Grief: when loss takes your breath away
I couldn't stop staring at the woman in the Whole Foods. I think it was mostly about the way the collar of her denim shirt was flipped up all wonky on one side.
I watched her shuffle along, pushing one of those tiny carts with just a few lemons and a box of salad in it.
Her hair was thin and silvery and it flipped in at her jawline in a way that thin hair doesn't do naturally. She must use those pink plastic foamy rollers. I would find those little rollers randomly strewn around my house after my grandmother would visit — they'd be sitting on the side table, stacked up on the Kleenex box, lost under the guest bed.
This woman reminded me so much of my Gramma that it took my breath away.
Literally.
I have a panic disorder, so when something startles me — like thinking I see my grandmother whose death still breaks my heart — shopping for avocados, I hyperventilate. My husband was putting red peppers in a bag when I grabbed his arm and managed to say something about stepping outside.
"Are you okay? What happened?"
"Fine. I'm. Outside."
I don't tend to get my words right when I have anxiety.
I almost slammed into the sliding door as I stumbled outside. The cool air felt good on my flushed face. I hid behind a pile of locally made Christmas wreaths.
Tears poured from under my sunglasses as I continued to gasp like a fish. I've had panic attacks since I was eleven years old, so I know the drill. I started with my breathing exercises. I inhaled for four counts. Exhaled for a count of eight. I propped myself up against a pile of scented pinecones and felt the pleasant burn of the cinnamon in my nostrils. My breathing started to normalize, but my hands were still numb. I moved on to my grounding exercises. I counted my fingers. Pressing each one to the opposite palm. One. Two. Three...
My Gramma loved Christmas, so the holiday season feels thorny for me. Over the last few years of her life, she gave me many of her favorite Christmas things. The little nativity set she and my Poppa got in Europe back in the 1960s. The hand-made gold spray-painted angel that now sits on my bookshelf year-round. Various tree ornaments with sentimental meaning to her — the details of which I've now forgotten and they are precious just because they were hers. As I unwrap each one from the plastic storage box, I'm hit with memories that are both sweet and feel like an ice pick to the chest.
But it was the unexpected sight of a flipped-up collar that had me undone. I was always flipping the collar of Gramma's denim shirt down. I don't know how many denim shirts she had, or why the collars were so troublesome, but fixing them seemed to be my eternal karmic job. If I wasn't flipping her collar down, I was twisting her necklace around so the clasp was at the back.
She'd do the same for me. Rotating my necklace and attempting to tame and smooth my hair — mermaid hair — she called it. We had a lot of things in common, but my thick, wild curls are one of the traits I clearly didn't get from her. I will never be in need of those pink plastic curlers.
In the most simple of ways, we took care of each other.
I walked back into the store and found Jeremy, who gently rubbed my back and mercifully didn’t ask if I was okay. It was clear that I was not okay, but I would be, eventually. Knowing I needed a distraction, he asked me if we needed bananas.
I didn't accost the random woman and fix her collar. I didn't sob into her denim shirt and tell her that she reminded me of someone I still can't believe isn't here. I didn't tell her that the holidays are nice and all but sometimes they are just really really fucking hard.
Because the Universe finds things like this to be hysterically funny, we ended up in the check-out line right next to the denim shirt woman. And I saw her trying to snap closed that familiar wallet — well-worn red leather stuffed full of receipts and coupons and newspaper clippings.
And right there in the middle of my grief, I found a chewy center of joy. There are memories of tiny acts of love that live on forever. What a wonderful thing, to know that kind of love exists. How comforting to know that someone has smoothed our frazzled hair, flipped down our collar, fixed our necklace, rubbed our back in the produce section. They tried, in some simple way, to make something better for us. Those tiny gestures live on and reaffirm love at every moment. And my pain dissolved, as it always does, in the face of gratitude.
What a stunning act of love it is, to say:
"C'mere. Let me fix that for you."
