her INTERIOR DIALOGUE

The tears were surprising. She was only ordering dinner after all. But she was ordering from the place she had ordered from the last time they were all together. At least the last time she counted. She didn’t count the hospice or funeral. She only counted the last time they were all present.

This is the intimacy of grief, she realized. She thought she had distance. Safety. That the time apart had weakened their bond, like meeting last year’s bestie with a shy embarrassed nod after the summer apart. But when it hits, she knows. The distance was an illusion. Grief has been hovering nearby, waiting patiently, stalking her until she let her guard down.

Grief doesn’t ask permission. Or wait for an appropriate time or place. True intimacy does not require such strictures. You can try to corral grief, to put it into its box for the right time and right place, but that doesn’t mean you won’t end up with a trembling lip while placing a mundane order, that you won’t start to bawl at a song on the radio, or that you won’t wake from a dream with an understanding that underneath all of your smiles and laughter, the sadness was waiting for you. Had always been waiting for you.

That’s the heartbreak of life, she realized. There would just be more grief waiting around the corner. She knew she was lucky to have gotten this far in life without suffering such a significant loss, but she also knew that many more losses awaited her in the future. That’s how life works. We love people and lose them. And spend the rest of our lives trying to come to terms with those losses.

Selfish as always, she felt the loss of her own opportunities the most. Mourned her own failures. Because it was obvious she had failed at everything. She was not the friend, sister, aunt, daughter, or granddaughter she should be. She had envisioned she would be better, more present, more reliable, to the ones that she loved. She knew she had gone on a different path, not choosing motherhood, but she didn’t realize how much that would isolate her from everyone around her. She would not get invited to the playdates or, because her friends were kind people, she would get invited so she wouldn’t feel left out. But she would feel left out no matter what, separate and less than. They had all progressed to motherhood and somehow she had devolved. At her day job, she was competent and capable. But around her friends, she always seemed to do something stupid or reckless, something which elicited a tsk or side-eye or shake of the head, something they all understood was taboo but she didn’t. Because she wasn’t in the club.

Before she made the choice to not have children, she hadn’t realized the gravity of her decision. She guessed she had never really made the decision at all, just that she didn’t act, kept waiting for the inevitable maternal instinct to kick in, but she kept waiting, and eventually the decision was made for her. However, she hadn’t realized all that the lack of action entailed. That everyone around her would have a ticket to the mainland party while she sailed further into the sea, bobbing adrift and seeing everything from a blurry distance. She thought the separation and isolation would lessen as their children grew and became independent, but somehow she had less and less connection with the people around her, less to discuss, less resonance with those whose lives used to align with hers. She wondered when the distance would be too far to bridge. When she would be completely at sea while everyone she knew was on land, sharing parenting tips and frustrations, winking knowingly at each other as they shared their human bond. Would she know beforehand that the connection was being entirely severed, or would she only know afterward, when she was talking to Wilson on her own desert island, and everyone enjoyed the party she had never shown up for?

If she were a better person, she would have pushed her way in, shown up for all the kids’ birthday parties and remembered their accomplishments, made an appearance at every concert or play, known with specificity what each loved and hated, made herself a part of the next generation so that she was included as a part of their lives, and therefore had a link to their parents’ lives as well. But the truth was, she wasn’t that good of a person. She had been a hot mess for years, barely keeping up with her own drama. She had so little left to give at the end of the day. It was clear she did not have the energy to parent or to be there for anyone but herself, really, and even that was haphazard effort at best. There was so much she would do differently if she could start over, but the knowledge came too late, and the energy for change had never materialized at all.

There was the time she had been talking animatedly and laughing with her mother, and the woman at the next table kept looking back at her. Does she think she recognizes me? Does she want to say hi? She carried on with her story, expecting that at some point the woman would walk up to their table and ask “Don’t I know you?” or “Did you go to…?” And they would share a moment, a laugh, a remembrance.

But that is not what happened. Eventually, the woman looked back with her finger to her lips, making a shushing sound. So that’s why she’s been looking back, she realized. Because she thought it was obvious, I was being too loud, laughing too much, invading her space.

And all of a sudden she was 13 years old again, giggling with her friends while a classmate rolled his eyes and muttered about how annoying girls could be. Looking back, she’s sure she was annoying, as teenage girls often are. But it felt so much more personal. Like she herself should not be allowed to speak, to laugh, to giggle with friends. She had not earned the right to exist, and the audacity she showed by taking up space with her presence and voice had to be corrected. She had to be put in her place.

After the woman shushed her, she became quiet. Almost silent. The shame that overwhelmed her, the feeling that once again she was being corrected, pushed back into her allotted role, made to feel small. And she did feel small. How dare she tell a story in a voice that was a little too loud, laugh so that others could hear her? Logically, she knew it was an overreaction. That she should not allow a stranger to silence her. Does she feel powerful now that she has muted me? But still, the voice inside her asked if the stranger was right. If all of the nagging voices throughout her life had been right. If maybe there was something intrinsically wrong with her which everyone else understood.

She wondered when she would allow herself to take up space. Allow her voice to be heard. She had heard that in middle age she would stop caring what other people thought. She wondered when that would begin or if, just like motherhood, it was another experience she would only know from the outside. Another way she would mark herself as unworthy, unlike the others.

But maybe the crushing pain of loss and loneliness was, ultimately, her connection to humanity. The grief she carried was one that everyone around her also carried, or would carry, with enough time on this earth. Those who loved fiercely and those who held back, those who dared and those who didn’t, those who succeeded and those who failed, they would have one thing in common: all would know the ubiquitous shadow of grief.