A month ago (almost exactly) I wrote a post about the numbers and how they no longer bring me comfort. This week I found myself faced with a prompt about the math of grief – so today I will write about numbers and math and grief from a different perspective. It may not seem very mathy at first, but hang in there.
Before last year, I was someone who was generally optimistic. I believed that if I worked hard enough, did enough research, got to my appointments on time, worked at creating opportunity – that my life would work out. There may be ups and downs, obstacles to overcome, challenges to face… but that fundamentally, things would be okay. I am a privileged person and I understand that led to most of my optimism. I come from a middle-class military family and earned an excellent scholarship to a well-regarded university, and fell into a job with a company after graduation where I’m still employed today, 14 years later. It wasn’t my 1st choice at the time, but I’m glad it’s where I ended up.
I went to grad school, got my CPA license, exited my first serious relationship, dated off and on over the years but stayed pretty focused on my career. I assumed that eventually, things would work out and I would meet someone and get married. Then I hit age 30…31… I started getting a little nervous. Until Sara came along, right before I turned 32. I knew right away that she was special, and that she and I were special together. It didn’t take long for me to decide I wanted to ask her to spend the rest of her life with me – though when she said yes, we both figured we had at least 25, if not 35 years left together.
We spent one day looking at 5 houses in 2016 – put an offer on the last one we looked at that day, and after a quick negotiation were awarded the contract – my first time buying a home. Our wedding came together in a matter of months – when we moved into our house in September we immediately decided we wanted to get married there in the fall – why wait? Nov 18, 2016 that’s just what we did, the day before my 33rd birthday. It was a beautiful day, perfectly us – we loved it.
Life went on, and then 2019 happened… and the entire premise I’d lived my life around, that things would work out and be okay in the long run, was decimated. The math no longer worked. We found a fantastic oncologist for Sara and a great midwife group for me and we both went to all our appointments and we stayed positive to the best of our abilities and we accepted all the prayers and woo and cosmic love that people would sent our way. But everything fell apart. 1 + 1 no longer equaled 2. Somehow it came out to zero.
Don’t get me wrong – things certainly could’ve been worse from a practical perspective. I had amazing support from my employer and was able to take care of myself and Sara without worrying about losing my job, which is an incredible privilege that many, many people in the US don’t have. The >$10k (probably >12k – I don’t remember right now) in medical bills we encountered last year didn’t bankrupt us – also a privilege.
That said, the math of grief – it doesn’t really take those “positives” into account. It’s not simple addition & subtraction. When I held vigil over Sara on her last day here – all I knew was that my world was being torn apart. There were no positives, no at-least’s, no be-grateful-for’s that could do ANYTHING to lessen the pain of going from a couple married for 2 1/2 years who were deeply in love and trying to have a baby, to a couple grieving their son, to just me – a widower grieving his son and his wife, 2 1/2 weeks before our 3rd wedding anniversary.
I do acknowledge that others without my privilege end up with more layers of grief – that of financial instability, food instability and/or housing instability as a direct result of their losses. I cannot fathom my grief being harder than it is, but I know that many have it more complicated than I. It’s almost as if the math of grief can go infinitely negative – but no amount of positives can ever bring you back to where you started. There is an fissure created by such grief that cannot be mended no matter the efforts.
Now, 8 months (to the day) since Sara died, the math still doesn’t work. From an external perspective, my life probably looks okay (quarantine notwithstanding). I still have a job that I like with a company I respect. I have friends and family who love me. I’ve made some changes around the house but nothing too extreme. All that said, the grief’s still there… and it hasn’t dulled one bit. It’s always going to be there. No amount of life-going-right can make up for the loss of Sara and George.
Who knows what life is going to be like years from now. It might look beautiful for me, but no matter the beauty, no matter the joy, no matter the love – there’s always going to be a part of me that is broken, a part of me that is grieving Sara and George and what our life was supposed to be together. The math of grief just doesn’t allow for anything else.