The Crater: Notes Toward an Essay On Grieving

The shock of human loss is unforgiving, visceral, and total. And though we all suffer it, we do not all suffer it simultaneously. Occasionally we are lucky to find a scarred one in these moments. The grieving tend to recognize each other at a considerable distance, though not, it would appear, on social networks. Those who have suffered loss, really experienced it, can be there. They know not to soothe. They know that to be is the most difficult thing. Just to be.

The morning my father passed away. In fact, the moment I was hearing of his death on the phone, I also became aware of a rustling in my backyard. It was December 1st, 2001, a few months after 9/11, in Highland Park, New Jersey. The year winter never arrived. The rustling was persistent. I listened to my brother detail the scene, happening at the moment in a hospital in a suburb of Vancouver, listening to my mother’s wailing in the background, feeling my chest cave in.

The death of a parent.

For some, another’s grief comes at the moment when one feels, finally, able to laugh about death…it is not good timing for either party.

Grief is no less dull for the young, and it can be persistent. I thought, having had a lifetime of dulling childhood grief I would be better prepared for the loss of a sibling in my adult life. There is apparently no free pass.

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After I put the phone down I moved to the window. There, under the spectacular maple tree with its low, far reaching branches like arms wanting to touch the side of the house, a woman in grey, circled.

went outside to investigate

The image of the crater arrived upon waking in my apartment in Brooklyn. The week of my sister’s death I was so busy dealing with the physical reality of her death, putting her affairs in order, clearing out her apartment (far too abruptly), that the loss did not hit me until the moment I could reflect.

The loss appeared in the form of a crater. It loomed before me in apocalyptic proportions. There was no earthly way I could navigate around it. Behind me, the past was vertical and horizontal, a pane of glass separating me from my immediate world.

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