Five years, ten years....15 or 20 years from now, I don't know what will stick out for me the most about the summer of 2020. I'll remember the hot hot July days, wearing masks everywhere, not being able to hang out with friends without being outside and more than six feet away. I'll remember not being able to hug my mom or my sick father because of fucking COVID-19 and fear of getting them sick and our stupid fucking government not getting a handle on this fucking shit.
In the photo album in my mind, I will also remember the bright sunny days that seemed to make the blue skies bluer and everything greener.
But despite the vivid colors, everything else is dark. Because I will also remember this is the year my dad went to hospice....and this is the year, just a week after having accomplished 51 years of marriage to my mom, my father passed away.
Honestly I'm doing...ok...
But...what they don’t tell you about grief...
Is that sometimes crying can come out of nowhere
Almost spontaneously
Like in the same way you can get hiccups without a trigger and you don’t know what caused it at that moment
I was sitting and eating a bagel the other day
A. Fucking. Bagel.
Not really thinking about one thing or another.
And outta nowhere,
I took a normal breath in but my exhale was sort of a choking half-sob, that seemed to have been buried somewhere in the back of my throat but chose that moment to come out
Tears spilled onto my cheeks like a faucet had been turned on
And I was automatically full on crying.
No slow or subtle lead up to this episode
And I was thinking, well shit,
This is weird
And different
And
This sucks
And I guess when you hold grief inside you during the day because you actually have to live your life and carry on like a “normal” person,
This is what can happen in those quiet moments...
When you’re alone even without thoughts in
your head
And you can let the grief express itself.
