Grief is the Metabolization of Change (and other wisdom from Ross Gay)
LA, meditations on the grief of chronic illness and a winter bookclub on Ross Gay's book Inciting Joy.
In the middle of December, I get on a plane and travel from Vancouver to Los Angeles.
It is my first trip to LA and it is sunny and warm and there are palm trees lining the roads and my limbs barely hurt at all. I want to soak up the sun, marvel at the ocean, be moved by art, eat good food, drink good coffee, walk as much as possible and cram in all the living that I miss out on because I am ill every single day. I am hungry for any moment in which I am upright, awake, functional. Because of this, I have left home more than usual this year, often but not always solo, desperate and hopeful for the possibility of my pain receding a bit in a new environment.
I work more than half of the trip. I coach clients, I answer emails, I study, I write a report, I do a presentation about a learning day I co-facilitated this autumn. The other half of the trip, I do a version of LA modified for my disability. Instead of hiking up to the Griffin Observatory and admiring the views, my brother and I drive up during golden hour on the first day so I do not miss it. I am aware of hikers going further up the trail that we can in a car, but I am grateful for the company, for the views, and for the chance to be part of it at all.
I do everything I hope for on the trip and I am surprised by how much I like this strange, car-dependent city. On my last afternoon I watch American Fiction in a movie theatre with ornate chandeliers hanging from the ceilings, curved balconies with wrought iron railings, concession signs in art deco fonts, and pillars in warm brown tones. The film delights me. The theatre is full and the audience is racially diverse and during the screening people talk out loud to the actors, laugh heartily, respond audibly. At the end of the film, people clap. It feels like such a friendly action - like whispering “thank you” to the bus driver as you exit a bus, or sharing your appreciation online about a good deed. The person/people you are thanking may never see your appreciation but the sharing itself is a practice of gratitude. Here we are acknowledging to one another that this film we have seen collectively has made us feel things.
As I leave the cinema, I am invited to a detailed online survey about my opinions on the film and other films I’ve seen this year, to assess how it will fare elsewhere. Though this is a small moment, I feel a frisson of delight that I am one of the first people to see this film, that in a small way, my input matters. Afterwards I decide I want to see more movies in theatres this year, that I want to intentionally watch things, that I want to take in more art.
Two weeks later, my husband and I have a family retreat. I no longer make New Year’s Resolutions and so feel unsure of how to participate, but I tell myself that I can hold onto principles of how I show up in the world, and things I want to prioritize.
This is an exercise in hope, and it is hard. We know that my attempts to make plans are like writing in sand, things change moment to moment, get washed away by pain, entire days and schedules require rewriting constantly. We invite our grief about this into the room. We cuddle on the couch and we talk about how each day over the last fourteen months has been somewhere on a spectrum of “very very bad” to “sort of manageable” but never fully well. We mourn all the days that I’ve lost completely to illness.
We talk about our collective and individual grief about my changed health -what my husband calls “a grief of lost youth.” What he means I think, and what I certainly feel is that I am very very young, and I have never been so aware of how vibrant this time in my life should and could be. I am no longer in the stage of my life when I am asking the questions of my twenties and thirties such as “Who will I marry? and “Will I be a mother?” Now my life feels open with possibilities, and everyday that I cannot get out of bed or participate in the world around me feels like my life is slowly slipping away from me.
We expand beyond ourselves and express our ongoing grief about Gaza, the lives lost, the artists, journalists, babies, husbands, women, humans, stories that have been snuffed out with unimaginable cruelty.
We talk about the tremendous good and tenderness that we’ve experienced this year. The friendships, the meals, the work, the travel, the acceptance, the love.
Despite the intentions and principles I set, I transition to the new year in pain, heavy-limbed, and fatigued. A persistent fog blankets me completely and refuses to lift for almost two weeks. I cannot tend to myself or clients, and my spirits are low. And then I remember Ross Gay.