Issue II: When a Loved One Dies on Your Birthday
This issue contains a content warning for death and grief. Please proceed with caution.
Every birthday, I make a list of things I learned that year corresponding with the age I’m turning. This year, I was going to sit down and write down 24 things I had learned and share that with you. Try as I have to write and rewrite my original idea, I could not give you a single life lesson from the last year. I was born on January 17, 1997. My aunt passed away on January 17, 2021. So that being said, all I can offer is what to do when one of your favorite people dies on your birthday.
Cry
Cry until you’re choking, can’t breathe or think or feel or remember much of yourself or why you’re crying in the first place. Think of that time you told a friend that you can’t cry in front of others and told your therapist it made you feel weak. Cry even harder because you are weak. You are broken in half and then half again and again and again until there are no more halves to find and the pieces left behind can’t be put back together.
Eat Banana Bread Fresh Out of the Oven
It’s warm with two scoops of vanilla ice cream because in the midst of the crying your friend has gone out to get ice cream. Try to eat another piece and nearly vomit. Google if grief can make you sick. Be one stubborn bitch and decide that this will not take banana bread from you. Try another piece and quietly heave over the toilet for an hour. Said banana bread is still in the kitchen exactly a week later, stale and nauseating as ever when the scent wafts its way to you while you throw it in the trash.
Pick Up Your Phone
And look for any evidence that they were alive. The thought of forgetting even the smallest detail of them makes you heavy all over again so you sink into your bathroom tub with a mango white claw and look for text, voicemails, pictures, anything, anything, anything. You will never hear the sound of their voice again. You will never hug them again. They will never call you again.
Take Off Work
Consider not doing that for a moment because bills wait for no one. However, fuck a job, you’re grieving. But not fuck a job, you’ve still got bills. Capitalism is not conducive to healing but not having money would make this significantly worse. Pick out the crust from your eyes in the morning. Realize you don’t think you’ve slept despite taking an extra dose of your sleep medication. Call your boss. Take off work. Go back to bed without falling asleep.
Think about Cussing Out Everyone and Anyone Who Wished You a Happy Birthday on Facebook
Don’t do it though.
Cry Some More
This time it’s less violent. Not because it hurts any less but because you’ve hardly moved in eight hours and to cry like that again would surely exhaust the last of you. You’re saving what little energy you have for bathroom trips and to feed your cat at exactly 8am and 8pm. Everything else will just have to wait.
Ask Your Therapist How Badly It Has to Hurt Before It Gets Better
Get no answer that actually makes it better.
Remember You Have Never Lived In a World Without Them
And exactly 24 years later, here you are, without them.
Think About Your Next Birthday
Wonder if you’ll ever celebrate birthdays again. Someone says, “Well now you’ll never forget her.” You want to scream but they’re right. You kind of hate your birthday. Not for any reason other than it’s uncomfortable to be celebrated. It’s gotten better in the last few years. Maybe now that there are two lives to remember, you won’t hate it so much.
Resent Everyone
Remember that though they had always been full of life, their body had been breaking down from the inside out for five years. You had been prepared for this day for five years and no one will let you forget that.
“She’s in a better place.”
“She’s not in pain anymore.”
“She fought too hard for too long.”
You understand all of these things but have no idea what it has to do with you. You also despise speaking for others who can’t say anything for themselves. So who are these people to tell you what the deceased felt of their own death? Who are they to look at you and give you comfort like it may be an absolute truth? All you know for sure is, she is gone and you are here.
Looking on the bright side had always felt more like a cop-out to you.
Go to their Funeral
Don’t shed a single tear. There’s a photo montage of their life playing. A pastor tells you about their life and the person you were. You feel nothing. You feel empty. The space where they lay in their closed casket feels like they couldn’t possibly be there. They ask you to bow your head and pray for their soul in heaven. You close your eyes and try to change the sound of the voice of your head into there’s.
Write Your Newsletter
Hate everything that you write because you’re trying to write like your world tipped hasn’t tipped on its head. The whole thing of it is you want to teach others to write authentically to themselves and here you are, trying to come up with 24 things that you’ve learned this year when all you can write over and over again is some variation of the concept of loss. It’s not all you had but it’s all that matters in these moments so maybe this isn’t what needs to be said. Admit defeat at your keyboard and instead, tell the truth. Your head hurts. Your body aches. Everything is hard. But tell whoever that will listen that when someone dies, everything fucking sucks.
Try to End This On a High Note
Immediately give up.
When I think of grief, I have always thought of this quote, “Grief is just love with no place to go.” Over time I forgot where I first heard it or who it came from. Looking it up for this issue, I discovered that it’s from Jamie Anderson, the author of Doctor Who. It was the first thing to make me laugh after my aunt’s passing.
Split your page into two columns.
List five things you grieve for. What has hurt you? Who have you lost? What parts of you have you had to leave behind to survive?
List five things you love. People. Places. Things. Moments.
Connect something from the grief list to the love list. Do this for all five items on your list. It does not have to make sense.
Pick one, some, or all of your connections and create the link of how you’ve morphed grief for one thing into love for another.
Acknowledge how powerful you are to have done this.
This issue is for Yasmin Mullings. Thank you for loving me exactly as I was.
From left to right: me, my aunt, and my younger sister in Jamaica, circa 2002