The Longest Stage of Grief

Contains mentions of mental health, death, violence, and other uncomfy things.

It's not often you realize just how much you mean to someone until that someone is no longer with you. And then, once they're gone, your brain strains to figure out who they were. What their life was like when you weren't in it. Before you were in it. What they went through. Who their best friend was. What was the thing they loved cooking the most.

All of those things are left to go unanswered forever. And if you ever do get answers, they will never be straight from the source. What if they had lied to that person? They would never know. You would never know.

That's why I like to pretend that I got the chance to go through my grandma's things. I envision myself picking through all of the stuff she had stored away in her basement. Looking at the jewelry loved, some of it she may have even set aside for me. Peak into her desk to see what she had been working on just the day before.

But that's the thing about tragedy. Not only do you get to lose the person, but you're entire grieving process gets interrupted.

Picture your grandma for me, will you? Her skin is probably wrinkled, but really it's just lines telling you all the places she's smiled. Her hair is probably white or gray or some kind of combination. Maybe she dyes it. But no matter what color it is, it's probably brittle. Her hands are probably soft from years of use—making you snacks, sneaking you treats, wrapping you gifts, wiping your tears, tending to "ouchies." She's likely done some shrinking, too, since you first met her. But that's what grandma's do. They give pieces of themselves until they're a smaller version of who they once were. But still, their love flows strong.

Mine was something like that. Her hair was white and her skin was like silk. She wasn't very good at hiding her emotions. You and everyone else would always know what she was thinking, whether she said it out loud or not. But usually, she said it out loud. She spent every day of her life wearing her heart on her sleeve, and I was no exception to that love.

She was never shy to tell me how much she loved me. How happy she was when I was born. She always called me "her little angel." I was no angel. Not really. But my mom announced her pregnancy shortly after her dad died. She didn't talk about him much, but I know they were close. I know they worked together until the day he couldn't anymore. I know she was proud of him for all he'd accomplished and his time spent serving in World War II in the Navy. I know that he loved my great-grandma, and I know that she leaned into him for comfort. And I know that her heart broke when his brain tumor took him prematurely.

I know that she had felt lost in grief. And when she heard she was having her first grandchild, it was like God had called to her and said, "In exchange for the angel that I took, here's a little cherub to fill the hole he left in your heart." I don't know that many grandchildren can say that when talking about their grandmas. But I get to. It drove my uncle crazy.

She had a hard time getting rid of the things that she collected. Even the things she did "throw out" simply moved from her home to a shed marked "get rid of."

My grandpa had done a great job clearing out all of his old junkyard cars from the back lot, though. Anything worth keeping found its way safe and sound into a garage where he could work on them in all of his retiree freedom.

Another thing that I knew was that she and my grandpa had started their own printing company. It wasn't anything fancy, but to a five year old, it was like a portal had torn open in the space-time continuum and brought me to a print shop that smelled like well-oiled machinery and paper. There was lots and lots of paper. I lived in that little place. It was another shed on their property, but they had converted it into a business. That was totally wild to me. I hadn't known any other business owners.

And it was those two sheds that we got to sift through after they died. Those and the debris that was left scattered over all five acres of their property.

It started out as any other Thursday, at least I think it was a Thursday. My babies were playing, and I was trying to get some cleaning done before I had to work later that night. It was nearing the end of summer, and the golden sunlight was pouring in through open windows. It wasn't windy. I would have taken my kids out to play later. I remember standing in our living room when my mom called. That was nothing new. My mom has never, and probably will never, call me on a schedule.

I remember answering the phone and I remember the frantic way she said my name. That was the first thing she had said when I answered the phone. My name. As if to confirm that at least I was still here. At least she still had a daughter. Because she no longer had a dad. And she wasn't sure if she still had a mom yet.

"There was an explosion."

Those were her next words. What kind of explosion? She wasn't sure. She lived about five hours south of her parent's house, so the police officer who contacted the next of kin had to call.

He didn't give many details other than there was an explosion, your dad died on impact, your mom is being rushed to a hospital for emergency care; here's the name of where they're taking her.

I'm sure that wasn't an easy call for him. It was a small town and they had lived in their entire lives. Hell, their parents had lived it in their entire lives. It was unlikely that the officer who called my mom didn't know who my grandparents were. And he had to have been at the scene. He had to have been the one called in.

They lived a mile out of town. But residents miles inward say they felt the earth quake at around 6:30 AM.

By 10:30 in the morning, the internet had more information than I did. I scrolled through every deficient article a few news outlets had posted. Gotta get on that story while it's fresh.

I read them over and over again, refreshing Google waiting for one of them to tell me something new—something about what had happened. But the picture someone had snuck didn't look good. That had kept my mind preoccupied for a while, at least.

I don't remember much of what happened after that phone call but the events that I do are etched into my memory. But I can't quite remember the order in which they happened. I know I went to their house—property, now.

I remember someone saying, "Just prepare yourself. It's going to be pretty shocking."

And I remember learning that there was no way to prepare yourself for something shocking.

The way their home was now everywhere. Wood splintered out of their foundation like the explosion was stuck happening in slow motion. The garage roof had blown off in one big chunk and landed back down again on top of their cars. Shingles and wires and clothes decorated the trees. There wasn't a safe place to walk. I'd inched around everything. Trying to take it all in, remember it. I know that I had wanted to remember it. The air was light and breezy, the sun was shining.

I remember looking out for nails. I think I had been wearing flip-flops. That was a silly choice of shoe. I don't recommend wearing flip-flops to an explosion site if you ever have to go to one.

I know I went to my parent's hotel room at some point. I think that happened before everything else because I remember looking at my mom for the first time and how her face had lit up in grim welcome—a mix of happy to see us, shock, and total obliteration.

I know someone else had told me to prepare myself before I visited my grandma in the hospital. "It'll be a bit of a shock."

And I remember that, again, no amount of warning prepared me for how she looked in her hospital bed.

I know she was stabilized and in a medically induced coma. I remember the way her body fought to wake up while I talked to her. The way her eyelids fluttered and her body jerked around and her fingers twitched. I remember how much of her body was covered in gauze.

Sometime after everything had happened, I found out what had really happened when my grandma woke up that early morning in September. She got out of bed. She probably put on her slippers because she had to go to the basement. The floor was concrete. Just because it was summer didn't mean the floor would be warm. She shuffled down the hall to the laundry room. She opened the dryer door. And that was that. The little light that clicked on in the drier ignited ten hour's worth of a gas leak, just like that. Because of how it had seeped into their home, it had no smell.

Even years later, I sometimes wonder if the air had at least felt heavy. It had to have felt heavy.

My grandpa was still been in their bed. My grandma had been thrown against the wall. He had been thrown with everything else. Even though she took the brunt of the impact, she had been contained.

She'd called me the weekend prior. We had talked about something. But I think the conversation mostly consisted of my two-year-old running around with the phone. She liked to stuff it places and play "hide-and-seek" with whatever pour sap she had stuck on FaceTime. But my grandma loved it anyway.

In the year before, I had lost my great-grandma to old age and my grandpa to cancer. 18 months later, I was down to my last grandparent. I had entered twenty-three with five and, before I even turned twenty-five, had been robbed of all but one.

My only grandma. She's old and kind and cute and shrinking like grandma's should do. Even in her eighties, even without my grandpa, she's still a world traveler.

It was about five days after the accident my grandma finally passed. My grandpa was already in the ground. I went through the first three stages in those five days.

Even though her body was sixty-five percent covered in burns and didn't have very good odds of pulling through, I let myself imagine how I would visit her every weekend throughout her recovery.

Even when the infection from all of the debris that they had to take out of her body in intervals so as to not cause too much stress to her body, I was angry that my mom and my uncle decided to call it. They hadn't even given her a chance. Not really. They had spent the entire conference call talking about how sad she'd been since her mom died. How she wouldn't be able to go on without my grandpa.

And then I bargained. I cried to a God who was already preparing to take her to please, please let her get through. She was a fighter. She wasn't that old. There was still so much she wanted to do and see and experience. I knew all of those things, and it wasn't fair that he was taking her before she got to do them.

When her mom died, she looked around and said, "I wish someone didn't have to die for everyone to get together like this." She loved it when everyone was together, even if she was stressed out the entire time.

It took a funeral for all of us to get together again, but her and my grandpa's services were full. Even though all of those people had come to one. Gone home. They still turned right around five days later to go to the other. It was obvious how full their lives had been.

The hardest part was the lack of closure. We didn't get to watch them leave, knowing they had been ready to go. Their stuff had been scattered miles out from where they had originally been kept. And there was no chance to go through their memories. Laugh, cry, tell stories. We were cheated out of all of it.

Depression manifests in many different ways. And it comes in waves when you're grieving. Anger, hopelessness, dread, existentialism, anxiety, mania, and everything else in between. It's like having a tick on your back. It's easy to miss until it's finally gorged itself to death and falls off.

Everything came to a culmination about three years later. After a long time, I was in a where I could no longer neglect everything that I had been through since that summer. Even before it, too. I had, at last, found my absolute lowest. Life was exhausting. My spirit was tired.

But the best thing about hitting rock bottom is that there's no place to go but up.