What Grief Feels Like...

You grab your purse and start heading out the door to return to the ER because your resident screwed up and forgot to give you shot, but after making it down a few steps, you collapse and start sobbing.

You realize what unbelievably wonderful people your friends are. They are so good to you. Why are they so good to you?

You’re feeding your sick dog rice. You look at what’s left in the container in the fridge, and you just set the container on the floor for him. You don’t bother to measure it out and put it in his bowl. He looks at you like, “This is all wrong.” You just shrug your shoulders.

You tell one of your amazing friends, “I’m thinking of breaking my Target boycott…” and she is up out of the restaurant booth saying, “Let’s go!” before you can think about it anymore. You buy a new set of pajamas because you know that’s all you want to wear for the next week. You buy pajamas that aren’t even on clearance. It makes you feel reckless. You buy a large bag of tennis balls for the dog. You’re out of prenatal vitamins, but you keep walking around the store in this odd pattern, avoiding that aisle. These patterns are equally awkward because you are avoiding the toy, baby, and children’s clothing sections as well. Finally, you stand in front of the vitamins and feel tears in your tears, “I don’t know if I need them…” you say. “Ann, it’s the right choice,” your friend whispers. She’s really just the best.

You give your dog one of the tennis balls as soon as you get home, and let him chew on it with abandon. It makes him happy, and he’s been working very hard to keep you happy.

You run into a friend downtown, and you let her take you to her house, sit you down at her table, and feed you pie for dinner. You don’t consciously make the choice to eat pie for dinner. In fact, your friends asks, “Ann, did you eat dinner?” You think about it, “No.” It’s a quarter to eight at night. She offers to make you something, but the pie seems about all you can eat right now. She lets you take the rest of the pie home with you.

You have to take a shower before bed just to wash away the day’s tears.

You cut a piece of pie for breakfast the next morning. You take two bites, and then you collapse on the kitchen floor, sobbing. Your dog leaves the tennis ball he’s been chewing on since yesterday afternoon and comes and puts his head in your lap while you cry.

You pour yourself a cup of coffee. You can drink coffee now. But you can’t bring yourself to drink it. You wonder if you’ll ever be able to drink coffee again.

Once the shock wears off, you start to realize how awful your ER experience was, and you get angry.

But it’s easier than you think to laugh at and be patient with people’s insensitivities. Their own issues are so transparent. Besides, you are so overwhelmed by other people’s genuine love and kindness that those ridiculous comments seem so small in comparison.

You’ve lost the sense of how time moves. It goes so quickly, but so slowly too.

Just when you start to feel some peace, the questions start. It’s a good thing your new ritual is to take Tylenol PM before bed.

You keep wondering what you did wrong. All the medical people keep saying, “Well, these pregnancy tests, fifty years ago you wouldn’t have even known you were pregnant.” Were you wrong to test? But you knew. A full week and a half before you tested, you knew you were pregnant…so would it have been better to not know? Were you wrong to know?