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As I wanted to start writing the blog, the title I wanted was Grief is a Mother Fucker. But I also don’t want to scare people off. Grief is a raw emotion and to give it the respect it deserves, I will be using raw language. If this is offensive to you, I understand. Grief is offensive to me. So, I shall begin: Grief is a mother fucker. I have known a lot of grief since I was 3 years old. I was lucky enough to know my great great grandmother. She was the first person that I remember being suddenly gone. I don’t remember what I was told, I just knew I missed her, but I would never see her again. She had a favorite chair she used to sit in on the back porch, and it stayed there for about 20 years after we lost her. I vaguely remember being told not to sit on “Mom Mommy’s” chair when she was alive. Then suddenly, it was okay to sit there. It became one of my favorite chairs. Shortly after we lost Mom Mommy, who was living with my great grandmother, Meenie Maw (I will get into family names and other assorted family weirdness later in a different blog,) we lost Meenie Maw’s second husband, and the only person I considered as my great grandfather, to cancer. All I remember after his death is stopping at Meenie Maw’s and looking for Pop Pop and not finding him. I asked Meenie Maw where he was and can still remember the sadness in her eyes. When I was five and a half, my only sibling was born. Just a few months later, my paternal grandmother died. I still remember her as a tough as nails woman, tiny little thing, who had lost her husband 8 years before I was born and was now living with her boyfriend who I called Paps. I still remember traveling three hours to Cumberland, MD where my father’s side of the family is from to have her buried. I remember seeing the town from the highway and thinking even as a little child how small and compact it looked. We stayed at the local Holiday Inn and even though I don’t remember the room or anything else visually, I remember the smell. Back in the day, hotels had a very distinct smell and I loved it. I also remember all my cousins swimming in the hotel pool but me not having a bathing suit and my mother thinking I shouldn’t be swimming because we were in mourning. Oh, how wrong she was, lol. During the graveside service, I became squirmy on my mom’s lap, so my Aunt Jeannie offered to hold me. My mother was mad cause I was having a bit of a meltdown, which was very unusual for me. My mother was upset but my Aunt Jeannie told her I was fine; I was just upset over losing my Mom Mom. (Yes, close to my maternal great great grandmother’s name, but not quite.) I remember sitting there crying cause my mother didn’t want to hold me, and then the words sinking in that I wouldn’t ever get to see my grandmother again. Even though Mom Mom was the third death I had experienced when I wasn’t even six yet, this was when it all came crashing down around me, what death really meant. Then I had a few good years. I remember other students in class when a grandparent would die, and it would be the first time that student had experienced death, while so many other people in class had never experienced it. This is where I think my life was preparing me for a LOT of loss. Shortly after I turned thirteen, I got a call from a friend’s mother, asking if I had seen Laura, who never came home last night. Now my mother was a helicopter mother for the 80’s but would be considered a free-range parent today. I never snuck out or did much of anything that my mother didn’t know about. For five painful days, they couldn’t find Laura. Then, her body was found. She had been murdered. Now, unlike now, in the 80’s, it took no time between a person dying and the services. The viewing was on Labor Day. So instead of seeing friends for the first time since summer break didn’t happen outside of the school on the first day, it happened at the funeral home. My favorite teacher, Ms. Miller, came up to me and told me it looked like I had been crying for days. Which was the truth. I hadn’t stopped for even a minute since she was discovered. Her funeral was on the first day of school and I attended. And if this wasn’t enough, it was also the day I got my first period. Don’t exactly want a milestone like that on the day you are burying a good friend. In 1993, I was a newlywed and living in Missouri when we got the call about my husband’s grandfather, Stanly. He was a small man, steelworker most of his life that had lung cancer. While we were still living in Baltimore, my husband’s grandmother would call us and ask us to go pick up Stanley from the bar, Mr. B’s. We would pile into his tan S-10 pickup and while my husband drove, Stanley would hit on me. Unlike my husband’s grandmother, who didn’t like me because I was a female and she had her own mental issues herself, Stanley always talked to me and enjoyed my company, just like I had always hoped and strived for from my boyfriend’s families. I got a call from my mother when I was almost 24. My husband was in Bosnia at the time when my mother called me in the middle of the night. I just happened to have gotten off of work two hours earlier and had some work friends over. I worked in an adolescent facility that helped kids cope with abuse, depression, drug use, gang affiliation, mental issues, and an assortment of other issues. I loved that job and loved working the 3-11 shift. My favorite aunt, Aunt Luci, had died of a heart attack. I flew home and met my Aunt Sharon’s new boyfriend, David, for the first time, as he was picking up his sister from her flight at about the same time. I don’t remember the ride back to my grandmothers, but I do remember the call. I collapsed on the floor when my mother told me and I thought I could feel my heart break. It was a pain like I hadn’t felt. So intense, so unexpected, so unfair. Aunt Luci was only 68 and heart issues did not run in the family. Less than a year later, my husband’s brother was diagnosed with terminal skin cancer. We traveled from Germany to come home to see him one last time in November of 97, and he passed in January of 98. Jimmy was only 29. He left behind two young daughters, one who was 4, and the other who would turn two about a week after his funeral. I remember my husband going through a rough depression and feeling helpless to help him heal. Nothing I could do would bring back his brother and we both knew it. *Check back next Sunday for our second part of Grief is a*