Happiness Beckons Grief

I took a sip of my pickle martini, looked up at the woman I had proposed to earlier that day and thought, If only I could call my mother. She was the person I wanted to share this news with the most and the only one I couldn’t tell. If I could’ve called her, I would’ve told her about how the rain nearly ruined my plans, how I found the perfect spot on a bench after a walk through the forest. I would’ve told her about how I tried to open the black velvet box the wrong way, how upon realizing it was finally happening, Clara kept joyfully repeating “No way, no way.” How I lost all my words even though I’d been bringing myself to tears practicing in the shower for weeks, how we barely cried at the sound of “Yes” because it all made sense.

Instead I whispered, “It’s okay,” to my drink, myself, and my brand new fiancée. “I just miss her so much, you know?” A confused smile of poignant joy and sweet pain took over my face as tears warmed my eyes. That’s the thing no one tells you about grief: happiness beckons it.

I had spent most of the first year of her absence on the floor. Everyday, as I sat at the desk of my first full-time job, mindlessly tapping on keys, a sudden stream of pain would travel up my torso and lodge itself in the space between mouth and throat. Unable to breathe, I’d quickly gather my sunglasses, cigarettes, corporate badge, and headphones before running to the elevators. Over my black outfit, my flowy trench flew behind me like a veil, a marker of speed, a proof of urgency.

Once outside, I’d rush to my designated sacred space: a stretch of tiled concrete at the edge of the Hudson River where I could collapse to the floor. Knees to chest, I’d yell, “Maman, Maman,” like a lost child in a grocery store. In grief, we create little temples to lean on everywhere we go. It may be a bathroom stall, a hidden corner, the spot between fitted and top sheet.

My original temple, a shrine made of pictures and eulogies and wilted white roses, sat at home, awaiting my return. Because existing as a wailing grieving human is like crawling naked on an empty sidewalk across from the busiest one there is, it is to that shrine that I could repeat, “No way, no way.” It is to that shrine that I could beg, “Reviens, come back.” It is to that shrine that I could bargain, “This can’t be happening. I must be in a coma with her by my side. If I try hard enough, I can wake up, I can come back to her.”

I never woke up but I found that time does heal, leaving rough scars all over. Cheeks streamed of broken vessels, guts worn down in wrenching, palms bruised from forcing people away. Time makes grief attacks evolve. They become less and less frequent. Drop by drop as one fills a newborn’s bath, checking for temperature, grief attacks streamed from burning to boiling, simmering to hot, warmest to warmer.

But time doesn’t make it better. Time taught me to find joy again but it came with an unshakable craving to share it. One day, as I shoved Clara out of my apartment yet another time as though she were dirt and grief were broom, I sat on the floor and finally said, “Don’t go, please help.” I let her rock me like a child found in a grocery store. She could be my temple, I thought, she could be my shrine. If I can’t share the joy with my mother, maybe I can share the pain with my lover.

Since the first time I smiled for real after her death, I knew that for now and forever all of life’s minute discoveries, an old family photo found at the bottom of a chest, its small pleasures, my sister’s ballet showcase, and its massive joys, my engagement, would be rendered bittersweet by the veil of grief.

I prepared for the major milestones like marriage and success and children. I wasn’t prepared for the realization that as my life unfolded, it would get less and less recognizable to the one she witnessed me lead. It’s more than she won’t make a speech at my wedding or read my book or meet my children. It’s that she’ll never know that I moved from New York to a coastal Portuguese town, that I walk in the forest now, that Clara and I got back together two years after her death, that I proposed, that I fulfilled the promise I made her in the eulogy, “For you, I will be happy.”

That’s the thing no one tells you about grief: happiness beckons it.

So I hold her mother’s intuition close, finding solace in the certitude that she knew the woman I was to become before I did. She knew the woman I am to marry. She knew the people that will line our wedding aisle.

Grief attacks may lessen overtime, streaming from burning to boiling, simmering to hot, warmest to warmer but they will never get tepid. A week after proposing, after the joy had settled into a future-beckoning hum, as I sat at my desk attentively stringing words together, a familiar stream of pain lodged itself in the space between mouth and throat. I grabbed my sunglasses and keys, left my cigarettes, and rushed to the ocean to join my tears to its puddle. I didn’t collapse. I stood tall. Hugging myself through the shaking. And through the pain I was reminded of the intensity of our love, the inevitability of our connection, the luck of having basked in her motherly touch for two decades. It’ll never be enough, but at least, I know that when grief attacks come up it means I have something to be happy about.