storge, regret, & catharsis

on the deaths of those we love

“We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.” - Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

The Wedding Dress (1911) by Frederick Ellwell

I work as a cleaning lady on Fridays. Yesterday was my late Grama’s birthday, and I was listening to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking as I worked. In the book, Didion describes what could only constitute a deluge of loss and pain in a book that can only be understood as her own cathartic process through grief. One night her and her husband leave the hospital where her daughter, after falling so ill that she needed to be in a medically induced coma, lays unconscious. They return home, and Didion’s husband suddenly dies of a fatal coronary event. Many days pass before her daughter is even awake for her to explain that her father has died, and Didion must face this tremendous pain alone. Sometime after, her daughter falls ill again, and is once again in a coma. 

“Life changes in an instant. An ordinary instant,” she writes.

Her writing is dizzying — a mother and wife trying to understand what has befallen her; trying to understand her own irrationality through this terrible time of her life. If she donates her husband’s shoes, how will he get around when he comes back? If her daughter gets a tracheotomy, how will they leave the hospital tomorrow? How can we bring back to life the ones we’ve lost?

She starts to remember ways in which her husband seemed to predict that he was going die — things she didn’t pick up on at the time. At one point she describes how her mother, when she was close to death, explained to her that she was ready to die, but could not, because her children still “needed her.” I wonder at what moment her own needs took precedence, and she finally let herself go. 

“Let me off of this earth.”

I struggled a lot throughout my life with believing I was worthy, lovable, or deserving of happiness. It was only after my Grama died that I realized how much she represented love itself to me — not eros or agape, but storge. Storge is a familial love, but also a love that may be asymmetrical: a love between child and parental figure. We were devoted to each other, though, in my immaturity, in vastly different ways. When she died, it felt like a hole had been bored out of my chest.

She was the one I turned to as a child, adolescent, and young adult: the one person who I truly trusted to love me no matter what happened. As she neared to death, I called her every day to tell her how much I loved her. It’s only now that I wonder, did I call her because I knew that my own personification love itself would leave the earth with her? Did I call her so she felt loved, or did I call her because I was afraid — afraid of the void that would be left when I lost her?

My Grama also wanted to die for a long time but held on. Her children and grandchildren still “needed her.” How does one gauge how needed they are? Is it measured in the desperation of a daily phone call? I started wondering yesterday, did I prevent her from letting go? 

Though I am the protagonist in my own story, I know that it’s not the case that I alone prevented my Grama from letting go. Nevertheless, I feel some regret — actually, a lot of regret. I wish I had been stronger, for her. I wish I had had more bearings and loved myself enough to allow her to be her and not a projection. I wish had been more mature, listened better, and had the wisdom I had today. I wish I would have just gone to sleep. I wish I hadn’t missed her last birthday. 

The trouble is, we don’t ever stop needing people, and we don’t ever get to live without regret, fear, or pain. This is what I learned when she died. We don’t get to walk on this earth without ambivalence, consequence, and remorse. These I feared deeply, in large part because I didn’t love myself enough to weather the pain of such things. I didn’t see myself as someone worthy to experience such pain and confusion and come out on the other side. I didn’t yet see that suffering is part of the deal. 

Before she really started to go, she got angry with me. She wanted a pill that would help her with her Parkinson’s, and it wasn’t time yet for it. I had just gotten back from over 24 hours of travel to be with her while she died. In my ignorance, or denial, I was still concerned that there was such a thing as “time.” She just wanted relief. And for the first time in all my life, she got angry with me. I’d never seen her so angry. She shouted, not to me, but to God, “Let me off of this earth!”

Let her off of this earth. I would beg for this for the next 37 hours. 

For a long time, I felt a lot of shame and regret that this was one of the last lucid things she said to me. Thankfully, it wasn’t the last thing she said to me (that was “I love you so much.”) but I still felt like I had done something horribly wrong. Today, I feel differently. Today, I feel grateful that she got to be angry and release that frustration. I’m glad I got to witness it. Even though I’m the protagonist in my own story, it was never about me alone. Perhaps she needed me to see her anger, so I could be better at harnessing my own. That’s one interpretation. Or perhaps I was the right person to see her anger at that time because I could hold it, and see it, and love her even more for it. 

I was never as sweet as my Grama, nor as patient, nor as gentle. She had a way of seeing so much beauty in the small things. I’ve always been more critical, brash, and impatient, more like my father’s mother - a difficult woman, a cast-iron bitch. As I get older, I see so much beauty in both of these feminine expressions. And I, their granddaughter, see myself as a mixture of both of them. I was thinking yesterday that I’d be honored if I could land somewhere in the middle of these two matriarchs. A union of the opposites - some form of alchemical gold. 

“Nana is a witch,” my little sister said, the day that Nana died. Nana knew she would die, we didn’t. I wish I would have seen her that weekend before, like my brother and his wife did, or my sister did that day, when Nana talked about her own death. I regret that, too. 

Nana didn’t worry about whether we still needed her. She was ready to go out with a bang, and with a bang she did. I always respected her for her utter sovereignty. We laughed a lot that night through our tears. Nana was a force. I think there is a coincidencia oppositorum there, too. 

Grama did not allow herself to die until she had spoken to everyone she was leaving behind. She stopped talking and really started to die when she got off the phone with my cousin. She needed everyone to know she loved them, just like I needed her to know, every day, that I loved her, too. Was she, too, afraid of the void that would be left when she was let off this earth?

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.”¹

The Year of Magical Thinking is a contemplative, cathartic book. It is a penetrating and unwavering gaze into the trenches of grief. It’s strange to read a book and know that the author wrote this for herself, and through doing so, she wrote something for everyone. Her honesty, so vividly expressed through her prose is what gives us all permission to be honest about what it means when someone we love dies. It’s complicated, and there is regret. There is no rational way to lose someone that you love, and to seek rationality in the face of such a powerful portal is the most irrational response there is. There are confusing feelings and there is no “coming to terms” because as we grow and evolve, so does the meaning, and so do the memories. Neither are static things, affixed into some permanent stone of the universe. Our relationships evolve with our loved ones, even after they die. Even regret can turn to peace. Pain can turn to laughter. The hole in your chest can be filled again when you learn to love yourself, too.

But always, unceasingly and forever, grief is our ultimate expression of love. 

Happy Birthday, Grama. 

1. Joan Didion - The Year of Magical Thinking