CW: Given the title it should be fairly clear that we’re going to be talking about death, loss, mourning. But there are also mentions of orbits and astrophysics and other nonsense that I really have no business talking about and I apologize for my lack of expertise in rocket science. Also some emotional abuse.
I’ve been learning a bit about rocketry and orbits due to a writing itch I have been wanting to scratch for a while. About orbits parabolic and elliptical, synchronous and asynchronous, about escape velocity and orbits in decay. There’s something about that phrase, orbits in decay, that’s always caught my attention. The orbit failing, rotting away, until the pull of the larger body simply yanks the smaller object into itself.
And I’ve been thinking about grief because, well, in a way I’m always thinking about grief. Grief has been a companion to my life for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest strong memories is being in what was then my bachan’s backyard, spinning in a black velvet dress and looking down at my shiny black Mary Janes. The rice vinegar and sweet tofu smell of inari. We’ve just come from a funeral at the Buddhist temple, the heavy smell of incense still clings to my dress as I twirl, twirl, gazing at my feet and the concrete beneath them and trying not to get too dizzy.
This is just the first funeral I can remember. I’m also told about the time I went to my Yaya’s funeral and my grandpa was so frightening when he yelled at me for crying that I pooped myself despite being potty trained. I was four. Later, I have actual memories of both Bachan’s funeral and grandpa’s wake. At eight, I went to the funeral of a girl who I considered my best friend at the time. She had been killed by an impaired driver along with four other people. The image of her tiny pink coffin, her inconsolable family, is seared into my mind. Before this, while I knew of death as inevitable, it was a thing that happened to very old or very sick people. With that, my own mortality was made real. Again, remember I was eight.
The year after that my father was diagnosed with a disease that he would fight for the next decade and then some before he finally gave up. So much time spent at the hospital that Sunday morning pancakes at the hospital cafeteria became a ritual, even when dad wasn’t admitted. Lots of hours in the waiting room at the ICU. You become an expert in going to the hospital, both as a visitor and, through watching your father, as a patient.
I’ve been thinking about grief this time because we recently lost, very suddenly, a woman who was like another mother to me. I was fortunate enough in my life to have many mothers, not just one. This woman, this matriarch, was the head of the most “normal” family I knew growing up, which is a statement that I think would have made her laugh, for she and her family were far from normal, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. She and her husband met over Dungeons and Dragons in college and fell in love. That kind of nerdy foundation for a family is something to aspire to.
And what a family! Each of them genius, all extraordinarily talented. Above that, they are all kind and good and giving in a way that is all too rare in this world. But this all flowed from their mother, who could put her hand to anything and excel at it. I marveled at her skill, I still marvel at her skill. That she died so suddenly makes me feel like the air has been knocked out of me, and I can only imagine what her children are going through.
Grief doesn’t get any easier the more you experience it. You may attempt to numb yourself and say you feel less, but it takes its toll on you, slowly adding up over the years if you fail to work with it. The weight of your grief piling up and sending the orbit of the satellite into decay until one day it crashes into you with catastrophic results.
Process your grief, however, and while it may not leave you, you can at least avoid the crash.
The thing is, once you experience it, grief never really leaves you. It stays in your orbit for the rest of your life. The exact shape of that orbit may vary but all of it is elliptical – there will be times when that pain is closer, when it affects the tides of your life, and times when it feels farther away. Maybe even to the point where it almost feels like it’s gone, where you can fool yourself into thinking it’s broken orbit and you are free from that hurt. A tundra orbit, so aptly named for the far reaches the satellite roams. But then one day you feel the sting of it again, and you look up into your skies and sure enough, there it is, coming closer to its perigee once again, coming back home to roost in your heart.
Just as surely, however, the pain of it will lessen. The orbit relaxes. Those close points don’t seem as close and the far ones seem farther away. It doesn’t hurt forever, but it is there forever. A quiet presence. You pull on it and it pulls on you, at times subtly and at other times obviously.
I am about to write up a new campaign for a tabletop game. It feels right. Her pull is there.
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