without introduction
i'm dancing with grief this week.
at end of april, my aunt died suddenly and unexpectedly. she was my father's sister and a fixture in my life.
she’d been in treatment for a blood cancer, but rarely talked about herself or her health. the family knew what was coming, but not when. we weren’t prepared for the lightning strike of infection and its quick takedown.
at the funeral, her loved ones embraced the graveside mic to pay tribute.
“she was like a second mother when my own mother died.”
“she drove an hour at night when i was in the hospital to bring me my pillow and pajamas from home.”
“she was the glue that held the family together.”
when it was time to shovel earth into her grave, i watched one scoop of dirt after another plop onto the gleaming white casket. and i ugly cried.
i kept thinking, she’s inside there right now.
proximity is emotionally misleading like that. her body was so near. surely if we could retrieve her from the swallowing hole in the ground, we could go back to living and loving the way we always had. once she was under all that earth, out of reach in the quiet darkness, her life with us would truly, finally, be over.
i tried to will my contorted face back to its usual shape, recalling how it had betrayed me in this exact way almost thirty years ago when we'd buried my dad. eventually, when i stepped away from the grave, it complied.
i hadn't intended grief to be the starting point for this newsletter. but it fits. grief plays a starring role in my origin story as an adoptee, and will inevitably be a recurring theme here if you keep reading. it's an essential thread in the fabric of life. a universal part of the human experience that can draw us closer together, if we allow it to.
so this is where we begin.
i'll end with my aunt's last words to me, sent a few days before her death.
goodbye. goodbye.
dear one, goodbye.
💔