The first thing I did when I learned that my father had died was hyperventilate. It wasn’t a chosen action, it was simply a thing my body did. This is the incredible power of language - five words is all it took for my body to lose the rhythm of life. “There’s nothing more we can do.” Before I grieved, my body did. And it did it quickly, with these quick and violent waves of air. One gasp, then another, then another, each carrying another no to shore. No, not this morning. No, not this death. No, not this world. No, not my dad. No. No. No.
My brother had to walk across the room and put his arms around me and physically teach me how to breathe again. Five words and my body forgot how to breathe. I didn’t know it then but this is the rhythm of grief. It is carried through your body on your breath, it comes in waves, and it has a rhythm that you sometimes cannot control.
That was the first wave. At first they came like tsunamis. They burst through the windows and soaked the furniture. They ruined the rugs and pulled all the art off the walls. Then they would get pulled back out to sea and I would be left drenched, gasping, and clinging, too tired to start over. It was terrifying and all consuming and it was so destructive that I stopped being able to see a future for myself. I was too busy trying to remember how to breathe and getting the house ready for the next surge.
It’s been eighteen years and they are still coming. They always will.
What I need you to know is that these waves will not always be tsunamis. They start out like that, but they get so much gentler. And they are not just destructive, they are also generative. Each time they come, they bring something with them - some pang, some memory, an ache, a beauty, a gratitude. You will learn to see them as visitations instead of disruptions. Your job is simply to hold on.
Two weeks after my Dad died, I came back to my little studio apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I opened the door expecting to feel comfort at finally being home and instead was knocked over with the awareness that my Dad had helped place every single piece of furniture I could see and would never help me set up another home again. I fell to my knees and gripped the soft looped rug we had picked out for the kitchen. Wave. This wave brings a realization: what a gift to have a father that cared so much that he helped you try out every single possible arrangement of furniture until it felt just right.
Six months after my Dad died, I was home visiting my mom on a weekday and six o’clock rolled around. And then six-fifteen. Then six-thirty. Time just kept marching and with every single tick of the clock another grief wave swept through because in all of my twenty-five years on this earth, my Dad walked in the kitchen door sometime between six and six-thirty but now I was twenty-five and it was six-thirty and he was never going to come home again. Wave. This wave brings a memory: when I was little, my brothers and I would line up in the hall and run through the kitchen yelling “superhug!” and leap into my Dad’s arms as soon as he got home from work.
The first Christmas after both parents were gone, I woke up and paced. Twenty-six and in a new city, alone in my house with no plans and feeling like I might not survive this anniversary of my Dad’s death, I sat down at my dining room table and cracked open Emerson’s journals. I needed distraction and company, and Emerson knew loss. I flipped to January, 1842. Two days after the death of his son Waldo, Emerson writes, “he gave up his innocent breath like a bird.” The paper that I wrote on that loss was the last thing my Dad would ever read. Wave. This wave brings a sharp pang with it: I wish I could sit in the car one more time and talk to my Dad about something I was writing.
Every single summer when the days get a little longer and the air gets a little softer, I am hit by a thousand tiny waves that carry memories with them: We are sitting on the lawn at Tanglewood, eating ice cream cones. We are driving to the pool in the station wagon, thighs sticking to the vinyl seats. We are riding bikes to Lil’ Peach for purple soda and cheetos. We are sitting on the side steps off the kitchen eating italian ice because Mom hates the sound of the spoon scraping against the ice Dad is standing in the garage and it’s pouring. He’s pulled the grill inside the garage just enough to be covered and he’s grilling fish and laughing like he’s getting away with something.
These waves don’t take me out anymore. They lap at my feet like the cool clear water of the Pacific Ocean on a relentlessly sunny day. Sometimes they carry memories. Other times wishes or fears or regrets. And I am grateful every time.
If you’re in tsunami season, I want you to know that you’re not alone. I know those waves too, and I know just what they do.
Our job is simply to hold on.
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You’ll be able to share your love for your lost loved one there.