The disturbance of loss without a story

The disturbance of loss without a story

There is often sadness, only sadness, hidden sorrow, old unrecognized unresolved grief. Why did I learn that I couldn't mourn? And what is unresolved here? I'm thinking about grief no one owns, inherited grief, grief without connected meaningful objects, unresolvable except maybe through exorcism-like ceremonies … loss without a story.

She was interior, tears wet on her cheeks. I reached out my arms to comfort and be held. She patted me with a hug and turned away. Her father had just died and I was two. My two grandmothers died and my dog ran away, all in those early years, and I learned boundaries on grief.  We had moved to new space: I had lost the familiar.  Before I was ten the father across the street and the father next door died. I watched how uneasy my parents were with the wives' grief.  My mother's sister moved from the room next door across the country, I skipped a grade and lost a friend.  And this was during World War II. There was whispering at the news and a blue fund-raising tin on the kitchen shelf and assimilation and Josh Liebmann died. Phyllis' father died and I went to the shiva and didn't know what to say or how to be. Richard died and his mother's grief scared those around her and I couldn't cry because Marshall didn't cry . The toy man died shoveling, our age, I could only write a note. Bess died and Marshall didn't cry and I couldn't cry because Marshall didn't cry and when at the service he plucked a daisy from her coffin, I cried and sobbed and got locked up again.

 

After, alone, I used to cry every day in Los Angeles watching the children like mine, not mine, leave school and after Al died I was in Los Angeles with Victoria and couldn't stop crying. And with Vickie there I turned a somersault and cried and cried. Then I put my face underwater in the tub and opened my eyes.

The new baby loses the womb, the dying elder loses even breath, and in between is always change, each difference a loss and a gain. I learn the disturbance of not having.