Grief Looks Like [Insert Here]
Processing an unexpected wave of reflective mourning.
I’m still trying to figure out the shape of my grief.
Does it have a shape?
A box, maybe, or a suitcase. Something made to carry around with you. Or it could be like a lake; a hazily-bordered body. Doesn’t easily show its depth. At the whims of whatever’s thrown into it.
To me, at least in this moment, it looks like something more mundane. The way it’s woven itself so closely to the fabric of the everyday, so I don’t notice until it’s poking at me: a snapped thread, skipped stitches.
That’s how I feel right now, remembering Uncle Richard.
Uncle Richard was family by choice, the husband of one of my mom’s first friends after immigrating to Canada, in a group that’s stayed close for over thirty years. He was dad’s best man at my parents’ wedding, and became my godfather when I was baptized. In January, he’ll have been gone for eleven years.
Realizing that was startling. What do you mean it’s been eleven years? What even is eleven years?
(Time, of course, is another shape hard to define.)
Earlier, fresh off a call with my mom where he was mentioned, I found myself thinking about him. I remember him being a voracious reader; in the summers, he would stand waist-deep in Osoyoos Lake, e-reader in one hand, beer in the other.
Anyways, I was remembering him being someone who loved reading, thinking of him with his glasses halfway down his nose in the classic reader’s pose, tucked into the corner of the couch in their old Chilliwack home, and suddenly: I was crying. It came on fast - faster than I was expecting, certainly, since I’d just been talking about him over the phone and it was fine. But it’s because I thought, quietly, and with aimless intent, I’d really like to hear him talk about books.
(Instant tears, damn everything.)
What kind of books did he enjoy? Like, really enjoy? (And, what kind did he vehemently abhor? Listening to someone passionately shit-talk a topic of relative inconsequence can be, by far, one of the most interesting and fun things to do.) Did he like the opportunity to learn, or was it the growth in thoughtfulness that drew him?
I think of these questions, and know that what I mourn most is not having grown into my curiosity when he was still alive. I remember him, and am given memories of him by others, and see a person I would have valued deeply. A person I would have liked very much.
(Loving someone does not always equal liking them.)
(I know you know that’s true.)
I mourn the conversations we’ll never have. The perspective I’ll never know. The nuance and shadow and context that I won’t get to discover through my own lens; things that made him a whole person, and not just the figure I grew up with. I get mad when he shows up in dreams, because I know it’s not the real dimensionality I want: the flaws and insecurities and ugliness that made him real like my parents are real, like the other adults in my life became “real”.
I can’t shatter the illusion of him - the fragments of lived experience that I haven’t forgotten, pieced together in an approximation of how I thought he presented himself - only place another one on top of it.
(And yes, in some ways, we are all illusions to each other. But that’s for another time.)
There’s one memory that sticks out more than the others, time smoothing the edges and flattening it out, but the details of import remain.
I’m not really an athletic person, by any means. ADHD lends itself well to being clumsy, and not super great at depth perception - and besides that I’ve always leaned towards the daydreamer, bookish side of the spectrum. But one summer, on a hazy day in the shallows of Osoyoos Lake, I got roped into throwing a football around.
We’d learned (very briefly) how to throw one in high school gym class. Something about fingers on the laces; something about your back foot; something about your elbow. For some reason, I was really enjoying it, but as people kept drifting off to other things, it was just me and Uncle Richard left. I kept getting frustrated by not having enough power to get the ball to him, falling a foot or two out of reach each time. The self-deprecation came out, because I was nineteen (maybe?), and, y’know, had undiagnosed ADHD. (See manifested here: a complex with perfectionism; anxiety around taking up someone’s time; fear of being unwanted and unliked; using humour as a calculated defence against inevitable failure.)
But the reconstructed version of him in my mind wasn’t concerned with any of that. I can’t recall the sequence of words that built up his sentences anymore, just the feeling they left behind, but it went something like:
Look, he said, pointing when the ball landed with a small thwack against the water’s surface. Your aim is great, nine times out of ten it comes straight at me. The other guys couldn’t do that. Doesn’t matter if it stops a little short.
I don’t know how long we stayed out there, but it was a while. Enough that I knew he was indulging me, throwing a football back and forth, on a long summer afternoon that crawled into the evening.
(I’m rolling my eyes in both exasperation and fondness. The whole thing sounds exactly like a scene ripped straight out of a wholesome coming-of-age movie.)
From this, at least, I can extrapolate the following, which I’m sure would have carried into the present: that he was encouraging; that he was engaged; and that he was considerate. These are difficult things for people to be, actively, meaningfully, as someone who tries their hardest to move through the world in those ways. It’s not something I would have considered as deeply back then as I do now, besides being an act of kindness. But now I work with people, on a level where those traits and behaviour matter an incredible amount, and I feel goopy (read: emotional) about this all over again.
I appreciate so, so much, having been able to see this, in that small memory; in other small moments I carry.
If you’re feeling out the shape of your grief, know that it’s worthwhile work. For whatever you’re grieving, both for yourself and those around you. Mapping it can look different over the years, in the day-to-day, and changes in solitude and in collectives.
Sending y’all lots of love 💜
Special thanks to my mom for the pictures.
This is beautiful. I don't know Uncle Richard, but I love him.
Grief is a powerful and transformative force.