Young Grief

Hey you,

Remember when we used to be children, back at the beginning of 2020? Ah, how carefree the good old days were.

We buried my grandmother last Saturday. She died two weeks ago on Monday. I felt an indefinable heaviness on that particular 7:50 a.m. At 8:50 a.m. they found her dead. I think somehow I knew she was drawing her last breaths. None of the family had any idea she was close to death, including her caretakers; sometimes the connections between people are weird.

My sister, brother-in-law, and I stayed at my maternal uncle and aunt’s house in PA for the weekend. We visited them many times while growing up, and if there is one sound I remember from nights there was a grandfather clock. He was a presence in the house I could never ignore, even when silent or in the far reaches of the house— even now the sound seems like it holds a memory of life beyond time. In that sound is something I’ve never been able to fully describe to myself; perhaps I haven’t encountered it here on earth.

I heard Grandfather Clock again at my uncle and aunt’s. In half a second I was 10-years-old, trying to sleep in their Green Dragon house but not always succeeding right away for excitement and the fact that it did not get totally dark in their town location. Why was it called Green Dragon? Not because of any dragons there, sadly, but because they lived next to an enormous flea market named ‘Green Dragon.’ It was such a wonderful place. We used to buy socks there, and when the craze hit, I plunked dollars on several Beanie Babies.

A week ago, trying once again to sleep at their new location, but this time failing because of the time and the acrid manure smell coming in the window, wrote:

Young Grief

The Grim Reaper gathers 94 years in his arms,

Gently closes the book on 1 life

My 10-year-old self peers around the corner.

Stainless steel bowls ‘gong’ and I see Mommy Eby

She braids my hair “this way”

I feel the brown, chevron texture of the tablecloth

My uncles and aunt gather to lay their mom to rest

They all have white and grey hair

But they are all 10-years-old too.

The clock strikes 10 and I am back in this life

My grandmother is young again

We gather the times in our arms, and she lets go.

The Grim Reaper gathers 37 years in his arms,

Slams the book on 1 life

A 10-year-old boy peers around the corner

10 pm nights when mom got off work

Tired rides home together,

It is strange how love turns on another.

It is strange how the same love gives life,

We are all the same

Until young grief surrounds us all.

Last week three young friends buried their mother. I’ve picked them up dozens of times, or taken them home to the daycare until their mom got off her shift at the restaurant and could pick them up. They are delightful kids; funny and mostly respectful and part of our Tuesday Church. We’d often listen to music on the way to or from church. I’d ask them how their day went, what they wanted to be when they grew up, and they’d ask me to play certain songs, or what I wanted to be when I grew up. I’d tell them I didn’t know, and dream with them.

We received the word just days before my grandmother died that their mom was murdered by their father. At least, the hit and run seems to assume it was homicide. The police haven’t said much.

Several of us went to the visitation and some to the funeral. There’s no good way for kids to bury their mom — for anyone to bury their mom. There’s a minute ahead which must be lived, and they pile up and carry us further downstream.

At Mommy Eby’s funeral I see my mother put her hand on dad’s shoulder, but then she pretends to brush lint, because PDA is a little out there for a horse-and-buggy Mennonite funeral. Mom hasn’t been well the last few days either. I worry for her. She’s strong, but this is hard.

I hear the undertakers monotone as he directs the pall-bearers how to lower a casket. I resent his flat specificity for a moment, but realize it would be worse if one side was dropped. Stifle a laugh. What kind of terrible person stifles a laugh at her grandmother’s funeral? Me, apparently. I can almost see her eyes twinkle too. Humor and grief are mixed, just like a bittersweet and salty cocktail.

A young man speaks words of comfort at the graveside in old German. It’s the language of my 10-year-old self. It’s still my language. It feels like waves of the ocean at family reunions. I speak it a bit more falteringly than I used to — learning Spanish has mixed up my other languages.

He has a lovely analogy about closing Ada’s life-book. We are filing it away in the past perfect tense of libraries.

I’ve never witnessed so much emotion at a Mennonite funeral, which might be because it is so small. COVID, we suspect, has kept people away. Even the second preacher (there are always two) trembles with emotion, and prays with passion for my one uncle especially. Norman was still living with Mommy Eby, and they have spent probably 60 odd years together. He looks devastated, utterly adrift. I can’t look at him anymore. I can’t look at any of the uncles lined up opposite the women. They have white hair, but they are all 10-years-old. Surely mom will be in the summer kitchen when they get home, making carob cake and smearcase, as she did for many decades.

The rest of the world, they see a group of 50, 60, and 70-year-old men using their strength to lower their mom into the earth, and a white-haired woman who is burying her mom on her own birthday, but I see the 10-year-old boys hanging around to try to lick the cake pan. I see a little girl chasing boys away with a spatula.

My friend, Angel. He is the little boy who just lost his mom and he too, looks devastated and utterly adrift. It’s heart breaking. Already the instinct to protect is in him, and he couldn’t. It’s too much for a little boy to carry.

All I can do is pray for my young friends, for even though we are all young in grief, they are young in time. For them time has collapsed in on itself, leaving them to pick their way out of a heaviness of lack. There was a fullness to my grandmother’s life that isn’t there for Vianney. In a way, it was beautiful to close a book on a life lived by my grandmother, but nothing feels beautiful about a mother with a 1 year old, and 12 year old, and ages in between, not even getting to say goodbye.

Do you think the Grim Reaper, metaphorical figure such as he is, sometimes weeps when he has to close a book of life? Does he think that sometimes he takes lives before they are full?

I know a little of lack, but a different kind. I understand grief for what I have never had, not for what I have loved and lost. They are two different kinds of grief. One mourns for what has never been, the other for what will never be. Both are final. Irrevocable. The kinds of grief, and the layers of grief, are many.

For me it is a little comfort to realize that when we grieve anything we become as children again. We may be anything from CEO to kid and the nature of grief stays much the same.

Sometimes though, we’ve been self-sufficient adults for so long we’ve forgotten what it feels like to be little and helpless in the face of things we cannot prevent or understand. Death is one thing that does not respect autonomy. It makes us needy in a way many of us probably haven’t had to experience in a long time.

Need is tricky, because we don’t always get what we need, and that is part of how unfair and cruel the world can be. The child halfway around the world that needs food may not always get it, and it’s tragic. My friends here who are so young without a mom, they need her but won’t get to have her.

We are all working around the concept of hunger gone wrong. We were created to be hungry and satisfied in life, and instead we now see it through death.

Last night at Tuesday Church a little girl of 10-years-old was praying for the oldest daughter who lost her mum, and though I’m not sure, it sounded like she said, “please God, let her let out all the feeling…”

An older kid prayed, “help us to move forward.”

We can’t reconcile some things, we can’t understand some things because what we were supposed to know in life, is now misunderstood in death. We try to either let it out, or just move forward.

Grandfather Clock seems inexorable to me, just ticking away like that, counting the time I don’t want counted and can’t understand. But perhaps he is doing something I don’t understand. Perhaps he is giving us a chance at life beyond us. A place where time is not marked “closed” at death. I thought he was telling me to be in another place, a not-sad place, but maybe he’s just saying to let him count the time, and trust in a better time. Time as it was meant to be: immortal. Perhaps through the death of time itself, when the sun’s light fails and our veils are torn in two, we’ll begin to understand resurrection.

For now, he’ll carry the misunderstandings, the doubt, the things which seem likely to swallow us during the hard times.

Carry me home when the light in my eyes does fade
Carry me home when the shadow comes to take me away
Lay down my bones knowing I'll be in a better place
Release my soul, carry me home

Carry me home there's no sorrow down in the ground
Carry me home don't you weep for I am freedom bound
Lay down my bones there is peace within the light I've found
Release my soul, carry me home

Time, is he the arch enemy of death?

L. Raine

Photo by Matthew Wiebe