Busted

I’m in a crunch at work. Basically, working 10-12 hours a day to meet various deadlines that under normal circumstances would be unrealistic, but we’re a startup with something to prove, and I’m massively invested – both in financial and emotional terms.

I slipped right back into this rhythm upon coming home after Mom’s funerals. It was a relief, honestly. I could forget all the messiness of end-of-life care – the catheter, the constant need to flip her over in bed, the diaper, the way her brilliant mind had ebbed away into – well, she always lived in the moment. At the end of her days, she lived in the second. Amused by the birds outside her window. Joking, in her faint voice, with the nurses to make them laugh. The epitome of grace and yet…in circumstances of anything but grace.

“This is no way to live,” she groused in her moments of lucidity. And she was right to grouse. It was no way to live. And so she died.

And I buried myself in work, which was quite easy to do because the alternative was letting people down. I care a lot about the people I work with.

On Thursday night, I was neck-deep in github pull requests and Slack messages, when my doorbell started ringing. And ringing. And ringing. It wouldn’t stop ringing. As a single person in a big city, I know better to answer the door when the bell’s going bananas. Who knows what awaits you on the other side? A problem you never asked for? A scam? Someone leaning on the bell to get you to open up so they can do something to you?

I ignored it and forgot about it.

On Friday I was in full immersion. Data mapping, more pull requests, more demands. And my landlady texted me: “Neighbor got a package for you upstairs and tried to let you know.” So while I was waiting for some approvals – close on to midnight – I popped upstairs to fetch the package.

A white USPS Priority Express box with huge orange stickers proclaiming “CREMATED REMAINS” on all six sides.

No wonder my neighbor was frantic – who wants to have that sitting around in the vestibule? I was absolutely mortified. I snatched the box and brought it downstairs to my apartment. And it sat. I did my absolute best to ignore it for days. But last night I had to open it – it couldn’t stay around like that forever, and at the very least I had to throw the box away so that friends coming over wouldn’t see it.

It broke me. All the grief that I’d been ignoring, trying to compartmentalize – I sobbed so loudly that my Apple Watch notified me that the decibels were in range of giving me hearing problems. (To be fair, it notifies me when I shower or dry my hair, so it couldn’t have been SO loud. And, as a friend pointed out today, if folks in the building have walked past that package with its loud labels, they fucking know why I’m falling apart.)

I’ve made a plan. It’s not the happiest, and it’s probably not the most legal, but I know what I’m doing (and it’s not strewing the ashes off the back of the Staten Island Ferry – Mom didn’t particularly love New York). The ashes will sit in my coat closet until I can scatter them in a place I know is meaningful to her.

And I fully expect more ambushes of grief. That’s how grief rolls – ironic, because Mom was a grief therapist in her later career. If anyone would understand me being emotionally busted right now, it would be her.