What I think about when I think about grief

What I thought I knew about grief but actually really didn't is how it comes in layers. It's not a one-hit, intense emotion that maybe softens over time, or many hits that ebb and flow in their intesity. And maybe hits is not the right word, but I've never liked its description as waves. which to me always sounds so much gentler and prettier than what grief is. Crest, swell, upsurge, tsunami? I don't know. Today I'm using hits.

Hits and layers. If you've experienced this before maybe you already know this. If you've experienced this before, you have my heart, my admiration. I thought I'd experienced it before. But this feels different.

Earlier in my life when I was struggling more with mental health issues,  I'd experience grief as the proverbial dark hole. That's a bit cliche and overly dramatic, I know, but I was younger poet. I'd circle and circle it for weeks, and then there would be a specific moment when I began my descent. The bottom was cavelike and pitch black and the way up felt mountainous.

Now it comes in layers, horizon lines on early winter afternoon. Grief is the low-lying sun, the insistent gray sky as my sister and I drive into our hometown, which itself feels like a descent. The once-shag green and blue carpet of my parents' house, installed in 1977. And then it is my father's face, the emotion of his cancer diagnosis mixed with undiagnosed depression.

I imagine it will continue like this for as long as it will continue like this. Today I have no oncology appointments, no support groups, no parent visit. I have about a thousand other doctor appointments to make, all those annual things I put off last year because I decided I'd had way more than enough of them: eye exam, mammogram, colonoscopy, physiology exam for arthritis in my hip.

But I just may make this a day of nothing. No hard news, tearful hugs, or fake, cheerful self-talk. A day not to wallow but just to be, to process, to binge-watch British crime dramas, with or without Trader Joe's cheddar cheese cornpuffs. Let the layers alone for 24 hours.