Today at the Playground and Afterward: Grief Tunes

After a great sand-filled, barefoot, pants wet from the rain on the slide visit to the playground, my granddaughter hurt her finger somehow getting into the car. She told me her finger was broken and she started to cry. We drove out of the playground parking lot. She cried louder.

We got on the main drag to go home. By then, she was wanting her mommy, calling for her mommy in the most plaintive, lamenting way. And then more tears. Genuine tears, heartache tears, like it had come upon her all at once that she had lost her mom. Her mom had died. She says that matter-of-factly to people, “My mom died.” It is a thing that has happened.

But the calling out for her mommy, the lamenting, is something else altogether. It happens in private with just me and her grandpa. It is a four-year-old’s grief.

We come home and go in the kitchen. She pulls out the silverware drawer and sits underneath. She says the lights are too bright, so I turn them off and turn on the softer light over the sink. She watches while I peel sweet potatoes. The tears are still coming but she isn’t sobbing. She is just saying “I want my mommy.”

I hug her and tell her I am sorry that her mommy is gone. That we miss her, too. And I know that to be true because I went through the second drawer of my desk today and I found the one of the pictures of her mom that I had been looking for to display at her memorial service, the one with her in her high school graduation gown, her head buried in her dad’s shoulder and her dad looking so goofy and proud. It broke my heart.

Whose grief is whose?

I know this much. My granddaughter’s grief has taken my mind off my own. The need to surround her and protect her has superseded any grief or loss I let myself feel. But all of this is getting harder to stow away.

In the drawer I found a tiny Little Mermaid figurine. My granddaughter saw the figurine on my desk and asked to take her in a bath. She asked if her mom played with that Little Mermaid and I said maybe because I couldn’t remember but probably yes. I don’t remember all the things. There is an avalanche heading toward me and I have nothing on but shorts and an old t-shirt.

That is what I know about grief right now. Nothing.