The Lungs of Grief, The Guts of Joy

An essay on the hardest time of the year

It happens quickly, but you’re slow to catch it. That’s not a judgment. You’re trying to make rent and pay the bills and keep in touch and complete tasks and love your people and get somewhere and get home again and buy groceries to feed yourself three times a day, if you can manage tasting something three times a day, and taking walks and planning possibilities and dealing with the weird sound your car is making and then your phone breaks so you need to find a way to deal with that, and then your toast is burning and the oven won’t start again and the laundry needs doing and you still need to buy a coat, and the cold is coming, and the snow is coming, and the dark is coming, and who can catch everything perfectly, on time, all at once? This isn’t a judgment.

But then, one morning, you’re crying over your burnt toast when you look up and see your grief, plain as anything, sat at the kitchen table beside you.

“Hello, grief.”

Your grief nods, pats your hand. Your grief is nothing if not sympathetic.

You thought you’d been clever. October was a breeze. But October is always a breeze, you have to remind yourself: a month when the turning leaves glow like lanterns and the river turns velvet and the cold in the air feels thrilling and new again. Meeting new people feels possible, even easy. Picking up new hobbies is part of the game. You stay busy, thrilled to be playing at all. Never mind the shadow in the doorway.

In November you’d gotten sick, the hacking kind of cough that wracks your body. You’d bruised your sides from all the coughing. “The lungs are historically where grief is held,” someone kind told you. “Maybe you have grief that needs to come out.”

But you didn’t want your grief to come out. It’s been a big year, and the highs were high but the lows made you feel like you were scraping the bottom of the barrel of your will to keep going. You didn’t want to sit next to grief at the fucking table anymore. I can’t deal with this yet, you’d told yourself. And so your body, a very expressive body that always seems to get sick or hold pain to prove a point, had to hold off.

Now: December. Hence: Grief. Sitting at your fucking table.

Outside your window, a Cooper’s hawk lands on a branch and rips into a mouse. You can see the curved beak pull at the intestines of the small body. Their blue top feathers catch the mist in a way that reminds you of the Virgin Mary statue that probably still sits in the back of your childhood church, lit petition candles glowing hopeful at her feet.

You have to look at the grief.

You look at the grief.

Here we go.

Some of the grief is old, or at least old enough to feel surprising that it’s still around. It’s been years and I still have to deal with this? You prod at that bit, trying not to feel annoyed.

There’s a fresher bit of grief, recently rubbed pretty raw, and you’re not at all surprised to see it here, though you wish you could stop feeling so miserable about it.

Here is a patch of very fresh grief, which seems to lead like a path to some of the old grief, and that’s annoying in and of itself.

You’re annoyed! This is annoying! None of these feelings are convenient and you’re exhausted!

Just to be sure, you check under the table.

There, huddled against the radiator, small and curled up into itself. So small you almost miss it.

You’re new, you almost say aloud, but then you bite your tongue because no, actually, it isn’t new at all. You remember this grief. It’s very old, and one you’ve rarely taken time to even glance at. That’s right: you hate this grief. You remember now.

When you reach out to touch it, it flinches.

That one isn’t ready, needs more time.

You pull away. You throw away the burnt toast, get out a new piece of bread, and try again. You make two cups of tea. Grief drinks slow.

Will there ever be a year when grief doesn’t come to the table? Sometimes you long for that. No grief: only joy. Only good feelings and easy comforts and optimism and positive reflection. Candy and Christmas trees and way, way less crying. A simple season, when everyone feels loved and everything works out.

But you know better than anyone. Joy, real joy, comes from breathing with the lungs of grief, and having the guts to try to sing anyway.

For now, it’s you and grief at the kitchen table. You take a deep breath. You feel what you feel. You write it down, move the energy around. Your body appreciates it. You get back to the business of living. Grief will still be waiting for you at the end of the day, at the start of the next.

We will, too. We all sit at the same table, with you. If you need us. If it helps.