I first learned about The Other Side at that dining table antiqued with anguish. That one where
\nwe would pound our fists and carve our nails into the brittle wood, wishing we could make the
\nemotional pain physical.<\/p>\n
I had heard about it before in Church, this place the energy from our palms reached when we
\nexalted Him. We held His personification in gratitude, in impermanence. People I knew of
\ndistantly were there, surrounded by light and everyone they ever loved. People I didn\u2019t know
\nwere somewhere else, certainly in a bleak solitude, perhaps even tortured from the darkness.
\nSomewhere in between was where I came from, from dust I was told. To dust I would return.<\/p>\n
Still, I didn\u2019t understand it in my soul until that dreary Tuesday night when my mom offered me
\nlemon bars and a chance to stay up later than my sister. I don\u2019t remember it well, just flashes of
\nher voice and the feeling of my nails in the wood. She was crying, I wasn\u2019t. I told her I was fine
\nand then banged my head in the pillow until I felt its tenderness. What was this feeling, what was
\nthis promise of a life?<\/p>\n
What happens when you are a mother, and you are forced to unravel a new world of devastation
\nonto your daughter? What happens when you can\u2019t get through it, when your own grief takes
\nover your soul and you can\u2019t speak? What happens when, in the days after, you grieve her loss
\nmore than she does, when you worry too much that she will never get over it? What happens<\/p>\n
when she can\u2019t get over it, when she still feels it in her heart and her bones every time she thinks
\nabout it ten years later? What does a mother do then?<\/p>\n
That first night, I didn\u2019t know it would become a pattern, that lemon bars would take on a
\nbrooding meaning, that staying up late meant another talk. I didn\u2019t know that friends dying
\nwould define my early years, that the tear stains would remain on the violet pillowcase in the top
\nbunk of my sister\u2019s bed, where I slept when I couldn\u2019t be alone, usually when I couldn\u2019t fathom
\nliving my life without someone who was gone.<\/p>\n
The next time it was lemon bars again. Dad was on the phone; she couldn\u2019t do it alone this time.
\nIt was a closer friend, someone who I had shared a bed with just three weeks before on a school
\ntrip. Slowly, I would forget what it felt like to connect with her, physically then emotionally. I
\nwould forget whether she snored, whether she kicked in her sleep. I would try for years to
\nremember every second with her, every time we spoke or shared a look. I would detest myself,
\nbang my head against that same pillow, as the memories started to fade, as the memories of
\nconversations I once knew every word to were obscured.<\/p>\n
I kept the only gift I had from her on the top shelf of my closet for six years. It was an extensive
\nwatercolor set, with three palettes and two synthetic brushes I wore thin. Occasionally I would
\ntake it out, look at it, and see how much dust had taken it over. Each time, it ended with me
\nsobbing on the floor, guilty that this dusty watercolor set was my only tangible memory of
\nsomeone I spoke to every day for four years. That the energy between us had culminated into a
\ndusty, old watercolor set.<\/p>\n
The third time, it was just a sick fucking joke. Dad was there, and we all knew the drill. No
\nbaked good necessary. An entire family had been taken in mere minutes, a brutal plane crash.
\nMy parents were grieving not only for me, but also for their friends this time. As a family, we
\nwere more broken than we had ever been in the days after. I saw dad with tousled hair once a day
\nwhen he emerged from his room to eat dry bread for dinner. Mom worked all day and came
\nhome flustered at 10 p.m. I was confused, was this how I was supposed to react? By this time, it
\nfelt routine to me, a melancholy taking over my body for days after, but one that had not yet
\nforced me into depression.<\/p>\n
I finally surrendered to loss, to death. I let it consume my moments and my thoughts. For years, I
\nworried each day about death. I wondered about the likelihood of my heart stopping or my lungs
\ncollapsing. I couldn\u2019t fall asleep without whispering I will not die I will not die I will not die. I
\nhad a recurring premonition of dying in a car crash, some car coming out of nowhere and
\nknocking me out of existence. To my shock, it never happened.<\/p>\n
I never grieved immediately as a child, not even as the deaths got closer and closer to my heart. I
\ngrieved four, five, six years later when loneliness took over my brain, when I allowed it to
\nscream at my mother. I measured the continuum in anger, in the anger I felt toward her and
\ntoward God. To God, I screamed at my least favorite Bible verse in my prayers: I have turned my
\ncheek this way and that way and again and again. Raw is my skin, primal are my protruding
\nbones. Let this be the last strife, the last gasp for love. To my mom, I screamed aloud simply: I
\nhate you.<\/p>\n
A girl sits in eighth grade math. Pre-Algebra, I believe it was. She looks uncomfortable in her
\nbody, trapped in her mind. I know, somewhere in my body, that that girl is me. I can feel it in my
\nstomach and the way I remember the year I turned eight with frightening clarity. But I cannot
\nseem to realize it, that I am the girl that sits in eighth grade math, who is lucky to have forgotten
\nabout lemon bars, even if briefly, and who is even luckier as to not have faced death\u2019s wrath
\nintimately in five years. I cannot realize it in the way I tell the story about this math class with
\ndistance, the way this story occupies the same type of space in my mind as the book that left me
\nsobbing alone on the couch four times as a child. I cannot realize it in the way that it only feels
\nright to tell it in the third person.
\n—
\nLast night, that girl learned that her mother has cancer. Her first instinct was anger. She yelled at
\nher poor mother: You had fucking cancer and didn\u2019t tell me? Her mother told her, Sometimes, it\u2019s
\nhard to tell people that you\u2019re sick. She stormed off in anger. She didn\u2019t understand. She does
\nnow.<\/p>\n
Today, all she can think about is her mother in surgery. There\u2019s a high success rate, she was told.
\n9 in 10. But all she can think about is that one in ten chance. She looks around in math class and
\nthere are twenty people. Two would die if they were having her mom\u2019s surgery. She thinks of
\nher friend group sitting around the cluster of desks they push together every morning. Ten
\npeople. One would die. She knows somewhere deep inside her that that\u2019s not how death works,
\nthat it mercies those who only barely need mercying. She knows somewhere inside herself that<\/p>\n
she should be rational, that her mom is going to survive, that her mom is lucky for catching it
\nearly. But she cannot find that rational place. All she can find is the whirlpool inside her mind.<\/p>\n
12 p.m. arrives; the surgery is supposed to end. She expects a text, a call from her dad: Mom is
\nout of surgery. No call, no text. 12:15 p.m. arrives. No call, no text. Each second aligns perfectly
\nwith the beating of her heart. Her mouth moves in the shape of one, two, three, four, five, six.
\n12:30 p.m. arrives. No call, no text. She texts her dad frantically, Any updates? Is she okay? No
\nresponse.<\/p>\n
For two hours she thinks her mom has died. She skips over anything other than complications
\nand death. She breaks down. She can no longer recognize her own surroundings. Her mind is in
\nthe hospital, it is with her dead mom, it is not able to control itself. Her body knows it too. She
\nshakes profusely; she sits on her hands to hide it. She sobs silently, in the way that her classmates
\nthink she is violently shaking, not sobbing. She thinks of dinners with only her dad; she thinks of
\neach piece of black clothing she owns. She remembers the three funerals she attended when she
\nwas too young. She remembers how death felt when it was stuck in her throat, when she couldn\u2019t
\ncough it up.<\/p>\n
When her sobs have a sound, she runs out of class. Her face is blotchy, her neck painted with the
\nred dots she gets when she can\u2019t breathe. In the bathroom, she calls her dad. What Dabba? he
\nasks. Everything is fine. Your mother got out of surgery a while ago.<\/p>\n
He forgot to text her. Half of her brain thinks she will never be able to forgive him for this. Half
\nof her brain remembers that she will always forgive. She does.<\/p>\n
I am twelve, fourteen, seventeen, and eighteen when I love people whose grandparents die. I am
\nthose same ages when I am once again reminded of my luck, that I know one day I will have to
\nface that pain, but that day is not today and not yesterday and not all the days before yesterday. I
\ncomfort, discern, fathom, and cry for my loves in the second person. I come to think of the
\ndeaths of my own grandparents in the second person.
\n—
\nYou are in your grandmother\u2019s house for Thanksgiving. Heartache has overcome your every
\nstep, your every organ. You are in a desolate fog: the sun shines rarely in your mind. You know
\nyou are here, at a house familiar yet mysterious. You are occupying space on the earth, barely. In
\nshort, you are feeling the effects of the days shortening, of the winter arriving.<\/p>\n
Your uncle orders a club soda at the dinner table, and you have learned over the years to not ask
\nquestions. You evade questions about your nose piercing, about why you go to college so far
\naway. A screaming match erupts. It was political but has evolved into something greater that you
\ncan\u2019t quite place. You don\u2019t know enough information to break down every tense feeling flying
\nmostly from your uncle and your dad. Everyone pretends nothing happened when it is time for
\ndessert. Your mom was thinking about making lemon bars, but you begged her not to. Things
\nfeel normal.<\/p>\n
But under it all, this time is different. Your grandmother is dying. You see it in the way she
\nforgets to turn off the stove, the way she tells the same story three times within twenty minutes.
\nYou want to scream when everyone pretends like it\u2019s the first time. Things are not fucking
\nnormal. Am I the only one who sees that? You are almost relieved by the worried looks your
\nparents share when your grandmother cannot grasp her fork. You know to worry when your dad
\nand his brother finally talk about it. You can hear them making a plan, considering their options.
\nA caregiver, a home.<\/p>\n
Your first instinct is to pretend it isn\u2019t true. You know she has had times like this before, after
\nsurgeries, after injuries. It will get better; it will mend itself. You only accept it when you drink
\ntoo many glasses of wine with her, and it gets worse. She can barely remember your name. You
\ntext your friends through your drunken haze, and it is real.<\/p>\n
You hadn\u2019t thought intimately about death since your mom had surgery. You had forgotten what
\nit felt to feel it linger in your stomach. You have never known its imminence intimately. You
\nhave known about organs and hearts just giving out, giving up. But you have never experienced a
\ndeath that promises constant acceptance. Constant acceptance that tomorrow your grandmother
\nmay not be able to hold a glass ever again, that she may never be able to walk to the grocery
\nstore again. But you are forced to accept it, to accept that these are her final years.<\/p>\n
That night, you stand in the bathroom and look at yourself. All day people have been telling you
\nthat you are the mirror image of your grandmother. No one has told you this before, and you take
\nit as a sign. You notice where they are right and where they are wrong. Your noses have the<\/p>\n
same little dip on the left side, and you learned today that you have matching moles on your right
\ncheek. But she has green eyes; yours are blue. She is a natural redhead; you are a tryhard.<\/p>\n
You wonder if she knows it too. If she can tell her body is in decay, or if she is denying it. You
\nwonder at what age you start to accept that you will be gone. You think that you might start
\nbelieving in God. You hope your grandmother believes in heaven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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