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The time is 5:37 on a Wednesday evening, and I’m sitting alone at an empty dinner table eating my chicken paella and catching up on bills. The sun has bid me farewell nearly half an hour ago, leaving a blanket of darkness to cover my city. A bottle of wine sits in my kitchen and I consider opening it, pouring myself a glass, and snuggling on the couch to watch TV. Read More
Me: my name is Julia I work for the state government. I’m studying public administration.
Blinks awkwardly.
Interesting fact? Umm, I have a desk job so I power walk in the conference center on my lunch breaks.
Also me: When did I get so boring?
Don’t let the anxieties of today cloud your hopes of a better tomorrow.
Today’s headlines and history’s judgement are rarely the same. If you are too attentive to the former, you will most certainly not do the hard work of securing the latter.
– Connie Rice
Despite Christmas being this month, last week I sat face in palms crying in a kitchen chair beside the stove as my roommates tried to diagnose my random outburst of sadness.
I never asked to walk the road of grief.
At least I can say I survived another year of graduate school, two years at the same job, and a few awkward dates (#ForeverSingle) But to be honest, none of these brought me to tears last Friday.
“I can’t be sad,” I told myself. “It’s almost Christmas.” My office has gone ballistic with the holiday festivities. And the chaos only follows me home. One night it was a church concert, then a trip to the German Christmas market. Next there was cookie baking, gift exchanges, caroling, choir practice, and still I was brought to tears in the midst of it all.
But for sadness I was not brought to tears. They were somehow triggered by what I saw as I drove home from work. It was simple, mundane, and even typical. In the wet December streets there was a man in front of me, riding a bicycle.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for cycling. It’s one of the shared traits of Millennials. That along with drinking coffee and mastering social media, and a host of other unimpressive skills. (#NotMyGeneration) But I’ve had this sort of reaction to cyclists lately. The first time it happened was during my last night of classes. In the dark streets I saw a man riding his bike under a bridge. It was as if his body was just a silhouette waiting to be hit.
I’ve written before about my friend who was killed fourteen months ago in a bike accident. But it’s beyond me why a year later it’s hitting me this way.
“A year is nothing,” my friend D. said from the passenger seat of my car. I tried to explain the PTSD to her in hopes of normalizing the episode. Her response seemed to empathize with my lingering grief.
My friend D. loves to cycle more than I love to write. She’s the international student who bought a bike without knowing how to ride, and now talks of nothing else. She was telling me about her project for a public health class in which they were asked to create more incentives for people to bike in the city. Her project explored ideas like protected bike lanes and bicycle expressways. Obviously, I don’t share her enthusiasm, at least not at this point. But I do appreciate it.
After reading up on PTSD, I discovered that symptoms may not occur or become problematic until years later. I’ve had episodes of PTSD twice since John died. It first happened a few days after my car accident last January, and the second time was when my brothers suffered a car accident last spring. According to Mental Health America this disorder is common in people who “have learned of or experienced an unexpected and sudden death of a friend or relative.” Symptoms include repeatedly thinking about the trauma, becoming upset when something reminds you of the event, rapid breathing, muscle tension, and rapid heart rate.
But I really think there was more than just seeing a biker, which triggered my PTSD. It was the recollection that my friend was hit while riding a bike. It was the remembrance of how I responded when I heard it. And most importantly it was the realization that he is in fact gone.
This is a new area of grief, I suppose.
“Do you need a paper bag?” my roommate asked. It wasn’t a bad idea. There I sat, my hands shaking as if I had Parkinson’s and my lungs gasping for air. But I didn’t even realize I was struggling to breathe until she mentioned it. Steam billowed from the kitchen stove, where pots of chicken soup were boiling. And what do you know, moments later, the shaking, the heart rate, the gasping for breath had all passed.
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Confession: I skipped my last Policy Process class to spend time with my sister. But in my defense my life as a graduate student is a constant struggle of juggling school, work, life, and mental health.
Family trumps education. At least for me.
My sister has this adorable child who is developing every day. And for fear that I might miss his entire childhood I recognized my need for some “auntie time” with him. Plus, I’m vying for his love, attention, and admiration in the face of his eight other aunts and uncles, not to mention eight or so more on his dad’s side. So, as you can see, I couldn’t pass up an evening with them even if it meant missing class.
John’s niece and baby cousin were at my sister’s house. Our families grew up together so I feel like they are my nieces and nephews as well. We shared a meal in the warm house, on a freezing December night, and the toddlers and babies played happily on the floor. Well not entirely, but their interactions were entertaining, to say the least.
As autumn frosted into winter this year I thought December would bring depression as it did last Christmas. But for some reason my foreknowledge of the potential to slip back into it has kept my head above waters.
But on this night, before I even arrived at my sister’s house, I knew the gathering would create remorseful nostalgia. And as expected it caused me to remember John. It was the sort of dinner he would have come to, with his sister and cousin.
Well, maybe.
I’m sure he would have been invited, but he’d find an excuse not to come, and then two hours in, he’d appear in the doorway with a cup of coffee and a mischievous smile.
* * *
The snow was falling as I drove home from my sister’s. Christmas music hummed from my car speakers as the seat warmer heated my bum. The quiet streets glistened from the neighborhood Christmas lights. Halfway home I started to think about John, not John when he was alive, but John today.
Because it’s difficult to fathom life after death, in vain I try to imagine what he’s doing up there. But the longer we spend without him, the more difficult this becomes. Is he making a new life? Is he outside of time, so far removed from the earth, that life before death is just a dream to him?
These late night ponderings always make me cry. For all that death is, the shock, the denial, the graveyard visits, and the PTSD, I can honestly say the hardest part of losing a friend is their absence. I sometimes wonder why I reacted so dramatically the night he died. Was it the unexpectedness, or the disbelief, or the fear? And then I sit there wondering why I revisit those thoughts so often, dissecting each moment to make sense of what happened.
One year, two months, and four days since John died. I’ve grown use to this reality in a sense. But the small things still trigger that painful remembrance. For some reason, dinner with my sister and John’s family caused me to cry. Holding his niece in my lap, her soft hair brushing against my chin. He would have laughed with me when I told him I’d skipped class. But in vain I resign to imagine what it would have been rather than accepting how it is? Just continued grief.
“The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.” ― Charlotte Brontë
The weight of loneliness seems heavier when you travel. But this isn’t a blog post about loneliness. Originally I intended to write about my trip to Vegas and Denver. Yet, for some reason all I could cover was the nine hour delay I spent in the airport. Read More
My life of late is that of a jack rabbit running from one thing to the next. Either I’m stumbling out the door to work, dodging angry Hoosiers in traffic, or rushing across campus to class. Read More
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My classmate and I stood outside the War Memorial building. We squinted from the misty air blowing in our faces and I could tell he wanted to stick around and talk—despite my obvious efforts to escape to my car. He and I had just attended the Festival of Faiths for a grad school assignment.
“Can I ask you a question?” he said, his words masked in a thick west African accent.
“Sure,” I replied with a shiver.
“What is the purpose of God?” Read More
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My friend John was a silly guy. He liked to pull pranks and make us laugh. I remember him pouring water down my back one summer at a family barn party. I screamed as the icy drink soaked my shirt. My voice echoed through the barn up to the loft where kids were jumping from the rope swing. It was pretty embarrassing for a middle school girl. I still remember him laughing at me as he ran off with my brothers.
But he could also be serious and extremely competitive. In speech class we were put on different teams and somehow he lost the pro-life v. pro-choice argument. Later he confronted me on the issue asking how I could really support the apposing argument. To which I replied, “Come on John, it was just a debate.” But he was adamant about winning and we often argued about any and everything; movies, religion, whether or not girls should play football. Often it went on until I was in tears and he breathed a quiet apology for making me upset.
Today marks one year since his death. I remember when it happened, it was so hard to believe. It’s painful coming to terms with never seeing a loved one again, on this side of heaven. But somehow I’ve grown use to the idea that he’s up in heaven relaxing to the sound of his coffeemaker and watching the Colts game. I often wish he was here so I could tell him how big his niece is getting and how cute she’s become. “Being an uncle is the best,” he once told me. I jealously listened wondering if my siblings would ever have kids.
Shortly before he died we talked about growing up and how hard it was to be adults. Our close friend had found a significant other and we realized life was changing quickly.
“I sometimes wish I was Peter Pan,” he texted me one night, in jest. I laugh at it now, though sad he didn’t live the life we expected, I feel he was granted the relief of a short life.
Over the last year I’ve felt pains of adulting to the utter worst. Many times I just wanted to call John and tell him how annoying life was: my car accident in January, my final exams for graduate school, the long hot days of summer where I sorely needed a vacation. He was a good listener and had a high sense of empathy. “I totally get that,” he’d say whenever I complained to him, his eyebrows knit together in genuine concern.
He died last October in a sudden turn of events. I’d never guess it would be this way, but life never is—so they tell me. I feel a peace in all the love my friends and family have rendered. There is comfort in community, especially in times of hardship.
