felt fine. I mean, I hadn't cried. So I was fine. What I didn't realize was that this horrible note, this awful fermata, was in fact an even more volatile kind of musical accouterment. In my strange artist's heart, grief was a sforzando.
The initial hit of a sforzando is strong and unexpected. Perhaps you've been sitting in your theater seat, enjoying the peaceful roll of violins, when the tuba gives a sudden belch and the whole audience ripples. Then, the decrescendo arrives. The orchestra grows quiet and you start to believe that the worst is over. But just when you're falling into a light trance, lulled by the lovely quiet, you find yourself bowled over by the second wave of sound, a raging crescendo followed by a devastating wall of noise.
I reached the wall of noise on my 16th birthday. By a stroke of luck, my advisor happened to be Candy Keane, the school counselor. I walked into advisory early that morning, having ducked out of the last 15 minutes of math class, and set down a tray of birthday cupcakes on the table. Mrs. Keane put her work aside, as she always did when we entered the room, and asked what sort of presents I'd woken up to that morning. I replied blithely, "My dad gave me car keys so that we can share the Explorer, and my mom got me some clothes from Nordstroms, and then I have some presents from family members that I'll open later. My Uncle Joe always gets me a book—" I stopped. My brain activity suddenly ceased and I found that I had no more words in my mouth. Mrs. Keane watched me carefully, most likely looking for the signs she knew all too well, and finally asked me, "A book?" I swallowed and looked down at the cupcakes, saying flatly, "But not this year. He's dead now. I forgot." For some reason, I felt compelled to continue. "He's the only one who ever gets me books. Because we both like to read." And I slammed into the wall of noise hard enough to send me reeling backwards, blood gushing from my metaphorical nose.
Joe used each individual holiday to get me one of his favorite books so that we could discuss them late at night when the rest of the family had gone to sleep. We would sit at the yellowed counter of our outdated kitchen while the dust storms of West Texas peppered the windows with gravel and talk about literature, politics, and the other lesser subjects that our family collectively passed over. Joe had often felt misunderstood in his youth, a boy with impeccable taste and a strong moral compass, wasting away in the remote desert of West Texas. After a scarring stint in Vietnam, Joe relocated to California and began practicing law in San Francisco. I've always surmised that he chose San Francisco because, when looking for the opposite of Lubbock, The Golden Gate City is the obvious choice with it's rolling hills, lush greenery, and swathe of rainbow flags. Joe was never satisfied with his station in life and neither was I. And now he was dead. There was no one to discuss books with me. No one to listen to my infantile Democratic ramblings. No one to tell me that there was a life worth living outside of Texas.
And I cried.
Mrs. Keane excused me from class that day and I sat in her office on a bean bag chair, looking out the window into the courtyard and reading a book. I began to discover my grief and started keeping a mental catalogue of the ways it affected me. Grief makes my hands hurt. It attacks the part of me that I use the most, my piano players, my pen wielders, and makes them ache like an empty scream. Grief makes me mean. While I'm normally an overly talkative person, speaking in patter rhythms reminiscent of a Bach invention or a late night talk show host, grief takes away my desire to crack jokes and replaces that impulse with one of rage; the words I speak in times of great sadness are a direct reflection of the darkest hole in my heart. Grief makes me eat. Sometimes, I'll eat to point of sickness and purge only to return to the kitchen and do it again; something about this cycle is soothing to me, like purging the food in my stomach might take the bad feelings with it.
And finally, grief makes me cry. My greatest fear in life used to be crying in public, though musical theater school beat me so far into the ground that I eventually found new things to be afraid of. But grief takes the hard-nosed, Marine raised, homegrown Texan right out of me and replaces it with a sniveling pianist who cries on the subway for no apparent reason.
My friends and family have their own ways of dealing with hardship, and most of them are just as specific and strange as mine. My mother reads the bible and drinks iced tea. My father watches football, yelling periodically at the television. My roommate stops eating and cries alone in her room, wordlessly wanting us to go find her. There are no instructions on how to grieve or be sad, just as there are no instructions on how to handle the grievers. For every person who needs reassuring words and a hug, there is another who wants silence and privacy. My mother, a widely known and accoladed nurse, once told me that people are not themselves when they are in pain. While the context of the conversation alluded to physical pain, this advice rings true for spiritual and emotional pain as well.
Though I've spent a good deal of time commenting on my own grief thus far, I actually care more to comment on the grief of others. The world is a complicated place right now, a confusing and painful planet full of billions of people who want things their way, often at the expense of others. Tragedy is currently at the forefront of our political stage as terrorists swarm the Middle East and Europe, people the world over glued to their computer and televisions to catch headlines detailing the senselessly violent attacks in Paris. Grief is an overwhelming global phenomenon, an unwanted guest bringing his sforzandos to your dinner table and staying well past his welcome. In times such as these, it's important to remember that the neighbor to your left will not grieve the same way as your neighbor to the right, and this fact is almost tragically beautiful. Our personal grief protocols are almost as distinctive as our fingerprints and we leave them behind wherever we go, our sadness staining the door handles at our offices and the seat belts of our cars. Considering how widespread grief is, it seems strange that we're constantly trying to instruct each other how to cry; everyone knows how because everyone had to learn. The day I spent in Mrs. Keane's office looking at the window and scarfing down every last one of my birthday cupcakes was just another part of the human process and everyone in the world will have a day very similar to that one. Whether or not it happens over the death of a family member or a national tragedy is simply up to the universe.
Don't tell your friends and family how to grieve. Don't tell them where to place the blame or that the things they care about are not important. If someone you know wants to cry over the terrorist attacks in Paris, let them. Chastising each other for grieving over a specific incident is not only counterproductive to human development, but also thoroughly ineffective. I've seen a swathe of articles telling readers not to cry about the shootings, but to celebrate the art and glorious history of the world's most beautiful city. While I understand the sentiment, I have only one thing to say in response.
Don't tell me not to cry.
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