On Grief and Loss

The recent event isn’t my story to tell so I won’t. I am WAY too far removed from the center of the circle of the pain for this loss to be about me, but someone I love as much as I love anyone is in the midst of a devastating loss. In trying to offer support I unexpectedly found myself reliving, in a full-on sensory flashback kind of way, the worst night of my life when I lost my Corbin.

I do not have the words to properly convey what Corbin was to me. Best friend? Of course. Non-sexual life partner? Okay that probably works. Kindred spirt? Uh yeah. He was my first phone call. If you were a fan of Grey’s Anatomy before it jumped the shark, perhaps it is neatest to say he was my person. And then, without any warning, he was dead at not quite 24 years old.

From the first day we met, it was a bond unlike any other I’ve experienced. I am lucky enough to have more than handful of treasured friends, but this was more than friendship, this was cosmic. We were just in sync. We spent years showing up to events in matching ensembles without coordinating, we could have entire conversations with only a glance or head tilt, we were inseparable, our lives and our families shared. He was fiercely loyal, had a cutting wit, and was so damn loving and even more fun.

He taught me SO much on what love and devotion look like in practice. He loved me at times when I didn’t love myself so well. When in my early 20s my mom said I was too old for an Easter basket and I lightly complained about, he showed up on my doorstep with a grown-up easter basket full of booze and treats. One year for my birthday he spent months making notes about little things I looked at in stores and didn’t buy for myself and then bundled them all up for me. He was there for me through heartbreak and trump and so many random outings. And then I had to learn how to live without him.

It was brutal. My memory of the that time is strange, lots of it is a blur, I’m sure my memory is far from complete. Other pieces are as fresh as if I’d just lived them yesterday. I remember taking the phone call in a bar that would change my life forever, I vividly remember a particular trip to Taco Bell with other close friends in the days immediately following, I remember trying on heels at Target with friends and losing it, and I can’t imagine I will ever forget the sound of his mother’s wail as we sat together on their sofa in the hours right after he passed sobbing and embracing.

I do not know the source (except as a reference to an unnamed Reddit) but this passage below is still the most accurate and poignant description of grief and loss I have ever encountered:

“As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating.

For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float.

After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”

I’m lucky enough now to be in the stages of grief where the waves are further apart and I can almost always see them coming. I miss Corbin most on my birthday and his birthday and at my wedding or the births of my children or his nephew. I can predict those things will hurt. I can predict the pain of missing freaking out about political developments with him. But yesterday took me by surprise.

Other treasured people have died since I lost Corbin and while my experience with grief and loss were valuable for navigating tragedy, in those losses I didn’t find myself underwater again.. until yesterday. As hard as it was to relive that intense gripping grief as though new again, now that I’m back on the shore, I almost appreciate it. He felt closer again and I so miss my dear Corbin.

Sending out all my love and support for any of you riding the waves of grief.