![]() What if the pain could just end?Īs a child, I knew that I was not permitted to indulge in the hyperbolic or sarcastic statements other kids made about wanting to die, because my father would erupt. What if you didn’t have to feel this way anymore? my mind proposes, in moments that are deceptively calm, moments when I am not sobbing in the shower or screaming in my car because I cannot scream at home. Nor does the thought frighten me, as it always did before. It’s not that I want to hurt myself-it’s that I cannot seem to work up any remorse when I think about no longer being alive. Watch and learn.Īll the while, I keep daydreaming about walking into traffic.įrom the moment the thought pushes its way into my grief-muddled brain, I know that I could never act on it. I am an expert at grieving under capitalism. My publishing team has thanked me for my promptness in replying to their emails, for being so great to work with. Am I not still doing what needs to be done: getting up every morning and going to work, taking care of my family, saying yes to anything anyone asks me to do? I haven’t dropped a single ball at work. ![]() Well, I think, a bit defensively, because I am. Punishing myself, keeping myself in as much pain as possible, seems like something a good daughter should do if it is too late for her to do anything else. When other people-my husband, my friends-try to tell me that I am not at fault, I barely hear them. All my parents wanted was to spend more time with us, to see us more than once a year or every other year, and I never found a way to make it happen, and now my father is dead. It doesn’t matter to me whether I take care of myself, because I do not deserve the care. I bank on this, even feel a kind of twisted pride in it. ![]() The truth is that I have always been able to work, and now I learn that grief is no hindrance to my productivity. I tell myself that I can’t afford to take unpaid time off anyway. I don’t know how to ask for leave from my job. ![]() Our rental term ends two months after the funeral, and when we move into another house, I hardly remember packing or unpacking. Entire weeks are all but lost to me, scooped out of my once airtight memory. After my father dies, I become, for a time, someone I do not recognize. ![]()
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