If the Shoe Fits

Photo credit: Robsalot (that's me!)

 It's been a while since I had to do this, but also not nearly long enough. Do I still remember how to do this? Did I ever really know how to do this?

The first time it happened I was 10. It was a beautiful sunny Sunday morning; I was reading the comics section of the newspaper in my parents bed when the phone call came in. A dark cloud descended over the morning. My cousin’s wife, complications from childbirth. When my parents told me I felt the panic wash over me, what should I say, what should I do, what happens now? I had no idea how to be with this information.

The second time it happened I was 18, well, 19, well, it was my birthday. Another phone call. My grandfather. And those feelings descended again. Am I doing this right? What is my role in all of this? What do I do now?

The third time was my mother-in-law. A steady decline over two years, and yet when that phone call came at 6 in the morning. The grief set in immediately, and also that same old uncertainty. Was I doing this right? Is this what is expected of me? Am I letting everyone else down? Am I totally fucking this up?

Last week I was riding my bike along the shoreline of Alameda. Summer was well over and the sun was rising later and later, the sky was just starting to pink at the horizon, as I was rounding the little bend around the park on the Bayfarm shoreline, when my phone began to ring. It was my mom. I knew what it was immediately. My grandmother was 94 and had been dealing with lung cancer for the past couple of years, but in the last week she had started to decline.

I sat there for a moment, watching the oily reflection of the stars in the sky on the lapping waters of the brightening bay, and then I pressed accept on the phone call from my mother.

My grandmother had passed away at 3:43 am.

I don’t remember what I said to my mom.

And then I was riding away, all by myself again. Well, me and my thoughts and the misty morning air, and the shore birds just starting to wake in the breaking dawn. And I realized, it didn’t matter that I didn’t know what I should do or how I should feel or what I should be in this moment, because this was death. And as I started to feel my throat close from the emotions seeping in, I pulled my bike over and sat on a little wooden bench and watched the sun creep over the horizon, and I slipped into the grief like an old shoe that I was finally understanding how to wear.