all i want is some sort of grace
grief that resists form
i spent the month after my grandmother died searching uselessly for form. something that could hold everything that had happened, which nothing could. or wouldn’t, for that matter. it was mine. i still feel a strange defensiveness about that, even trying to speak about it here, months later, my instinct is to curl around it and hiss out something visceral and distinctive, like it’s MINE. which it is. back off.
to be fair, very few people have asked about it, save for when it happened. that helps me feel more like this is mine, but doesn't ‘help’, necessarily. in the broader sense, i.e, not letting grief build up calcified layers in my body like so many other dead things, but maybe i never stood a chance. and at the same time, something else within me says, well why do i need to get better? why get over it? it was a horrible thing that happened. this too is remembrance.
‘—To which AC responds: that’s what mourning is. (He thereby constitutes it as a subject of Knowledge, of Reduction) —“That’s what bothers me most. I can’t endure seeing my suffering being reduced—being generalized—(à la Kierkegaard)*: it’s as if it were being stolen from me.’ — Mourning Diary October 26, 1977 - September 15, 1979
the days after she died, i was totally useless. the morning of i was called to say a prayer in the room in which her body lay, i got so dizzy feeling like i was breathing in the death fumes of all that was and will ever be i had to run downstairs as soon as the last syllables of gibberish left my mouth. i spent most of my energy trying not to throw up, or look anyone in the eye. there was too much sympathy floating in the air and i’m afraid it’s going to get into me through my skin. which still feels too raw a thing to try and absorb, least of all when i can still hear the rasp of the oxygen machine when i close my eyes sometimes. like now. and now. and now.
everything lacerated me. i may as well have been a newborn. anything which made claims of its own solidity felt unbearable. syntax was not to be trusted. it had too much of a tendency to abandon me in the middle of a sentence. i would suddenly find i’d forgotten how to put words together. or worse, that i had nothing to say. it was like everything was revealed for what it was — spineless. there was no form inherent to the world. like if i looked at my own hand i was sure i could see through to the floor. all i did was read Barthes’ Mourning Diary and sob. i don’t even remember anything from it.
writing this down has made it feel like it’s just happened. language erodes time. i wonder how long this will go on.
i wrote those lines in july. it is november.
a week later i developed an obsession with the black paintings of mark rothko. a good a time as any, i guess. there are so many lectures on youtube, talking endlessly about why his paintings remain so magnetic, so hypnotic. i spent hours taking notes that would go absolutely nowhere, but i like to have them. i don’t mean to be obvious, even though i am, when i say those paintings felt like the only thing that i could even hope to hold on to. they had no real form, save for the “self-effacing beauty of the rectangle”1, which was just restrictive enough to hold everything in place, long enough for it to reach articulation. after which it was free to go.
i haven’t seen one of rothko’s colour block paintings in person for 2 years now. i did, again, recently. and what stunned me about it was what always stuns me about rothko, when you think you’re looking at something hard, and unwavering, and like it won’t let you in— but when you see it in person, there are all these colours. and granted, i didn’t see the black ones, so i can’t attest to them, but god there was red and pink and ochre and other in-between colours i don’t have a name for. i think the canvas is still initially a little intimidating to look at. but if you wait there long enough, moving under the light, and maybe it’s like a little pinprick, when you see it—
i don’t really know what i do now. pray for grace, i guess. to make something out of what seems to only be pain. cry at inopportune moments. make everyone uncomfortable because i can’t make regular conversation anymore. it all feels cleanly sliced in two. old mantras are of no help. i feel like i’m falling through the veil at all times, except i’m always caught in the in-between, on neither side, and the veil is really just a sheet of laminated paper i liked to fiddle with when i was 9, going FWUBBaFWUBBaFWUBBa always and forever.
i just don’t want it to get stuck in me, i guess, which is why i’m writing this after letting it sit in my drafts for 4 months. in hopes that it’ll be worth something, just to say it, even though it won’t. i’ll wake up tomorrow, and that horrible rasping sound will still be clawing behind my eyelids. and she’ll still be dead2. but at least i yanked it out of myself. not that that’s good for anything. i just couldn’t let it sit there3.
phrase from a christopher rothko talk that im not entirely sure i didn’t hallucinate but i really hope i didn’t
just to preface this and just in case anyone feels the urge to say it: you do not have to say you’re sorry for my loss it’s fine in fact i do not want to hear it. with all the love in the world. really.
ALSO last thing the painting in the header is by clyfford still, not rothko. i just like what he said about black being warm and generative.
thank you for sharing your grief ra. i love you for ever. i appreciate your vulnerability. all my love.