Grief and Coffee

Grief never speaks first, but she always responds.

I am out of coffee.

This is a new-ish problem. Not the lack of caffeination, just the fact that it matters. I’m a recent-ish coffee addict, having only taken up the habit (okay, ritual) after my Mom died three years ago. Now, being mildly incapacitated by the absence of coffee annoys me. Not as much as her being here, again. Sitting there. Saying nothing.

Grief, why are you so obsessed with me?

Grief never speaks first. She starts off as a miasma of sadness, yet she’ll never initiate the conversation. The more you ignore her, the more she solidifies. It’s not enough to acknowledge her presence, she demands engagement.

Speak with Grief, and she will speak back.

“I am not getting dressed and leaving the house just to get coffee. The temperature is officially too young for me to date” I said–not to her but in her general direction. “Someone needs to tell Elsa to let it go. I know, it’s my fault: the absence of coffee, not the weather. I should have ordered more, but that was yesterday me’s problem; here I am, cleaning up his mess.”

Grief drifted closer, a chilled mist in her wake.

I inhaled sharply through my nose. “Fine” I snarled. “I guess we’re doing this. I don’t have to ask why you’re here; you never actually leave. I already know why you’re clearer today than usual, as if I could forget why today matters. I’ve spent a fortune on therapy. I communed with gurus. I converse with the Universe (stupid baby) and my Ancestors regularly.

“Why” I pleaded “are you still here? What do you want from me?”

Grief sighed and placed a cold hand on my shoulder. “I thought you’d never ask. You act like I’m a problem to solve, instead of an answer you refuse to accept."

I exhaled through my teeth. “And pray tell, what might that answer be? I know they’re gone. I know some part of them still exists in some cosmic, universal conservation of energy bullshit. I know memory is a bridge. I’ve taken myself down every possible path that faces the sadness head-on, and yet—I can’t make you leave."

“Of course you can” she whispered. “Just stop loving her.”

Grief took a seat on the couch beside me, and made herself comfortable.

“Once upon a time there, was a bridge between two cities” Grief said, adopting a storyteller’s voice. “Each place was beautiful and whole unto itself. Over time, a bridge grew between them, allowing them to contribute to each other’s growth and security. Then one day” Grief sighed “one city ceased to be.”

“I am the bridge that remained” Grief exhaled. “I am the memory of her; the part of you still reaching out for something that’s gone. When you are ready to let go of that connection” said Grief “you can let me go.”

“You don’t ever have to see me again” Grief continued. “I’m not here because I want to be. Trust me, no one wants this job, including me. There is nowhere I can go where I am welcome. Tolerated? Ignored? Medicated? Yes, and still: on some level you all realize:

“The roots of love live on long after the last leaf has fallen.”

I realized I’d been holding my breath. I exhaled, sucked my teeth and recognized the taste of iron, as I’d bitten clear through my bottom lip.

"I wasn’t even sad today," I muttered. "I woke up feeling grateful. My life is pretty good. Not perfect, but…”

I swallowed, hard. “I just wish…”

“Go on” Grief said. “Name it.”

“I just wish I could talk with her. There’s just so much I want to tell her every day, and it’s not that I don’t. I stay in conversation with my Ancestors; it’s not the same. It’s not interactive; I’m just talking at the memory of her. What made it special was us sharing with each other.”

Grief wrapped her narrow fingers around my throat, and squeezed.

“I can’t take anything from you” she said. “That’s Time’s job and Time is undefeated. What I offer is choice. You claim you weren’t even sad” Grief said mocking me. “You said you woke up feeling grateful for memories. What you didn’t say…”

Grief locked eyes with me, her bony fingers tightening their grip. “Say it” she growled.”

“Harder” I shot back, through clenched teeth. Grief smirked.

“It’s not that I don’t miss her; she was my best friend. And it’s not that I don’t have tons of cherished memories. The sadness isn’t in what I’ve got, it’s in what I can never get again.”

“Correct” Grief said, loosing her grip.

“I am the ache of knowing there will be no more new memories. This part of the narrative arc has run its course.”

“There’s no dynamic interplay” I rasped. “There’s no iterative growth. They stopped and I kept going and now I’m a river that doesn’t lead to the ocean. There were still so many new experiences to be shared…”

“Like having coffee” Grief said “with your Mom.”

“If I was slack enough to run out of coffee with Mom around” I said “she’d have roasted me alive, Caribbean-Mom style. You know, the kind of teasing where they make fun of you for what’s good about you. And you know what? I’d have deserved it. It’d have been worth it. I will never know the joy of having a sixth degree black belt in sarcasm throw shade that blots out the light of the sun, just so I could do the one thing I never got to do with Mom:

“Fix her a cup of coffee just the way she liked it, and enjoy it with her.”

Grief removed her hand from my neck and rested it upon my heart. “You can choose to let go” she said.

“There’s got to be another way.”

“Oh there is, but you won’t like it” she said, leaning in.

“The other way” Grief said “is acceptance. And I don’t mean that five-stage nonsense, as if I could be contained by anything so linear. When I say acceptance I mean: accept that I am the price you pay for having loved. This is a subscription model and you are allowed to opt out. You can stop loving, or you can choose to pay my toll for as long as you love.”

“If I’m stuck with you” I said “why’d I spend all that time in therapy? Why are you so much…heavier now than before?”

“Oh, that’s easy” Grief chirped “You’ve been under the mistaken impression that healing eases pain. That’s like saying weights get lighter if you exercise. The weight didn’t change; you did.”

"If I got stronger” I asked” shouldn’t you be lighter?"

“You lacked the emotional maturity to deal with all of me back then. So I held back. But look at you now” she said, squeezing my cheeks in condescension.

“When I got here this place was a wreck. Then you went full-on emotional renovation. You knocked down some walls, reinforced some lingering structural issues, even hung some art. Kudos: you deepened your capacity to feel. Now there’s room for me to spread out” Grief said “to seep into cracks and crevices you never knew were there.

“I am the price of love” Grief said, standing in her full glory. “The cost of accepting love that refuses to die.”

“And this? This is the best-case scenario. Because the other option is watching love die. What a gift it is: to grieve someone, not because you grew apart, or couldn’t resolve your differences.

“To grieve someone because love outlasted life, is winning.”

I cursed Grief under my breath, and wrapped my arms around her, sobbing. “Living without her” I conceded “is easier than living without her love.”

Grief gently kissed my forehead. “That’s love as a life or death experience” she said. “Is that too much to ask?”