Category: Big Feelings

I didn’t think I’d be writing about grief so soon after my Grieving for the Grieving post, but here the frick I am. This one is all mine though. It’s my own grief – the hit by the SEPTA bus kind.

The phone call from my sister came at 5:17 pm on Saturday March 7th – Uncle Mario collapsed. The boys (his two sons, my cousins) are giving him CPR until the ambulance gets there.

Waiting. WTF.

5:42 pm call from mom: Brief update – On the way to the hospital. He’s non-responsive. Two shots of adrenaline, but his heart won’t beat on its own.

5:44 pm call to my sister: Relayed brief update from mom.

6:13 pm call to mom: She’s speechless, sobbing. He’s gone.

I immediately lose my shit. I can’t stop crying. I can NOT believe this is happening. He’s only 57. His birthday is in three days. We were JUST at his house celebrating Christmas Eve. No, this is not happening. This did not happen.

Except it did.

The usual family drama ensued for a short while because why the hell not. I get it. People need to feel in control when something like this happens. I suppose it’s because the pain is too crushing and distractions of idiocy muffle the blow just enough to keep from shattering to pieces.

The next day I stayed in bed. It was either that or stare at the wall all day, which I did at times anyway, but at least I could snuggle up with my blankets and nest of pillows. It was easier to doze off after a crying jag, and I really didn’t feel like participating in the outside world knowing that Mario was no longer in it. Besides, I had to get my shit together for work. People were counting on me to be present.

On Monday I went into the office, even though Anna had thoughtfully offered to cancel my appointments for me. I needed the distraction too, and drama isn’t really my style, so helping my clients manage their pain helped me manage mine. It wasn’t gone. Just contained a little.

The funeral came and went, and the check-ins and sympathy calls slowly stopped coming, which is normal, of course. The tears gradually subside, but the staggering weight of sorrow is still slow to lift. It lingers in the quiet moments, the ordinary actions in a day, like stopping for coffee or pumping gas which now feel surreal – almost offensive, like betrayal because it feels like moving on when I’m still not ready.

Mario was directly responsible for my taste in music since childhood. For my 18th birthday, he got me a Jimi Hendrix cassette and a book of his song lyrics with various pictures from his career. For some weird reason, one of the pages of the book was covered in duct tape, and naturally I was curious as to why?

I carefully peeled the tape back, and underneath was a picture of the original cover from Electric Ladyland, which, if you didn’t know, was a group of about 20 women just chilling out fully in the nude. I had to laugh as I thought, “Jesus, ya prude. I’m an adult woman. I have boobs too.” That’s Mario for ya.

So as I drove home from work a few days after his death, I put on the playlist cultivated by our shared bond over Jimi. The memories that I took for granted began to emerge, quiet, deep and comforting, while at the same time reminding me that there will be no more to make – only the retelling of ones created over the past 50 years of love and connection.

I often share with my clients that I believe grief is the most sacred emotion. I don’t mean that in some grand abstract way. Happiness, or anger, or excitement are flashes in time, but grief is all of those feelings woven through the little and big moments shared over the course of a lifetime. It’s the loss of accumulated love.

A moment of joy passes, but grief is forever. We eventually get through it, but we never get over it.

Mario was only six years older than I am, so we didn’t have a typical uncle and niece relationship. He was also my friend. I lost both on the day he died.

The music is still there. The memories are still there. All of it is still there.

He just isn’t.

And I really fucking miss him.

I’m finding out that it’s…not so easy
Especially when your only friend
Talks, looks, sees and feels like you
And you do the same just like him

– My Friend by Jimi Hendrix

Brokenness is a state that all too often carries enormous shame. I’ve heard clients say, “I’m just broken,” as if being injured or anguished is somehow a defect in character. I think it’s stupid to view brokenness as a negative, because who among us hasn’t been smashed to pieces at some point in our lives?

Is it painful? Yes. Are we defective? Absolutely not. Suffering is not a failure, and if you think it is, maybe you’re just kind of an asshole. Learn some empathy.

Being broken is something that is very rarely caused by our own doing. It happens when an external force exerts pressure so forcefully that eventually something snaps.

Would anyone fault a person who fractures a collar bone after falling down a flight of stairs? No, that’s ridiculous. You’d blame the external forces: gravity, stairs, a hard landing, and maybe some ill-fitting footwear – unless you really are kind of an asshole, in which case, refer to my early comment about empathy.

Still, for some reason, people blame themselves for their emotional brokenness, without even stopping to consider that it wasn’t their fault, but rather that a different sort of gravity was grinding down.

In Japanese culture, the art of pottery repair is called kintsugi. In kintsugi, the broken fragments of a bowl or plate are meticulously joined back together with lacquer and gold, making the damaged piece whole again, but altered in the loveliest way. The finished results are typically stunning and the imperfections only serve to add character and complexity that enhance the original piece.  

One Christmas several years ago, I gave my father a piece of kintsugi that I made by hand. I took a dull gray bowl, broke it, glued the pieces back together, then painted the cracks with gold. It took days of frustrating attempts and several sacrificial bowls to create. The final product was a bit wonky, but I was proud of it, and I’m working on allowing myself to be messy anyway, so at least I was being consistent.

That particular gift held deep meaning for me. As a therapist (and for myself), I routinely use kintsugi as a metaphor for suffering. It represents our own unique brokenness, requiring gentle repair that alters us in the most exquisite new way. For me, it’s the ideal symbol for hope and healing, beauty for ashes, and how pain can shape us into something even better.

As my father turned the bowl over in his hands, I quickly tried to explain the meaning behind the Christmas present, but it was pointless. His frown said it all, but he felt compelled to add, “You can’t even eat cereal out of this.” Ah, a master class in adding insult to injury. Dick. The crowd of 20+ family members laughed, and I faked a chuckle because in that moment I felt like a piece of broken pottery myself. I didn’t realize that the utility of a breakfast vessel was the appropriate metric. Silly me.

My mom ended up taking the bowl for herself, as she usually does with all of the Christmas, birthday, and Father’s Day gifts that my father bluntly rebuffs. It’s her way of layering more gold over the old cracks, strengthening the ones I had patched up myself over the years.

With kintsugi, the finished product is the focus. The broken vessel whose flaws make a thing more beautiful has become an increasingly popular symbol of the wounded human being, especially in healing spaces, but what about the process itself?

During the grueling, sometimes dangerous work of cobbling our jagged pieces back together, we risk being cut by sharp edges, or letting discouragement set in when the parts slip and won’t quite fit the way we’d like them to. Still, we know deep down that the repair is worth it because without the breaking, the possibility of transformation doesn’t exist.

Very few people get to see the full creative process – the anguish felt or the tiny cuts on the hands of the maker. We see the gilded veins that make it pretty, but forget that the real healing is not the end result, but rather how we got there. We refuse to ignore the drops of blood on the floor, and when the gravity of pain and trauma crush down, we stagger through it anyway to become something wholly new and beautiful.

Yesterday my husband Chris and I had a lovely family lunch with my sister, her husband, and three of our niblings. We decided on Mexican cuisine, and since we were already visiting the area, we chose a restaurant that was near my sister’s home, but about 40 minutes and 30 miles away from mine. Keep that last detail in mind.

The food was great, the service was excellent, and the company was sublime. I love spending time with family. We walked out of the restaurant with full bellies and fuller hearts, and after a round of hugs, Chris and I made our way home. Little did we know that on the way back to our car, Chris dropped his wallet in the parking lot.

We had just pulled into the gas station down the road from our house when I got a phone call. I didn’t recognize the number, so I ignored it, but when my phone buzzed with a text notification a few seconds later, I decided to check it out.

The text was from a complete stranger. It read, “Hi! Any chance you’re related to a Chris? If so, we found his wallet.” I replied that he was my husband, and confirmed the name of the restaurant we had been to that afternoon (shout out to Plaza Azteca in KOP). The kind stranger informed me that my husband’s wallet was waiting for him at the front desk of the restaurant.

At first I wanted to choke him, but Chris beat himself up enough as we began the trek back, so I chose not to lose my shit and spared him the scolding. I knew he was looking forward to going home and loafing on the couch after a brutal week of laborious work. I knew how tired he was. Dude dozed off sitting up in his chair at the restaurant.

He was so close, literally blocks away, but couldn’t go home to spend the rest of the afternoon on the couch, drifting in and out of consciousness under his coziest blanket – at least not for another hour and a half or so.

I wanted to cheer him up, so I reminded him of the time I had lost my wallet, only then the wretched person who found it tried to buy almost $3000.00 of goodies from Game Stop, Apple, and Target. The scoundrel even tried to withdraw money with my debit card.

Luckily my bank and credit card companies flagged the transactions and shut down my cards and accounts, but that meant that I had to switch all of our recurring payments – the mortgage, internet, phone, utilities, college loan payments, streaming services, everything had to be transferred to the new account information. It was a mother-frickin’ nightmare that I did not want to repeat.

But thankfully, Chris’ wallet was discovered by someone with integrity and a heart. And I reminded him of that too. Life nowadays is hard, and too often the worst of humanity is shoved in our faces by needlessly cruel internet trolls, racists, misogynists, and the assholes who don’t pull over far enough when making a left turn so the rest of us can pass by. There’s a special place in Hades for those selfish douchebags.

Chris was eventually able to shake out of his funk, and we could both feel grateful that there are still people with compassionate hearts who will take the time to track down the owner of a lost wallet (or wife of said owner).

It didn’t erase the long drive or lost time, but it reminded us of something better – that in a world where the shittiest voices are often the loudest, there are still good people quietly choosing to be kind.

To the finder of the wallet, may you always snag the best parking spot at any location, may your snacks never run out before the end of a movie, and may your kindness be returned to you a thousand fold.

Chris eventually did make it to the couch.