The Evaluation of Grief

(TW: This blog post mentions death and grief.)

To what extent can one cry until it doesn’t hurt anymore?

At 29 years old, I am not a grief expert. I have felt it. I have seen it. I have heard it. And I can’t say it is one of my favorite states of being, even though I know it is inevitable. But, the past few months, I have been experiencing (and by profession, implicitly evaluating) varying degrees of grief in my life. And since it’s my week to write this blog post, I figured I’d put my findings here.

There’s the grief of losing loved ones who meant the world to you.

There’s the grief of losing loved ones where you question who taught them to love the way they did and why. There’s the grief of seeing your parents get older, knowing one day they will no longer be here to make your favorite meal or tell you about their day. And there’s the grief of getting to know your parents as an adult while mourning who they could have become if life were different.

I think my earliest memory of feeling grief was when Scar murdered Mufasa in The Lion King. I remember feeling sad for Simba as he blamed himself for it throughout the movie. I learned later just how much Disney loves to kill off parents. And I’m not gonna lie; they must be a little sick in the head over there because they do that a lot. And then have us rewatching it decades later because it’s “nostalgic.” We should probably be concerned about that…

In my sophomore year of college, I experienced the back-to-back deaths of two of my grandparents. On my father’s side, my Grandma Minnie Mae White passed away in the summer of 2013. My grandfather on my mother’s side, Ronald Williams Sr., passed away that fall. When my grandfather died, I remember crying as I climbed into the bunk bed of my older brother Josiah, who, coincidentally, lived across the hall from me during my freshman year of college, his senior year. But when my Grandma Minnie died, I remember crying at home, nestled in bed, between the bright yellow walls of my childhood room, recounting our last moments in this life together.

Eleven years later, I find myself in the same bed, in the same room with vibrant yellow walls, with tears bursting through my eyes, grieving the loss of my godmother, Gloria Ann Wright, aka Nana. While the walls and the bed have not changed, the grief feels different. Being a 19-year-old figuring out life and grieving is not the same as being a 29-year-old remote working evaluator obsessed with train travel and her new office chair. My tears are drenched in questions and reflections:

How many tears are enough to prove that I’ve mourned?

How often must I listen to her last voicemail so she knows how much I miss her?

In what ways could I have been more present in her life?

How does it feel to know you touched so many, Nana?

If I’m being honest, this grief has been culminating since 2020. Between mourning the life I thought I was going to live when I graduated in May 2020, grieving the lives lost due to a pandemic, and grieving the lives of Palestinians, Congolese people, and Haitians I see through my phone, I don’t think it stopped. Maybe it’s even been buried inside since my grandmother and grandfather died in 2013.

However, like the project cycle I’m evaluating, grief has no endpoint. It’s a continuous process that can evolve and feel different as we age from 19 to 29. But no matter how prepared you are, there are always more questions you yell into the abyss as to why someone close to you had to leave this life. There is no protocol for handling grief when it hits at the gym or during lunch hour. And there’s no way to prevent feeling grief, it just is and someone has to hold it. Because if you are not grieving, doesn’t that mean you are gone and someone would be grieving you, right? Grieving is a cycle.

As new life is brought into this world, the lives that are here run the risk of being taken away. It is a reminder that none of us are promised another day, so we should savor all the moments we can, which is what I did playing with my 1-year old niece the weekend of my Nana’s homegoing celebration. And while grieving is not the happiest feeling, I’ve learned that it is necessary. Grief reminds me that I’m alive. Grief reminds me of good times and sometimes the bad. Grief reminds me that I can love so deeply that I smile when the tears dry. Not because I’m sad but because my Nana chose to be in my life at the end of the day. She and my mom became best friends and loved me unconditionally as if I were her own.

So, here are my findings:

On the days when I’m sad or feel guilty that I didn’t call Nana more often, or take time to sit and visit her more frequently, here some things I remind myself

⦁ Grief is a natural part of life. It’s hard, yet necessary.

⦁ Grief comes and goes, and some things you may never “get over.”

⦁ Cry that shit out, don’t hold it in.

⦁ Community grieving is healing.

⦁ To grieve deeply is to love deeply.

I’m missing you real bad, Nana. And Grandma Minnie. And Grandad. I hope to continue to make you all proud.