The messy truth about grief Nora McInerny
2014 was a big year for me.
Do you ever have that, just like a big year,
like a banner year?
For me, it went like this: October 3, I lost
my second pregnancy.
And then October 8, my dad died of cancer.
And then on November 25, my husband Aaron
died after three years with stage-four glioblastoma,
which is just a fancy word for brain cancer.
So, I’m fun.
Now, since 2014, I will tell you I have remarried
a very handsome man named Matthew, we have
four children in our blended family, we live
in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota,
USA.
We have a rescue dog.
I drive a minivan, like the kind where doors
open and I don’t even touch them.
By any measure, life is really, really good,
but I haven’t “moved on.”
I haven’t moved on, and I hate that phrase
so much, and I understand why other people
do.
Because what it says is that Aaron’s life
and death and love are just moments that I
can leave behind me – and that I probably
should.
And when I talk about Aaron, I slip so easily
into the present tense, and I’ve always thought
that made we weird.
And then I noticed that everybody does it.
And it’s not because we are in denial or because
we’re forgetful, it’s because the people we
love, who we’ve lost, are still so present
for us.
So, when I say, “Oh, Aaron is…” it’s because
Aaron still is.
He’s present for me in the work that I do,
in the child that we had together, in these
three other children I’m raising, who never
met him, who share none of his DNA, but who
are only in my life because I had Aaron and
because I lost Aaron.
He’s present in my marriage to Matthew, because
Aaron’s life and love and death made me the
person that Matthew wanted to marry.
So I’ve not moved on from Aaron, I’ve moved
forward with him.
These are the experiences that mark us and
make us just as much as the joyful ones, and
just as permanently—long after you get your
last sympathy card or your last hot dish.
Like, we don’t look at the people around us
experiencing life’s joys and wonders and tell
them to “move on,” do we?
We don’t send a card that’s like, “Congratulations
on your beautiful baby,” and then, five years
later, think like, “Another birthday party?
Get over it.”
But grief is kind of one of those things,
like falling in love or having a baby or watching
“The Wire” on HBO, where you don’t get it
until you get it, until you do it.
And once you do it, once it’s your love or
your baby, once it’s your grief and your front
row at the funeral, you get it.
You understand what you’re experiencing is
not a moment in time, it’s not a bone that
will reset, but that you’ve been touched by
something chronic.
Something incurable.
It’s not fatal, but sometimes grief feels
like it could be.
And if we can’t prevent it in one another,
what can we do?
We need each other to remember, to help each
other remember, that grief is this multitasking
emotion.
That you can and will be sad, and happy; you’ll
be grieving, and able to love in the same
year or week, the same breath.
We need to remember that a grieving person
is going to laugh again and smile again.
If they’re lucky, they’ll even find love again.
But yes, absolutely, they’re going to move
forward.
But that doesn’t mean that they’ve moved on.