Writing never has to bring you home happy.
A friend from Austin, who was notorius for his tomb of stories about shitting his pants and his toxic crushes on baristas, wrote me an email not long after my dad died. I had forwarded him something I wrote, and the subject line of the reply email read: Writing never has to bring you home happy. I’ve been contemplating a project about grieving young, or young grieving, or grieving too young. Yet, I’m not sure there can be anything constructive left to say about grief. And if done poorly, projects like this stink of self-pity.
Anyway, Rolin’s email. Honest, un-stinky and proof that there is still something to say:
I told the girl I thought I was going to marry that my dad died; I did this maybe five days after the fact. I was in Kansas, the one place in the world I wanted to be, surrounded by the energy of 20 year old inspiration and 14 year old fascination. And I had most of those two months off from my feelings to live and experience and be completely busy with helping others. But you don’t have the entire 24 hours; a half hour gives you a chance to check email, and one word leads to a memory which leads to another which reminds you that the greatest grief you have ever experienced isn’t just behind you; it’s surrounding you. But you don’t have to deal with it, or at least I didn’t. I tried a bit with her; not consciously, I think I told her because that’s what you’re supposed to do, but also because she understood that he was an asshole and the complex relationship we had.
She wrote back a day or two later; I was checking while kids were yelling in my hallway and life was in full effect on all sides. It was a forgettable letter — told me how she loved teaching in Japan, the boy problems were solved, and probably some anecdote about karaoke or weed. And then this paragraph.
“I’m sorry about your dad. And I don’t know what else to say, so I won’t say anything.”
And every time I think about it, I think it’s a cop out. But then when I see it, it makes complete sense. A lot of people walk on eggshells because they don’t know, and they don’t want to presume. And that tiptoe makes the griever seem like a nuisance, or a spectacle. The last thing you want. But here, I don’t know. It comes off genuine.
And two years later, after I found the silver lining of “Well, at least I now know how to console my friends about this stuff,” reckoning comes and I want to utter this line, because it beats the clichés my mind feels forced to spew forth.
