Look, Mom, I’m Grieving!

How I learned to stop suppressing and learned to accept love, despite loss.

BY: NOAH FARBERMAN

Photo courtesy of Annie Spratt via Unsplash

I always feel guilty when things are going well. I think it stems from that thing that adults do. That catchphrase they use to make you feel guilty about wasting food, you know: “kids in Africa  are starving!” I’ve always been someone to question authority; I hated being yelled at and I hated listening. Call me the perfect blend of hard to deal with. When those well-meaning but hot-tempered adults would threaten me with the empty stomachs of worlds I didn’t understand, I would fester. I would sit and ponder just what to throw back at them the next time they made the overused comment. “Donate your lunch then!” or “Invite them over for dinner then!” were always great lines to add depth to the unhelpful threats I felt I was being given. 

Eventually, I figured out my own way of understanding the reality. I accepted the situation as truth and decided that it wasn’t for me to deal with. I was a kid, not someone with any ability to enact valuable change. Not someone who needed to feel guilty. I hated feeling guilty, it hurt. It often made me cry, this idea that my actions, or lack thereof, were causing pain. So I squelched it for a long time. I chose to suppress pain for the unfixable. First it was Africa, how could some six year old solve Africa? Then it was my father’s death. How could some seven-year-old make everyone in the family happy again? I couldn’t. No one could. 

To ignore the problem. I stopped crying. I stopped talking about things directly. I started to talk more in general, to keep myself distracted, but I stopped discussing feelings of any kind. I stopped letting them through. I’m human, obviously I couldn’t keep them all out, and I soon found myself having more trouble controlling anger the same way I could control sadness. I found myself frustrated by anything perceived as a slight against me. By the time my paternal grandmother passed, when I was about ten, I was capable of accepting the situation but I refused to process it. I saw no need. 

I still remember, after my grandmother’s funeral, taking the bowl of grapes from the snack table, my cousins in tow, and trying to sell them to the guests at the procession. It helped me get through the day without acknowledging all the people who would hug me, the same way they had hugged me at my father’s funeral. I was impervious to their guilt. And I categorized everything that made me sad, that I couldn’t control, as guilt.

I didn’t realize the woman that my mother drove me to see every few weeks was a therapist until many years after. I laughed when I learned the truth, amazed at how dumb I had been as a kid, thinking that my mother wanted me to make friends with some random older woman. I was never mad about it. I never blamed anyone for lying or misleading me. Out of character for me, I realized that it was warranted. My mother was direct with me, or around me, about how I wouldn’t cry as much as my sister. I didn’t complain or lash out when I learned this. I accepted that something was off. 

But instead of fixing what I agreed was odd, I embraced the weird. I did whatever I could to be weirder. If they saw me as someone that needed to be fixed, I figured I might as well prove them right. I would collect bugs at recess and just keep them in my shorts pocket. I talked as fast as possible just to be annoying. I’d dance sporadically and have uncontrolled outbursts. I’d do anything for attention and get mad when the reaction was negative. 

My mother remarried the perfect step-father when I was about nine or ten. I was in denial about any need for change and angry about nothing and my step-father never tried to change that about me. He listened when I talked and responded when I needed him to; he treated me like a kid when I was a kid and like an adult when I asked to be. I’m thankful everyday that I have him in my life. Moreover, I’m thankful for the catalyst of positive change his presence sparked. 

My best friend in the tenth grade was my step-father’s father, Wayne. The tenth grade was the peak of my swimming career. Although I’d still lash out, cause trouble, and be incapable of handling any emotions, I was consistently happy to get that extra energy out in the water. And I know for a fact that the reason I was so happy to swim five times a week as a restless teenager was because I knew that as long as I swam, every Wednesday Wayne and I would have dinner after practice. 

I’d always been close to Wayne. I met him when I was nine and he immediately treated me as someone older than I was. And for him I acted older. I would sit through dinners without being disruptive, I would listen and learn what sort of questions adults would ask. I was still a kid under a mask, but by the tenth grade I felt that I was a good version of myself around him. In my eulogy for Wayne I talked about how much those dinners meant to me. I didn’t talk about how he was the first person I lost that I understood that I loved. Instead I made a joke about what we would talk about at those dinners, his interest in my new technology and my interest in his new ear pieces. 

I wish I’d had my child therapist after that funeral. Instead I had the eleventh grade. Wayne passed in late October, and after having felt disappointed in my cousins for having taken so much time off school when my first grandmother passed, I decided that I didn’t need any break. I’d experienced loss before, I was strong enough to not fall behind. And I was right, I didn’t fall behind. I passed everything, despite having my headphones in and my head on my desk. High school is just memorization until you transfer to a better high school, which I thankfully did in the twelfth grade. 

For the remainder of the year after my grandfather passed, I reverted back hard to anger and suppressing sadness. It became difficult to exist. I replaced my friends with others and eventually just stopped talking to people altogether, jogging home for lunch every day so I wouldn’t be seen as one of the loners and so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. I lashed out at teachers. I insulted and bullied my English teacher all year. I would call my drama teacher out on his patronization, but I was far from cogent so it came across as aggressive, out of character, and worth calling my mother for, the teacher decided. I decided that meant I wasn’t someone who was worth talking to directly. So I stopped explaining myself. 

About a week after grade 11 ended, my father’s father passed. The situation surrounding his death was impossible, ridiculous, comical, depressing. Several of my uncles stopped talking to each other for years after the fact. I didn’t care, I told myself. All these old men do is die. I was thankful I didn’t get to know him as well as I had Wayne. And thankful to hear all the less than positive stories I was told later on. All of it was proof that I didn’t need to mourn anymore, I didn’t need to talk about it at all. 

So I didn’t. 

My grandfather’s funeral, my father’s father, was my fifth service of the sort, following my father, grandmother, aunt, and grandfather. At my aunt’s funeral, I was silently jealous that my cousins in their mid-twenties got to know their parent as long as they had. But otherwise I was unfazable.

About two months ago, my maternal grandmother started sleeping more, for most of the day, I would be told. It was harder for us to visit during quarantine, not that I was very good at visiting anyway. But even my infrequent pop-bys became less so. About a week before she passed I stopped by for a socially distant hello, not getting close, not wanting to risk her health. My mother told me that was one of the last days she stayed awake that week. 

A few days later I stopped by again, but she was asleep, so I left. The following week, I was on my way to her house when she passed. My mother had been texting me updates, saying time seemed short. I cried that day. And then I did something I hadn’t done before. I talked about it with my mother. 

I’m lucky that I have someone I want to talk to. I felt so lucky that I started to feel guilty again. Not because I felt that I didn’t visit enough. I felt guilty because, thanks to the people I had chosen to surround myself with, I was feeling good. Almost immediately I was feeling good. The loss was hard and I miss her so much, but the fact is, I am doing great. I am thriving and feeling so blessed to have my insanely smart and caring girlfriend. I’m writing more, working on new and exciting projects, finally getting published for the first time in my writing career. And through all of that I felt guilty. Guilty that I was not slouching around regretting the times I didn’t go over. Guilty that I wasn’t feeling guilty. 

For the first time in my life, I talked about grief. Through a combination of putting my feelings into the world and having someone who is able to understand those feelings and help me through them, I realized that I didn’t need to feel guilty. That I was putting it on myself. It’s not my fault that I was doing well at this specific time. It’s not my fault that anyone has died. It’s not my fault. 

So here we are, I am 22, and I have made the exact same revelation that I had at age six. If I can’t control something, then I don’t need to feel guilty about it. On paper this discovery looks like a long walk around a short circle. What’s different this time around? I can talk about it. I can grieve in healthy ways. I can both accept it, and understand it. 

I can talk to my mother, something I wish I could have done the whole time.I was gearing up to write something for my grandmother until my mother asked me if I wanted to speak and I took the time to answer the question honestly.  I can explain to her why I don’t want to speak at a funeral, how it makes me feel like a stand-in, like I’m forcing my importance onto the lives of someone I was lucky to get to know. I’m not saying that speaking at a funeral is bad, I’m saying that for me I have learned it doesn’t help. 

Looking back, I wonder how many questions I didn’t answer. Or didn’t absorb the question at all. I remember all the times people tried to help and I can differentiate between which times should have been effective and which times have left me feeling more broken. I see holes in my memory, blocked out by sheer suppressive force. Looking forward, I see communication. 

I wanted to talk about how I grieve, because grief, like respect, love, and learning, is different for everyone. I thought I grieved through comedy, or through working hard to prove that the impact these people that I had loved and lost was positive. I wanted to prove, just a little, that I could grieve quickly and painlessly. I have never been happier to have been proven wrong. The way I mourn is through talking. Writing. Being honest with myself and with those who I know care about me. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some leftovers that I really need to give to my dog.