On Gratitude and Grief

Grief has been a new friend with a heavy shadow. There have been so many good, beautiful, wonderful things that have happened over the past three years, over the past three months, but I feel like I see it all in sepia, with gaps and creases and crumbling edges.

For a while, the ritual of fulfilling responsibilities was a welcome steroid, numbing the grief enough to keep moving forward - work, classes, setting up our new home, getting through a litany of previously committed performances, tending to sick babies and relentless piles of laundry. On some days, there is even enough energy to make plans - new choreographies, songs I want to explore, stories I want to tell, that elusive next season of the podcast.

But lately, the steroids of mourning rituals and keeping it together have tapered off and I’m just so, very tired. And it’s not just Tatayya passing away. It’s revisiting old memories and finding them all in shades of fragile yellow, crumbling at the edges at my touch. It’s making new memories and being unable to change the filter.

Two years ago, we sold our first home and purchased a beautiful piece of land. While this land was slowly worked and reshaped into our new home, we moved in with my grandparents, living upstairs. I hadn’t been so close to my grandfather in years, physically, and it was joyful. I hadn’t been so far from him in years, emotionally, and it was heartbreaking. But they welcomed us. I cringed at every tiny human tantrum that disturbed their peace, plastered on a strained smile as I talked over strains of his music classes that seeped into my Zoom meetings, huffed at every construction delay that kept us all under the same roof while knowing with every fiber of my being that this was a gift - the universe was insisting we spent this time together because all good things must come to an end. Anticipatory grief, Anderson Cooper’s podcast supplied as a helpful label.

We moved into our new home, airy and spacious and filled with light the Friday after Labor Day. Two days later, he was gone. This is the first place I’ve lived in as an adult that he’ll never see, and I have to dance, sing, write - all the things I trace back to him in various ways - without him. While I’ll never see him slowly making his way up my front steps and into my living room, I’ve been able to welcome dear friends and give them a place to share a meal and dance and spend the night, even while surrounded by boxes and eating meals on the floor while we awaited our dining table.

I feel happy in this home, see it as another step toward the future I want to build. But I wish I could enjoy it in its vivid colors, the blue skies and warm red brick and soft yellow walls and cool gray tiles, fully take in the laughter of children running through its halls and meals shared with loved ones cooked in a spacious kitchen. But for now, sepia is what my eyes can handle.

“We can do hard things,” I wrote on January 1st. I didn’t realize I was challenging the universe, because this year has been so, so, so hard. For the handful of things from this year I’m okay talking about, writing about, revisiting in the halls of memory, there are so many more incidents painfully etched into the crevices of my mind that have left my soul with flagellated skin and raw nerve endings that just won’t heal.

But at least, they weren’t in this home? Hopefully I can keep such heartbreak and hurt away from this home? I know I cannot, not permanently but… at least, for now, it’s been a haven. And, at least, nature has shown us that wildfires allow for fresh growth and renewal. And, I know I cannot continue holding onto relationships where it’s the blade edge of a knife that’s being offered.

I’ve tried my best to stay cocooned away from the larger world, but enough has slipped in from under the front door to know that there are so, so, so many people hurting this season. I know how fortunate I am that I’ve been allowed to grieve, allowed the stability of family and home and work. There isn’t war and starvation and violence ripping through my home. But, it’s still hard. It’s hard and it’s beautiful and it’s inescapable - the sun keeps rising and setting and the rest of our hearts keep beating and memories keep being captured, even if the filter isn’t quite right and the ache won’t quite go away.

I don’t know that things will get easier. I don’t know what the right combination of variables is to kick my ass back in gear and get me functional again. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get back to my usual manic ways - or at least a more sustainable version of them. I hope I can find it in me to create and dance and share and express again, sooner rather than later.

But, I’m still grateful, so grateful for this year - the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between, the masterclass in grieving and grace under pressure and what truly makes family. I’m grateful for the person who told me not “I don’t know how you’re going through everything” but “those are some strong shoulders you’ve got.” I’m grateful for being allowed to run straight into the wildfire and I’m grateful for being allowed to bury myself in bed and hide from the weight of the world. I’m especially grateful for the Divine’s Mother’s grace, which has been the one thing pulling, pulling, pulling me through the smog and the heat and the heartbreak.