I have a friend I haven't seen in many, many years. We met one time, in person — one time — and we've been friends on social media ever since. He's still my friend. He has stayed. That counts for a lot in a life like mine.
The day we met in person, I was with my son Noah. I have been estranged from Noah for three years now — there's more to that, the alienation, the family dynamics, the shape of a grief that doesn't have a funeral — but on this day, none of that had happened yet. On this day, the sun was out. Noah was with me. My friend was there. His mother was there, and she was so kind. His little dachshund was there, and we played with him on the floor like nothing in the world was hard.
It was one of the happiest days I can remember. God-filled. That's the only word for it. God-filled.
I'm an artist. I have been trying to make my friend a gift. And I could not do it. I made one thing — not good enough. I made another thing — not good enough. I made a third thing — still wrong. I finally texted him and said, look, I made something for you, but it isn't good enough, I have to start over, it's going to take me longer. And he said the kind, easy thing: you don't owe me anything.
And he's right, I don't. That was never what it was about.
I figured it out a little while ago, standing in my kitchen. It came down on me all at once and it was so big and so simple at the same time. I had been trying to rebuild that day. I had been trying to put the sunshine and the dachshund and his mother's kindness and my son's presence into a piece of art, so I could hand the whole day back to him in a frame.
No piece of art can hold a day like that. No piece of art is supposed to.
I cried at the counter. The honest kind of crying — the kind that doesn't perform, doesn't apologize, doesn't try to be poetic about itself. I let it happen. I let the day be a day I will not get back. I let my son be a son I do not get to sit on the floor with right now. I let my friend be a friend I love from a distance the size of years.
And then I made him a little book. Toilet paper rolls. Cardboard. Pieces of old shrimp boat maps. Bits of ribbon. The small crow-magpie things I save in jars because the Honey Badger keeps shiny things and the artist in me keeps everything else. It's a little book. It's nice. I'm satisfied with it. It's not the day. It was never going to be the day. It's a little book.
This is what ambiguous grief does. It hides inside ordinary tasks. It dresses up as perfectionism. It says, you can't make this gift yet, and it means, you haven't cried about that day yet. It is sneaky and patient and it will wait years for you to notice.
I am so amazed that I noticed. I want to say that plainly. I have been doing this work — the slow, unsexy work of feeling the things I used to outrun — long enough that my own grief came up and tapped me on the shoulder in my own kitchen and I recognized her. I didn't run. I didn't make a fourth wrong thing. I cried, and then I made the thing that was actually possible to make.
If you are trying to make a gift, or a meal, or a phone call, or a sentence, and you cannot do it, and you don't know why — pause. Ask yourself, quietly, with no judgment: what day am I trying to rebuild? who am I trying to hand back to myself?
Then make the little book. Whatever your little book is. It's allowed to be small. It's allowed to be made of toilet paper rolls and ribbon. The point was never the gift. The point was the noticing.
— Briana
If you carry ambiguous grief
You are not making it up. The grief for someone who is still alive — a child, a parent, a friend, a self — is real grief. Read more Grief Stories →
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