After a week of greyish cotton wool blanketing the city sky, an infinite stretch of clear blue finally greeted me as I waited to cross Seventh Avenue. I was grateful for the injection of cheer—Sundays still felt gloomy without Grandpa. In the months after he died, I couldn’t bring myself to set foot in the diner. Or the bookstore. Continuing our weekly tradition without him was a taunting reminder that I’d been on the other side of the world enjoying myself when he needed me most. That even if there was nothing I could do to prevent his death, I could have at least spent more time with him before it happened.
I’ve never understood Western society’s warped perception of grief as something quantifiable and finite, a problem to be fixed. Eight months after Grandpa died, my doctor suggested I see a psychologist because I was still having trouble accepting he was gone. After only one session, the psychologist promptly diagnosed me with “persistent complex bereavement disorder,” aka chronic grief, and suggested I take anti-depressants. Turns out, in the opinion of most medical experts, your grieving process shouldn’t last longer than six months. And if you aren’t over it by then, there’s something chronically wrong with you.
What the hell?
It felt callous to be expected to resume life as normal six months after losing someone whose existence had been so indelibly intertwined with yours. There would never be a moment I wouldn’t miss Grandpa. That was one of the reasons I became a death doula—my grief felt more at home in the company of others who were grieving, whether it was loved ones, or the dying person themselves grieving a life they knew they could have lived better.
As much as it hurt, I eventually realized that keeping up our diner and bookstore tradition was one of the few ways I could still feel close to Grandpa. Now, every Sunday when I wasn’t working, I ate breakfast alone in our favorite booth at the diner and then walked to the bookstore, his absence as conspicuous as his presence ever was. After more than a decade, the pain had dulled slightly, but my grief hadn’t diminished. It had just taken a different shape…
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