Grieving JoJo - I
When I say her death was completely unexpected it sounds naive to anyone who knew her but didn’t know her. My aunt was dying for a long time but she was never a participant of her dying. She was always living. Sometimes it was annoying she was so alive. And she was alive right up until the very moment she left three weeks ago. None of us—not a single one of us—believed she would not come back home then, even if it was for mere days. We were all stunned and shattered—like bulletproof glass blown apart by a hailstorm. It was, and will always be, completely unexpected.
Today I went to my cousins house for the first time since the night her mother, my aunt and godmother, Jackie, died. I have grieved deeply since her death. Not for her so much—because I am comforted in my soul knowing she is free from earthly shackles, and breathing deeply, and laughing, and happy.
I am sad for us. Here and floundering. I am mostly sad for my cousin and her father. I am so terribly sad for them. When I cry, it is mostly for them.
I took chicken soup and a few gifts with me. And the boys were along too. Nothing like two raucous kids to distract things. But the grief was palpable and heavy in the air like early morning fairy mist. I looked at my uncle and could not imagine a way to help him smile, his pain swelled out from him like a perpetual ragged sigh. My cousins eyes were repeatedly rimmed with tears barely held back by surface tension. I let their sadness settle around me like a thick wool scarf and did not try to make anything better, as I deeply wished I could. I wished I could take a huge shovel and scoop away some of their sadness and swallow it myself, pack it in my pockets and purse, even feed it to my children so that they may feel some relief. I saw my uncle gaze at a photo of my aunt while pretending to watch television. I sat with them—both trying desperately to shuffle time between them so as not to be still or quiet for too long.
Having lost my father many years ago I am keenly aware of this kind of grief. I have spent a lot of time and energy thinking about it. Almost 27 years. A kind of loss that is so wide spread and intense your mind cannot process it —not for weeks, months, years—a lifetime. So you wake up and think the person is in another room, or on a trip, or just out running errands. You laugh and begin to tell them something they would appreciate. And then you remember—like a great crashing wave.
I came home and turned the boys over to my husband. I ran a bath and poured wine and cried. I cry almost every night and when I don’t cry I wake up feeling as though I must have been crying in my dreams.
Jackie was the youngest of two sisters—my mother (the oldest) and Sheila (the middle child) are an enigma of pain that I can not grasp or even touch. They feel they have lost a critical link in their sibling chain and it is counterproductive to share any comforting perspective otherwise. That is all I can perceive for now. Their pain is wrapt in an impenetrable protective shell like stubborn, angry lead. They are more grief stricken than when their parents died. I don’t have this kind of bond with my brother. I do not even know where to begin. For now I am just shrouded.
