How Getting to Know Death Finally Allowed Me to Grieve
It would be like sitting too long in a hard chair. Or trying to walk with a pebble in my shoe. A forgotten tag in a new blouse that scratched at my back. I thought that grief would be like that. A magpie funeral. Uncomfortable and painful — but temporary.
Death was still a stranger then.
It hung around the edges. Whisked away someone I knew in high school, but we hadn’t been friends. I don’t think I went to the memorial service.
I was 21 when my grandfather died. Cancer had reduced him, shriveled him up so he fit into a twin bed in the guest room off the kitchen. Sometimes I tried to forget he was wasting away behind the door. The loud hum of the air conditioner in the wall was a constant reminder. The linoleum floor stayed cool in the Miami heat, but the humid air left beads of sweat on his forehead. His square jaw was strong and whiskered, and he still had a full head of silver hair. I remember my mother sitting on the edge of the bed, stroking his face, memorizing it. She whispered that we were all going to be fine.
On the night he died, in that hour, on the very minute of his last breath, we were miles away, crowded around the table at my Aunt’s house lighting Shabbat candles. Shoulder to shoulder we were singing the Sh’ma as if he could hear it. The…
