Head Trauma

There are dozens of things I should be doing at the moment—studying German, a Family History assignment, cleaning my room and doing laundry—but I’m so sad and so distracted, and all I want is to fly at you and cling to you and make you tell me it’s okay and smooth my hair. I miss you, especially now, especially during the times that are hardest to bear.

My first reaction in these situations is to recoil, to shut up and keep to myself and not say a word, not because I don’t want to tell people or allow others to sympathize but because I don’t know how to say it. I don’t know how to be eloquent and meaningful with my words in these cases. I feel awkward and stupid, like everything that comes out is some form of word vomit, desperate for sentiment but completely lacking.


When my grandmother died last year, I think the number of people I physically told is so few, I could count them on one hand. My friend Justin was visiting from Seattle. He kept text messaging and calling me the day she died. I didn’t have the heart to pick up the phone, nor the words to express my pain, so I basically ignored him. I wrote him back at one point in the afternoon to tell him, My grandma is really sick and things are crazy with my family. I’ll keep in touch. She had been dead six-and-a-half hours by then, and I didn’t keep in touch.

It’s not that I didn’t expect him to be sympathetic. He would have been very kind about the whole thing, and was kind, in fact, under the impression she hadn’t passed yet. He was genuine, though I was deceiving him in my crazy, personal defense mechanism. It was almost like I couldn’t tell him the truth without having the words to articulate the extent of my sadness. I would rather be left alone in my grief, though I wanted the company and support, than to lamely inform him of something that should be so much more significant than I’m able to express.


But I wish you were here for me to tell you. I wouldn’t mind just blurting it out all at once with no special language, but all the emotion in the world. I know you would understand, too. I know that you understand how special our little girl is and what a presence she is in this family. You would understand our sense of loss and appreciate how we mourn. You’d understand the balance between letting me fold myself into your arms, and letting me have my space.


My mom has an irrational fear of flying. It’s an admittedly irrational fear. She knows it is, openly acknowledges it, but it doesn’t make the process any easier. She takes her “doggie downers” an hour before take-off like clockwork, and keeps the bottle of pills tucked safely into the seat pocket in case of turbulence, mild or severe. She’s got a relaxation CD uploaded onto her iPod that literally talks her through take-off, landing, and any number of unexpected events in flight—like an unexplained flash of the Fasten Seat Belt sign.

It’s difficult for Mom to help others understand her fear. Others think it’s funny, or frustrating. It’s easier not to go into detail about it, so she doesn’t. No one is any closer to understanding why she feels the way she does, but at least she doesn’t get frustrated herself.


The most difficult thing is watching my dad suffer. We suffer together, but he is very alone in many ways. My dad has always been the strong one—absolutely emotional and feeling, but in our estrogen-driven family, he keeps a sense of equilibrium. There are few deaths that would affect him quite so specifically. One occurred last year. We never in a thousand years expected a second just a year later. The relationship is so very, very different. It’s almost more heartbreaking that way. This little baby is a Daddy’s Girl through and through. From day one he was Alpha, she thought she was Beta. My poor dad. My heart breaks twice for him.

And he can’t say the words either. He can’t call his sister, his best friend. He can’t call them up and just say it. How do you say it? How do you tell them without breaking down completely? He’s about to lose his running companion, the tail that literally wagged the dog with excitement at the top of the stairs when he came home from work each day, his third child, in essence. He must explain what he’s going to lose. He must face them, and in facing them, he faces the truth of it. You’re far away—you aren’t even here for me to face. It’s easier and harder that way, all at the same time.


Times like this clarify how truly empty words are. No matter how hard I try, it will not be possible for me to explain how I am affected right now. I cannot communicate the extent of my impending sense of loss or make you feel what I’m feeling. A very unique little light in my world is flickering off, and there is no way I can effectively convey my pain in words.

Language is limited. Language is vast, it is varied, and theoretically I should be able to mold words in such a way as to force you to feel, see, hear, smell, taste my pain. I should be able to take these bottled emotions and allow them to explode onto a blank page, somehow resulting in heartbreaking, life-changing genius. My descriptions should be so vivid that you understand you are the one I want right now, why you are the one who could make things all right.

But I don’t know how to be lovely and tragic and verbally intriguing. I don’t have the energy or the focus to wrangle words and shape sentences in such a way that I might express the inexpressible. I’m tired and beaten.

Bonny is dying. I need you.