Grief can come at you like a flood; it can be sudden and catastrophic, like my city after the hurricane. Or it can be slow and insidious with the water slowly rising; you don’t realize you are drowning till your head is almost completely under water. On August 19th, our city flooded and on August 20th, my cousin Lara died unexpectedly, one day shy of her 49th birthday. Losing her in the midst of a natural disaster has caused me more personal damage than the actual storm. At the time of Lara’s death, I tried to shelve my sadness. But the loss kept seeping in over the floor boards and through the cracks in the walls. Before I knew it, I was completely under water and I couldn’t see the surface.
Throughout the hurricane, our house had remained a dry and electrically intact island, and once the water receded, I felt the need to atone for my fortune. I was eager to rip out sheetrock, work in the temporary clinic at the convention center or help colleagues find housing. I had recruited my entire family to do good deeds. But on the morning of August 20th, I could not have anticipated how my life was about to change. I stepped out of the shower and with my towel still wrapped around me, my husband delivered the following news; my cousin Lara had collapsed and died about 2 hours earlier. His words thudded onto the floor in front of me and I plowed through them. The hurricane’s destruction surrounded me and I could not hear that Lara was suddenly gone.
From our very existence 49 years ago, Lara and I had been thrown together. Two months after my birth, my mom and I were sent to live in San Francisco with her older brother and his wife and their 3-month old baby, Lara. No one else wanted us; an unwed teen mother and her illegitimate child. My aunt and uncle opened their home and Lara and I were forever bound in a type of closeness that transcended our understanding. I knew her and she knew me. Our relationship was held together with a lifetime of memories; she was my person. Because of raising kids, work and other responsibilities, we put off the trip that she and I had been promising ourselves for the past 20 years. In May of this year, for Mother’s Day, we finally did it; we went to the beach for 6 days with her sister and our mothers. Without internet connection, we talked, laughed and played games. Little did we know it would be our first-ever and last-ever, annual trip to the beach.
On the day Lara died, I had volunteered to care for the baby of an ER resident while she and her husband looked for a rental home. Her laundry spun in my washer and dryer as I processed what my husband had just told me. Inconceivably, I thought to myself that Lara had chosen an inconvenient time to die. At that precise moment, I resented her. The hurricane had been dramatic enough, with its 13 trillion gallons of water and its decimation of lives. Being trapped in my house for 4 days with the constant news-reel of devastation had a huge impact. My only way to work through this trauma was to participate in the relief efforts and Lara’s death interfered with that. How was I supposed to grieve for my city and face the larger, more personal crisis of losing my cousin, the sister I never had.
What happened next is similar to the times that I’ve turned on the water to fill our pool and forgotten to turn it off. The pool overflows into the street and our water bill reflects the oversight. That morning, August 20th, I turned on a faucet in my mind and walked away. The consequences were bad. I could see the damage caused by my flooded mind, but I couldn’t stop the water from rising.
In the days that followed the hurricane, before Lara’s funeral, I had 2 tasks; to process the loss that had affected my city and to grieve my cousin’s death. In retrospect, my only job should have been to mourn for my cousin, but the aftermath of the hurricane could not be ignored. While I systematically filed through every photo album, box and electronic file of photos attempting to recreate our entire existence together, I baked 20 dozen Nestle Tollhouse cookies and delivered them to fire stations. All night I poured through thousands of photographs and all day, to the extent that my mind would allow me, I’d give halfhearted attempts to help those in need. I couldn’t see it, but I was the one who needed help. During this time, I didn’t shed a single tear. I was too busy with my tubes of mass produced cookie dough and anonymous firemen and photo-documenting memories as I ignored my husband and my children.
After the funeral, I started to get physical manifestations of my unprocessed sadness; first, my head itched like crazy. For a solid 2 weeks, I just kept scratching my scalp like a dog with fleas. I could not concentrate; in clinic, I listened as an intern presented a patient to me. He mentioned a drug routinely used in asthma and I argued about its appropriateness. Finally, he pulled out his smart phone and showed me I was wrong. I barely had the mental capacity to brush my teeth and I had the responsibility of teaching medicine residents and treating sick patients. At home, I became more compulsive in my actions, to the neglect of cooking, cleaning and caring for my children. For the past decade, a dozen balls of fuzzy yarn had sat intertwined at the bottom of my closet and every night I sat on the sofa and unraveled the yarn. It was as though once I untangled the yarn I’d have untangled the mess in my head. Because of the flood, my children started school two weeks late and during that time, I didn’t know where they were, what they ate or when they went to sleep. One Friday night, after I had freed about 2 balls of yarn, I realized I had no idea the whereabouts of my 13-year old daughter. I asked her 16-year old brother to track her down. It was my job to look after my daughter, not my son’s but I couldn’t get off the sofa. She and a friend were watching a scary movie at a boy’s house. My son assumed the role of the parent that night and knocked on the door, introduced himself to the parents, retrieved his sister and brought her home. In the recesses of my mind I knew that it was my job but I didn’t care. I also knew that my 13-year old daughter shouldn’t be at the home of some random boy at 10:30 on a Friday night, but it was too much to be present and involved.
I did finally unravel all of the yarn. The colors are bright and beautiful and the textures are varied. I bought a glass apothecary’s jar in which to display them. Lara was always that ray of sunshine in my life and I decorated my den with colors as bold and warm and radiant as her personality. A friend and I went for coffee and she told me to forgive myself for retroactively parenting. She also gave me a hall pass to extend some grace to myself. She suggested we start a walk-jog program; not actually running together but accountable to each other. Initially, I’d walk for 2 minutes and then jog for one minute and I’d do this for 30 minutes, barely breathing the entire time. It was only our promises of shaming each other and the last vestiges of sheer will that got me out the door. As the ratio flipped and I started jogging for longer intervals of time, the cloud started to lift from my field of vision. By the time I was jogging for 15 consecutive minutes I could see the sun beginning to shine. It’s like the further and faster I go, the closer I get to heaven.
My story with Lara has been like a book or a movie that ends too soon. I wish the audience could choose an alternate ending. My mom goes to a church whose pastor just lost his wife of 54 years. In his first sermon after her death, he told his congregation he’d retreated to an island for several months. When she told me that, I cried because that’s where I’ve been; on my own island, not working and concentrating on me. After the hurricane and upon her death, my world flooded literally and figuratively. Slowly I started to tread water till I could get to my island. Just like the days following the hurricane, the flood waters surrounding me eventually receded. The grief is still with me and I know it will never leave, but maybe one day it will be more familiar. Sometimes I still shake my fist at God, wondering how he allows I miss Lara every day, but I’m no longer drowning and I’m still standing on dry ground.
