Is this what makes a house, a home? Unpacking? Belongings on a shelf?
I clench my teeth and bring my hand to my chin, my shoulders hunched. I had relied on Grant to make our last housea home. He had decorated. He was the one always bringing home a new rug for the living room and suggesting a dinner party on a weeknight.
He was always the one full of life, even until all of his life was pulled out from underneath him. When he died, the light was snuffed from our home indefinitely, and I hadn’t cared to bring it back. I had stumbled in a never-ending marathon.
For the longest time I thought, what was the point if it wasn’t him? If the light wasn’t brought by Grant, I didn’t want it. I wanted to live in darkness. I didn’t have a reason why. It’s just how my grief was.
You never knew why; you could never explain. It was as if you’d handed me a calculus book and asked me to teach it to a group of seventh graders. I could read the words and the instructions, but I couldn’t explain anything past addition.
How do you put something so enormous, so gigantic, into a digestible sentence to a friend who only wants to get a cup of coffee?
In the first year, I insisted if I had left any trace of him, it’d be like his light was still here. The toothbrush in the toothbrush holder. His razor hanging in the shower, scraggly beard hairs and all. His clothes, hanging in the closet, untouched by anyone or anything except dust bunnies.Architectural Digestand theNew Yorkerstrewn on my coffee table, subscriptions left uncanceled, automatically charging my credit card.
Those things were his light beaming strong and bright from the lighthouse on the rocky island, and I was a little rowboat bobbing further and further from the shore. In reality, I was the island. He was the boat, bobbing away. I wouldn’t letanyonetouchanything.I wouldn’t let my family visit. I wouldn’t let his parents take anything. I kept all of his belongings as a shrine the size of my entire life. Nothing in, nothing out. I had to keep thelight on at all costs, and I was willing to shipwreck anyone who got too close.
In the second year, I started therapy. I let people prod from the outside at a distance, never the inside. I kept the lifeline shrine in the bedroom and Grant’s old office. I painted, I talked with my parents, and eventually I let go of some of Grant’s things.
But no one could brighten my mood for more than an hour or two at a time. I took solace in my grief. We were good friends by this time. I muddled my way through time, feeling like I was waist deep in quicksand. But it wasmyquicksand.
After much discussion between my therapist, and group therapy participants, I realized it wasn’t sustainable to carry on like this. At that point, it has been three years. It took all the courage I could possibly muster to admit I had to leave the apartment to my therapist. It was a disaster and so was my life. I’d been letting grief steer the wheel and I had to be ready to get back in the driver's seat, or risk losing myself.
So I had a choice to make. Move back in with my parents or get a job and a smaller apartment. After packing up our old apartment, I realize it wasn’t saltines and instant oatmeal in a cupboard and it wasn’t unwashed clothes in a Ziploc bag that made a home. It hadn’t been unwashed clothes in a closet, or crusty toothbrushes or rusty razors the year before.
The light had to be all on me, and I didn’t know what made a house a home in the slightest. I have picked this apart in therapy a thousand times and didn’t want to admit that it wasn’t material possessions that made a home.
It’s people, and the light that comes with them, that make a home. Stories. Good food. Movies and campfires and going for walks around the block. Everything that comes with having friends and family and someone to talk to.
When someone close to you dies, it’s not uncommon to lose all sense of yourself. You become a shell of who you once were. A caricature of the worst version of yourself. Sullen and snotty, someone who not even your mother could bear to look at. You don’t want to talk to your friends. And to top it off, your friends don’t know what to say to you.
“I’m sorry for your loss. Can we help with anything for the funeral?”
“My condolences. Do you want us to bring you dinner?”
“Is there anything I can do? We could make a donation in his honor.”
“We’re so sorry. You know you can always call us.”
Everyone says the same things, no matter who died. You can only hearcondolencesso many times before you want to rip your ears off, Van-Gogh style, and finally get committed. And your friends can only say those things so many times before their answers get shorter and shorter.
“Hey! Sorry we didn’t invite you. We weren’t sure you’d want to come. Next time?”
“How have you been? We missed you at the book club.”
“What’s up? I’m good.”
“Lol..hru?”
I think back to my last group therapy and the answers everyone gave. We had been talking about ways we are developing our new self-identities.
“I’m learning the guitar, like Jessie always wanted. I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would.”
“I started having weekly dinners with his sister. We get McDonalds with the kids. They play in the PlayPlace. It's good for the cousins to bond.”
“I actually went on another hike! I had a good time. I surprised myself with how much I liked it.”
“I made his favorite food without crying last night. It was delicious.”
And what had I said?
