I grieve
“I Grieve”
It was only one hour ago
It was all so different then
There’s nothing yet has really sunk in
Looks like it always did
This flesh and bone
It’s just the way that you would tied in
Now there’s no-one homeI grieve for you
You leave me
’so hard to move on
Still loving what’s gone
They say life carries on
Carries on and on and on and on– Peter Gabriel, I Grieve, from the album Up
This is a hard time of year for me. It has been for the last 15 years. Or rather, the last 14 years. Fifteen years ago, my life changed forever.
Each passing day, then week, then month, calculated in my head. It was only one day ago… One simple day. A few minutes that could have made a difference.
I’d like to think that I’ve moved on in many ways since I lost my mother. I know people don’t really want to know how I feel or what I think about being a motherless child some 15 years after the fact.
So I’ll just say this. I still grieve. It’s still like yesterday sometimes. Maybe I’m too emotional.
My brother and I had a conversation the other day. It was a painful conversation in a painful time, so we kept it short. He said he didn’t know if 15 years was supposed to be some kind of milestone.
I think it is. Not for anyone else, but it is for us.
I’ve thought about all the milestones throughout the years. The first birthday and Christmas without her. My first college graduation, without her. When my brother had his first child, I thought, mom threatened to kill me if I made her a grandmother before 50. That would’ve made her feel old.
I miss my mom in so many ways I can’t express to people who haven’t lost a parent young. And now I’m no longer young. I can’t believe it’s been so long, and I can’t believe it still hurts so much sometimes.
The next big milestone will be in a few years, when I turn the same age my mother was when she died. I’d like to think that I won’t even think about it, but the chances are I will.
I think part of my problem is I have so many regrets and so many unspoken words. So sometimes it helps me to talk about it, or helps me to be sad. And sometimes, life carries on, in the words of Peter Gabriel.
Life carries on
In the people I meet
In everyone that’s out on the street
In all the dogs and cats
In the flies and rats
In the rot and the rust
In the ashes and the dust
Life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and onIt’s just the car that we ride in
A home we reside in
The face that we hide in
The way we are tied in
And life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and onDid I dream this belief?
Or did I believe this dream?
Now I can find relief
I grieve
Very well written, Melissa.
The thirties are such a time for melancholy and reflection. I don’t have a childhood trauma haunting me, but the last few years have been full of generalized anxiety. It’s the ageism that I have just started noticing linked with the reality that, yes, I am 37 and not 30 (slowly my ideal image of myself is connecting with the horrid reality). It’s the economy, and its the specific horror facing so many of my peers finishing grad school with a 20 percent chance of actually landing an academic job. It’s a tough time to be alive.
Dad: Thanks. You know I never want to bring up stuff that might make you uncomfortable. We don’t talk about this much.
Todd: I suppose we all must mourn the loss of our youths. Or maybe it’s just we navel-gazers who have until recently harbored the idea that we were still able to be hip. But the older I get, the less tolerance I have for those young kids and their emo music and their 90s retro clothes. Since when did the 90s become retro?
The economy is indeed a source of trouble. I will point out to you that you have been urging me to go to grad school, and more specifically, library school, for many years, so I don’t want to hear the negative part of academia crap right now, thank you very much.
That said, I do worry about getting a job, and trying to carve relevance in a field that is changing in a similar way to that of the dying newspapers. Libraries have to evolve or suffer a similar fate. That’s why, by pursuing a specialization in digital libraries, I hope to carve out a place for myself that is a little more secure from upheaval. The last thing I want to do is spend all this money and find out that in my mid-30s, I still don’t have a job, or that I immediately get laid off somewhere else.
The problem with our age is that we’re neither fish nor fowl. We seem more set in our ways. At least I don’t have children. I feel I can take more risks and be more mobile. I don’t think you’ve been all that happy where you teach, and it sucks that you seem to be sorta tied there. How much of restlessness is tied to the vestige of that slowly fading youth?
I don’t know. In a very real way youth is overrated. The teen years are a useless bunch of ticking minutes where you’re overextending yourself in search of that elusive “good education” that will open doors to the profession you are meant to do. All while dodging taunts and obeying increasingly archaic rules from your elders. Once you realize that you’ve been fed a bunch of lies, and that living to work in that great job is really a shitty way to go — seriously, one should work so they have money to do the things they like to do — you’ve graduated into the relative poverty of your 20s. To boot, you have no seniority at work, nobody anywhere will listen to you because you’re just 22, and you’re likely living in a crappy place and driving a crappy car.
Life didn’t start getting good until about my mid-20s. I started figuring out how this work thing works. I had gotten a few raises and didn’t have to ponder every Friday night purchase of wings. I learned how to properly flip a pancake. I made friends with similar interests. And I got a car with a heater that got warm within minutes. Most importantly, I was finding out the stuff I was made of.
I would be thoroughly enjoying my 30s if I didn’t make a critical error in judgment in choosing my field. I suppose that’s my bad, though, in the end.
We are in our prime. We have our health. We’re finally figuring out what the hell we’re doing. In Todd’s case, he owns a house and thus can paint a wall or two. And the gray hairs on our heads gain us the right to lecture to the young ‘uns about a thing or two. Yeah, I’d like to be hip, in a way. But personally I’d much more settle for a nice 401k, a nice house, and a profession. Travel. And knowing that I can make a mean pancake. And that’s what the 30s are all about. (Wel,l and family, too, for the parents out there.)