Grief and joy.

January was an odd month, with worry, grief, and joy intertwined. I have written about how I want to stop waiting for sadness to go away before I taste joy. It doesn’t make any sense, like waiting to lose weight before you let yourself feel beautiful, or waiting till all the work is done before you lie on the grass and rest.

I remind myself there is no need to postpone joy. I can spend it now, every day, and wait for my hands to be filled again.

In January, my father was in the hospital, two of my sons celebrated birthdays, and my last living grandparents died within a week of one another. My dad is out of the hospital now and well again. Leafy is fifteen years old and wonderful. Isaac is eight, leading me farther away from being the mom of young kids. And my Grandma Mary (on my mom’s side) and my Grandpa (on my dad’s side) have passed away and out of my life.

I have been very sad, and at the same time, hosting birthday parties. Lots of things are like that these days. Worrying for friends across the world, and feeling so much love for people close to me. These things exist together, like grief for two grandparents who I knew in different ways with different meanings. These things cannot possibly feel the same, and they don’t cancel each other out.

The joy is in their long kind-hearted lives. The loss is in their presence. The joy is in the way they both lived out of love. The grief is death in a pandemic— when they were often alone. The grief is in the way I can only send hugs to my parents, rather than hugging them in person.

My Grandma Mary was kind and bright, sort of an anchor in life. She wrote letters and we had tea at her house the last time we were there. I remember her kind practical Canadian grandmotherliness. I sat in her kitchen on that last visit, looking at the old phone number list on her fridge. So many people to call and check on. 

My Grandpa was a big part of my life. We lived close to him and my grandmother for many years, and I grew up in and out of their house, playing games, going camping, working in their fabric store with my sister. Scents that remind me of those days can send me back to the feeling of being cherished and cared for. 

Grandpa loved us. He loved Chinua and he loved our kids. This is something I am realizing about my grandparents and my parents, about Chinua’s grandparents and parents. We come from a lot of love. We have good, good people in our lineage. The last time we were at his apartment, we pored over the photographs on the walls in his hallways, looking at similarities and differences between all of our faces, talking about the different loved ones. He lived a life of love and forgiveness. He had a lot of grief in his life. And a lot of joy. 

I felt like one of his joys. 

Maybe that is something about the way grief and joy are mixed. We are one another’s joys. I felt like a delight to my grandpa. I can remember the way his eyes lit up if I said something funny. He had a great sense of humor and his whole face seemed to open. And my sons are my joys. When they say something funny, maybe I look like that, like my whole face is opening in joy. 

I loved them. I will miss them. Something feels like it is gone forever. And their love and joy live on.

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