Complicated grief — it’s complicated.
My springtime sensation of loss is linked with birdsong and rain and unfolding tulips.
I am utterly destabilized by the month of April.
To be more specific, it starts sometime in mid-March. Exactly the day when the afternoon sun hits just right and finally warms my shoulders.
I stare up at a flowering tree in my Queens neighborhood and feel immense gratitude, then I basically double over. Something about the wind or the angle of the light. The combination of daylight savings and Easter plans. As I’m staring at that glorious tree and its big pink blossoms, whispering hello after a long cold hiatus, it’s like someone ran up the road and punched me in the gut.
I don’t think about April, I feel April. It’s in my chest and my toes and my digestive system. It’s a stomachache as I lay in bed, a wretched tightness in my hips. Why April? Why like this?
Because April 15 happened. It was the same day as the Boston Marathon bombing. While the rest of the world was shocked and mourning that large tragedy, I was shocked and mourning my own personal tragedy.
My dad—young, healthy, with a big goofy smile and a sensitive heart — he died that morning. Nobody saw it coming and nobody knew what to do about it…
