I freeze when I grieve. Suddenly the whole world stops, and every ounce of energy goes out of my system. Grief has its way of consuming me in bits. I can still control it but when it hits, it is a gut punch —so hard, I just fold into the ground coughing up blood. It becomes this slippery slope of hauling all the past objects of grief in the surfaces and compounding into one massive punch.
Our last standing family budgie died this week, and I remember how stressful a budgie dying is for me. Each of them dying, I’m the first one to see and it’s always a stressful situation. I always freeze. It’s a little traumatic for me because the first time I was in that situation, I couldn't call anyone about it. I left a voice note on my own phone trying to console myself and figure out what to do. On Thursday, the house was quiet, no chirps to welcome anyone the moment they came home from work.
I had my first grief rodeo when my grandfather died in the middle of the pandemic. I felt betrayed by life for the first time, utterly shocked with how a lack of someone's presence can haunt you at that moment and for the rest of your life. For us, it wasn't a death we expected because yesterday he was just doing his normal routine —get up at seven in the morning, sweep the front of his store, make coffee, grumpily sell someone a few cigarettes and sodas, eat whatever Nanaymade or whatever Tito bought at the karinderia by the corner of Kalayaan, look for something to fix in the house, turn on the karaoke for a bit of Engelbert, then cap the night with old couple bickering. Yet suddenly, he was in bed for a month. I was alone and trying to survive my third year in university and I refused to hold him because I wanted to pass my midterms. It was hard to move around during pandemic, so my good bye with him ended with him complimenting my humor and my beauty, Nene, I love you apo ko —all in a videocall.
In those moments of grief, I was frozen. I knew what I had to do. I’ve let out a few scream and buckets of tears, and I travelled home. I knew I am my grandmother’s rock, prepared or not. If she wants to see his cold body, I would need to see it and face the reality too. If I hear her wail fill every corner of the room, I need to hold her hand and let it be.
The funeral was filled with the smell of instant coffee, wailing here and there, old friends of my Aunties and godparents I’ve never seen until that day, younger cousins asking me to write their excuse letters of missing classes, arrogant and annoying distant relatives, and all-nighters —my soul wasn't there.
I remember being a little sick and my aunt Amy was caressing my back and told me to take a break. I went to my grandparent’s house and popped a paracetamol. I have to rearrange some flowers. For the first time in months, I stepped foot on his store, looking for the same old 15 year old scissors, and not finding it anywhere. Not until I asked him for it out loud, as if he was still there, and magically my eyes caught it instantly. He gave me anything I asked, when I was addicted to Mountain Dew at 10, when I was living in dormitories —my Yakult supply never ended, when I had a photography phase at 18 —all his Yashicas were passed on to me.
That was the same scissors he must've used to cut sachets of Sunsilks. I used that to cut the thorns away of the white roses I placed near that altar. That was a temporary moment of feeling like I’m present —everything else was a blur, the eulogies, the dirt, the balloons, the last bits of goodbyes. My soul felt frozen again.
The thing about being the favorite grandchild and being an immigrant’s only daughter —you are your own rock. Same responsibilities as an eldest daughter, just no siblings to grow up and relate with. You build your own world, and you rely on yourself, you talk to yourself, you process with yourself. So for me, grief is bits and pieces of resentments, regrets, and anger, and love that I’m too frustrated to put anywhere. In my first rodeo, I had to push it all down to survive. Eventually, I did burst —that’s when I was pills deep.
Once you experience grief for the first time, it becomes an impending doom that simply never goes away. It comes at you on your happiest days, because you wish you can be with them to share it with. No matter how simple it may be, a sunrise, a cold beer, a joke, a fresh fruit —you miss them, and you wish you can see their face enjoy it. Grief is when the lack of their presence becomes too loud to bear, but eventually you heal and you live. It will still hurt but it becomes manageable.
The second time I grieved was when I lost someone I thought I was, and the person she was with. I outgrew her dreams, and I outgrew him. It took me months before I can eat. There was a hole in my heart that did hurt physically, it felt like a squeeze in my heart, and it was so tight that I could no longer breathe. I religiously prayed to God for the day I wouldn't wake up that way. As months go by, the pain was the same but it became bearable. Eventually the day I prayed for came.
Despite of all the pain the word grief carries — it teaches you so much about love. It teaches you how to give and receive it. If anything, it teaches you to be generous about love and how it’s not a pie that can be divided into portions and limited to. The limit only is bounded by our fear of rejection, of not being reciprocated, of losing them completely. But it’s not an object, it’s energy. It’s not going to be obsolete, it’s just transformed into another form and that form persists. It persists beyond that feeling of betrayal and denial.
Grief is not merely the experience of pain, but it's the life at the end of the tunnel —"They need to proclaim not merely the loss, but the love, the continuity”
"It is an act of resistance and refusal: grief telling you it is over and your heart saying it is not; grief trying to shrink your love to the past and your heart saying it is present.” — Notes On Grief, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
As love persists, I am here having a box of pizza every 3rd of June.