On Grief
Image via TONL
There is so much grief.
I’ve read that 2020 is supposed to be the Year of Grief. And I’ve thought, what a privilege it would be to have known years that were not. See, I have developed a kind of relationship with grief— I’ve written books and plays and poems and even a film about it. I sometimes joke that grief is my personal brand, as it has been a constant part of my life, well before 2020. I am a queer Black woman in America. Grief is part of my inheritance.
I don’t mean for that to sound pessimistic. I am not pessimistic. In my experience, grief is only joy turned inside out. It is the pain of excess love with nowhere to go. It is the ache of lost possibility. Grief, just like joy, is abundant. And abundance holds a promise of hope.
My father taught me grief first. It was easy for him to do because he also taught me love. I grew up in a house full of music with a larger than life musician for my dad. He used to say he’s “too hip for the room.” He knew how to make me laugh the hardest, always made me smile the biggest. I think he was too hip. Probably so. I know he was too mean, too drunk, too angry, too much for me when I was small. I know growing up didn’t help.
My dad taught me grief by disappearing into himself, a little bit at a time. Running, no doubt, from his own grief. The trauma of surviving as a Black man in this country. Escaping into drinking or drugs or however he could, whenever he could. When he was there, we usually fought. But when he was gone, I missed him. I had too much love for someone who was vanishing right in front of my eyes. The last time we spoke, he didn’t remember me. That day I had all my joy turned inside out.
These last few weeks, I have been thinking of him often. I have wished things were different, that I could call him. Wished he would know me if I did. Wished we could talk and laugh and find comfort in knowing I inherited not just his fear and anger and sorrow at the world but also his generous heart, his wide-open laugh, his sense of humor. I miss him.
And when I miss him, I think of all the families suffering loss. Who’ve had their joy turned inside out by this country. Who have to find somewhere to put all the love they didn’t get a chance to spend. And I know there is so much grief. The air is thick with it. I try to hold each of their hearts in mine, think there isn’t room, think there will always be room.
These days there are so many stories of loss. I think we must all have our own by now. 100,000 deaths in the paper and counting. 463 fatal police shootings this year and counting, which doesn’t include the knee that killed George Floyd. No arrests made in the 99 days and counting since Breonna Taylor was murdered. 15 trans lives stolen so far in 2020 and counting. So many pandemics all at once. So many tragedies, it can feel endless. And still, there are people who will not permit grief. Who reject it because it makes them feel guilty or nervous or threatened. Because it doesn’t align with their worldview or their priorities or their comfort. There are people who will forever try to diminish the devastation of each loss by pointing to a person’s history: their temperament, their health, their habits, their worst day, or their criminal record.
As though any excuse could negate the space a life leaves behind.
We must make space for grief. It will come whether we want it or not.
The other night, unable to deny it, I let myself cry. Loud and alone. I cried myself tired and then cried some more. I felt overwhelmed in a wash of sadness, and I couldn’t see the bottom.
And then something strange happened. When I glanced myself in the mirror, clear as a song, I heard my dad’s voice in my head, saying, “shit, Nick, look at you. What’s going on? You don’t laugh anymore, babygirl?” And through my tears, it made me smile. To think of him at my side still somehow, the way he was sometimes. With his enormous heart on his sleeve. Wiping snot off my face and grinning. Showing up just in time to walk me the distance from sadness to laughter.
I thought of him close. Thought of angels and ancestors. Thought, maybe we are all only as far apart as we allow. I’d like to believe that.
In all my years of it, there is still no easy remedy for grief. There is only feeling it. There is only calling back the memory of a smile to hold in your heart. There is only the sound of the last “I love you,” you heard. There are only the tears and the tears and the tears, until one day you laugh so hard that you cry from that instead.
There is only the moment we’re in when the grief is thick. And the folks who will ask you to let it go. But we must not surrender it to anyone. Joy is on the other side.
Nicky Davis is a playwright, novelist, poet, screenwriter & blogger from Seattle, living and working in Los Angeles. As a queer, biracial Black woman, she is committed to telling honest stories that represent all shades of humanity in its complex dysfunction and beauty. Nicky graduated from Yale University in 2013 with a degree in Theater Studies and Playwriting. Her first film, Junebug will premiere in autumn 2020. Her debut novel, Grieve Yourself, comes out in 2020 as well. You can find Nicky on Instagram and on her blog, www.theconversationalite.com
