Where there should be laughter
On going back home after grief has changed everything
I took the 8 hour trek back to visit my family in the Midwest this week.
It was a big ole bag of trail mix as family usually is.
One of the easiest things for me to do in my grief is to fixate on the ways people fail me—people who I’m close to or have been close to in the past. Their comments feel like micro-cuts that add up and create a big gaping wound.
I’m a wide-open field of landmines and each one gets stepped on when I’m around more than a few safe people.
I have two older siblings who each have multiple living children. Each sibling has a house on the same property where I grew up and where my parents still live. It’s like a little family commune.
Their kids roam freely between houses on freshly mowed paths, surrounded by trees, wildflowers, and the sparkle of fireflies. It looks magical, and I imagine it probably feels that way for the children growing up there.
But, when I step back into this world, it feels like I’ve been condemned to life in Hell and I am only able to visit on probation.
The laughing children become the soundtrack to a horror film. The fireflies turn into ticks that drink my blood, and I become a hunchbacked old Scrooge who can’t stand the sound of Christmas carols.
You might think I sound dramatic. My family probably thinks so too.
And who’s to say “dramatic” is wrong? Losing both of my children was as dramatic as it gets—I have yet to find a dramatic enough response to match the severity of the circumstances.
To go back to the place I grew up and see the people who look like me raising humans who look like them is to see what could have been and what should have been.
It’s painful, and I love each of those humans deeply. Both are true.
More than one thing is always true.
Stepping back into that world is like putting a knife in my open-wound, and it’s also like wearing an oversized, perfectly worn t-shirt to bed.
In losing my children, I lost so very much more.
I don’t get to see Jemma and Lev having a chaotic dance party with their cousins, listening intently to their G’s made-up stories, licking the cookie batter from their MiMi’s kitchenAid, or laughing at the silly antics of their aunts.
Where there should be laughter, I hear silence.
Where someone should be yelling “Jem Jam!” I hear my dog’s name.
Where Lev should be cradled in loving arms, there is emptiness.
And on and on and on.
It makes me feel so “other”— so alone.
Even if my family were to say the perfect words and resist the triggering ones, it would still be an impossible scenario.
There is no perfect word when all that should be has turned to sand between my fingers.
Can’t Cope? Here are some things that got me through this week:
Music: “maggots for brains” by Olivia Rodrigo. The lyrics speak for themselves…
I'm a zombie in my body
I'm a train off of the track
I feel dirty, I feel rotten
And the colors are all flat
I'm a sad shell of a woman
And I've got maggots for brains
But that's just the thing that happens
When my
When my baby goes awayEat or Drink: A home cooked meal by my mom and sisters and lots of white wine.
Words: Amy Poehler’s Podcast, Good Hang
Watch: Friends rewatch and lots of Tiktok tbh
Social Life(?): See above ;)
🤍🤍🤍
My 'coping' list includes baking sweet treats which I no longer can eat and add in an occasional repeat of Big Bang Theory 🧡🧡🧡