Such a dirty, filthy word...GRIEF!
I am no expert but by life's infinite graces I am quite familiar with grief and the variety of coping mechanisms that come along with it. Welcome to my Ted Talk. Ok, serious face. I have been on this planet for a little over 33 years and in that time frame I have lost not one, but both parents and most recently and easily most gut wrenching my little sister Devin. If you are uncomfortable with dark humor and the concept of complete black hole sadness, I'd say turn around right now but really you should stay. Because these two things are eventually unavoidable. So buckle up babies!
Dad: 15 years old, stubborn, insecure, massive chip on the shoulder
Losing my dad was tough, for many reasons. He was the first. Uncharted territory. How does one go about living in a world where one minute you had two parents and the next you're down to one? Well more like half of one. Mom wasn't doing so swell back in 2001. She had a lot of demons (too many to go into in the post but trust me we'll get there one day). So now, I am the oldest sibling of a one parent household. Dad was the navigator, he was the one who knew the next step. I think this was the first time I felt completely and utterly helpless. I remember I was having a good day on September 27, 2001. My friend Brett and I went to the mall, I'm pretty sure I bought a purse from American Eagle. Back at home, sprawled out on my bed attempting to start some homework, the phone rang. It was my Dad's mom. You ever know something is wrong before given any actual reasoning? That's happened to me twice in my life. Once, 3 years earlier and this day. I knew he was gone. My grandma Alice asked to speak to my other grandma Carol (whom we lived with). She said nothing other than "Hi sweetie, can I talk to grandma Carol?" Thinking back on it there was no real shift in her tone of voice, maybe subtly but not enough to send red flags waving around in my mind. When it was finally said out loud that he was gone, I embraced the laminate flooring beneath me. An ungodly wail escaped my mouth. I became one with my siblings as a ball of overwhelming grief. A son without his idol, two daughters who wondered who would walk them down the aisle now? With that quick call the life that we had known was gone. He was gone.
Mom: 25 years old, still stubborn, still insecure, working on that chip, in a super unhealthy relationship
We use to joke about how it would come down to the apocalypse and all that would remain would be the cockroaches, Twinkies and my mama. She had done so much damage to herself in her short lifetime that it was baffling how she made it as long as she did. But despite all of that it was still absolutely shocking when she really died. I was living 900 miles away from my family in Myrtle Beach when I got the call from my sister. My knees gave out, my ears starting to ring. I now have no parents. How does that happen? How do some people have both and I get none? Selfish, irrational thoughts like that one would soon consume my mind. In chaos we booked a flight back to New York but it wasn't for 24 hours. We can drive there quicker than that. We ended up using the credit for the flight back for the official goodbye a few weeks later. Guilt. Crippling, soul crushing, guilt. Could I have changed the outcome by being kinder to her? Were my siblings right? My tough love approach was falling on deaf ears? I didn't tell her I loved her the last time I saw her. In fact, I'm pretty sure I just scoffed at her. A month earlier we celebrated Christmas. In the week I was back home she never emerged from her room. Or if she did, I wasn't around to see it. I hugged my siblings, cracked some jokes and packed up the car to escape back down to the warmth. Halfway down the block, "SUSIE", my most prized possession was back in my childhood room, we turned around. And there she was, making her way down the stairs like the living dead. Ghostly pale, disheveled, with the saddest eyes I've ever known. A common site, unfortunately. No words were exchanged. A sarcastic breathe of air was my greeting. I will have to live with this. Realistically, I think my mom knew how much I loved her. She had to. I spent the better part of 15 years begging her to come back to us. If that didn't scream love, what did? Maybe actually telling her "I love you"? I do Mom. More than words were ever able to express in your lifetime. I hope I am like you when I have kids of my own. Seriously! Minus the obvious issues, I would be disgustingly lucky to be a fraction of the mother you were. I wish you knew.
Devin: 29 years old, not so stubborn, still insecure, chip is long gone, freshly laid off
...I don't want to write about this. I've never had a problem sharing my grief about my parents but Devin is different. Its still so new. Its never been believable to me. Plus to be actually honest about this one I would have to divulged some things that I would rather keep close to the chest. Because Devin doesn't deserve to be remember any other way than as the wildly funny, intimidatingly gorgeous, absolute lunatic that she was. All you need to know is that my little sister died 5 days after her 28th birthday. I was the last one to see her. She was wearing a "Finding Gerald" shirt (i.e. Finding Dory) and the last thing I said to her, as I touched her back, was "I love you Dev". This grief. This is the monster you hear about. The one that takes down others. The one that is so easy to get lost in. The one that makes you wonder if you should follow and leave too. When I think about her not being here my initial reaction is sadness, obviously. But that is shortly followed by a cocktail of guilt, anger, resentment, self loathing, loathing in general, bafflement, you name it. And its that cocktail that gets stuck as a lump in my throat. I can't swallow it. I can't allow myself to move past those feelings. I can shake off the sadness but not these. I am conditioned to sadness. These were new. I would, and I mean this with every single inch of me, trade places with her if I could. The world deserves Devin but more importantly Devin deserved the world.
When my Dad died I coped like most teenagers would. I hated my mom, my littlest brother was the bane of my existence, I discovered self harm (eventually to be replace with the more socially acceptable tattoos and piercings) and I fell in love with a boy. With Mom, as I was older and "wiser" I coped with booze and drugs and sex. The holy trinity! After Devin, I ate. A lot. I went from a squishy size 12 to a robust size 20. My interest in guys was minimal, I assume a side effect of my new padding. I like to think that I have covered the spread on ways to cope after losing a loved one. But the reality is I could have done so much more damage if wanted to. I could have become #4 on the Sheppard Family Tree of Death. Which, I have dibs on by the way. I refuse to outlive anyone else! Call me selfish but I am done losing people. I am feverishly knocking on all wood surfaces right now. I think another one would break me. And for good. I often wonder how it hasn't already. Am I stronger than I think I am? Or in a weird way does my inability to follow through with things also effect this aspect of my life? ← If you are curious what dark humor looks like, this would be a prime example. In other words, I am not suicidal, just super fucked up!
People have asked me how I do it, I assume they mean live with so many people absent. The only thing I have to say to that is, Quinn. The littlest of the Sheppard's, a full grown adult man now, but forever my chicken nugget. You think its been rough for me? Quinn was 5 when Dad died, 15 when Mom left and 19 when he lost his best friend. All of that before he could remove the "teen" from his age. If he can keep his head up and walk this earth without a massive grudge then fuck it so can I! This is a constant theme in our lives, perspective. No matter how bad its been, it could always be worse. The hardest day of our lives could be a cakewalk for someone else. This doesn't mean we're not entitled to grieve the way that we do but it also doesn't excuse us for being bad people. I refuse to let the loss of my family members allow me to treat others in a negative fashion.
I will probably come back to this topic time and time again but for now this is it.
