This is What Grief Feels Like Now

It feels like forgetfulness. Every day I make a big cup of water that I take with me to work. It's a seamless part of my morning routine. Today I forgot. I didn't remember until I got to work and went to take it out of my cup holder. How odd. How predictable.

It feels like achy muscles. There's tension in my jaw and neck that I'm not fully conscious of.

It feels like tired. I resist going to bed at night. I don't want to lie awake and give grief an opportunity. I'm not willing to open myself up to it. I have too much to do. I crave distraction. I find it in the form of addressing Christmas cards with elaborate designs that occupy my hands and keep my brain focused on something else. I find it in reading--books about obesity, immigration, Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Anything but something that might bring me back to myself. I find it in a cross stitch project. One x after another in neat little lines. I find it in television. Netflix into the wee hours. The dark shadows under my eyes are alarming evidence of this. Being tired makes everything so much worse. Of course, you understand, that's the point. It's supposed to hurt. This is grief.

It feels like wistfulness. Like counting years and months and I'm too old to have another baby. But am I too old to have another baby? I'm not sure I want one, but I definitely want one.

It feels like guilt. Zuzu asked me last night where Eliza was buried and I couldn't answer her. At the time, I couldn't bury her. Letting her ashes go, imagining here in the Everywhere felt like a reasonable alternative to the unthinkable sadness of a tiny, baby-sized grave. How could I put my baby in the ground? How could I choose a stone to commemorate my child? We didn't want to be those poor, pitiful people who visit a child's grave. And now, seven years later, I hate myself. I think, how could I not have done that? How could I have let her go out into the everywhere when she was the thing I wanted to keep more than anything else in this world? We didn't want to be those poor, pitiful people who have a dead baby, but not burying her didn't fix that. How can I have no answer when her sister asks me that simple question? What kind of mother can't keep track of where her baby girl is? This is the question I come back to when my grief doesn't hurt bad enough. It is my greatest regret as her mother.

It feels like stress. My strategies for coping with the ordinary stresses of life falter and fail me. Ordinary work place issues--stacks of ungraded papers, questions about spring schedules, committee concerns--suddenly become heavy weights in the pit of my stomach. A phone call that is friendly and cordial but delivers news that I wasn't hoping to get about university policies leaves me blinking back tears. Someone has a question for me that I'm perfectly capable of answering and instead I feel frantic and short of breath.

It feels like dread. This is a month with much to look forward to and I'm not feeling any of the anticipation.

It feels like faking it. I hope I'm doing this. I hope I look like a reasonable professional. I hope I look like a happy mom. I hope that Zuzu can't quite tell how hard I'm faking it when I gush about her art work while wanting nothing more than to crawl into bed and pull the covers up over my head and then read something on my phone until my eyes close.

I want to be distant and quiet and still. I want to snuggle my kids and breathe in the smell of their heads. I want to be alone so I can scream and rage.

I need a nap. A massage. A cup of tea. A flickering fireplace and a warm puppy. I want to go to bed and wake up on December 7th.

I lay in bed this morning instead of getting up to do yoga stretches. As I lay there, I tried to decide whether I was staying in bed because I'm so damn tired, or whether this is part of the way I punish myself for failing Eliza. I want my body to hurt. I need to feel achy and hungry and tired.

Because this is what grief feels like, and sometimes I don't know if it has hold of me, or if I'm the one who won't let go. It's both, I think.