Transcriber: Toka Ahmed Reviewer: David DeRuwe
I hate the things people say to me when I’m grieving:
“I’m so sorry for your loss.” “Hang in there.”
“What do you need?” “How are you?”
I’m thinking to myself,
“You’re not as sorry as me. My mother back - that’s what I need.
I’m hanging on by a thread,
and do you want the truth, a lie, or somewhere in between?”
Now, deep down, I feel bad for hating the things that people are saying to me
because I know that I am guilty of saying some of those same things too
when people are grieving,
Grief makes people uncomfortable.
We don’t know how to create space for people who are going through grief.
The five stages:
denial, bargaining, anger, acceptance, isolation.
People think that you need to work through these stages in an orderly fashion
in order to get back to living,
that grief is somehow a limitation on living,
so if you go through these stages, you can get back to life, right?
Wrong.
Grief isn't separate from living. Period.
I have been living 831 days without my mother,
1180 days without my grandmother,
7619 days without my grandfather.
I have been living with and working through grief
since I was 14 years old and lost my grandfather,
but even that grief experience could not prepare me
for the one-two punch of losing my mom and my granny in the same year in 2019
and going through a global pandemic with this fresh grief.
As I laid on my couch in between Zoom calls, “Tiger King,”
and my 15th trip to the fridge,
(Laughter)
I thought about my life.
I am a millennial at this crossroads.
I am hitting this good and grown stage, and I’m living where I want to live,
and I’m also doing a whole host of other adult things
like turning the lights off when I leave the room
because it’s my light bill that I’m running up,
(Laughter)
and I thought about life and the fragility of it,
in particular, when it came to my family.
I’d finally come to terms with the fact that my mom
and my granny had gone home to be with their ancestors on the other side,
and I’m left here living without them.
So how do you live with this grief?
I didn’t plan for this, and now I have questions:
Who will teach me how to be a mother when my time comes?
Who will I talk to when my husband wants to watch yet another Marvel thing
Disney Plus has put out?
(Laughter)
And most importantly, am I still me without them?
You see, grief is waking up in the morning looking good, feeling good, smelling good,
and all of a sudden, your mind turns to wondering,
“Why didn’t I pick up the phone that day when my mom called.”
And then it’s anger, a quick collab with depression,
and it’s off to a work meeting.
So how do you live with grief?
Recognize that your process is exactly that - yours.
My mom always told me nobody can make you do or feel anything.
As human beings, we make a conscious choice on what we're going to feel
and how we’re going to act, and that’s how we communicate.
For me, talking about my mom, my granny, and my grandfather
is my process - to know them is to know me.
Why else do you think I applied for this TEDx experience?
Talking about them is my process.
For you in your grief, it may be quietly journaling
or sitting in a parked car and having an ugly cry until you have nothing left.
Do you boo?
We all have to get comfortable with allowing people to grieve
in the way that it’s most authentic to them.
Finding your village.
I’ve come to the conclusion that grief was never meant to be spent alone.
I’m going to take you to church for just a moment - the book of “Job.”
Job was a man of great faith, wealth, health, and prosperity,
and then, boom, everything was taken from him.
Job was grieving hard.
His life had become messier than a “Real Housewives” reunion,
(Laughter)
and his friends knew that.
And yet they came to sit with Job,
and albeit most of that time for that week was spent in silence,
they sat with him anyway.
Even though grief made them uncomfortable, they cared about Job.
It is about finding the people
who are intertwined with the DNA of your heart:
my dad, my husband, my in-laws, my Elmhurst University family,
and all of those who collectively sat with me,
held me in my grief in my deepest, darkest moment
when all I wanted to do was go sit out in the cemetery and never come home.
They’re the ones who made me able to stand in this moment to speak to you today.
There is no timeline.
Your job may have given you a week, a day, two weeks,
or have been kind enough to say, “Hey, tell us how much time do you need?”
But somehow, society pulls us back to the status quo of normalcy.
I am here to tell you that there is no normal to go back to.
My grief didn’t stop just because my job gave me two weeks of bereavement.
Grief was still with me, holding me, hugging me, walking with me.
Grief has no timeline because it is a lifetime.
831 days later, I am still grieving, but that grief has changed.
Sometimes it’s laughter and joy.
It is rereading the thank you notes from Elmhurst students
who loved my mother as a professor.
It is wearing my grandmother’s pearls on a Sunday.
It is being a fully integrated self -
Zoom calls, work projects, grief, and all.
You may be wondering if I ever figured out
the answer to my most important question: “Am I still me without them?”
The answer is yes. I am still me.
What felt like all-consuming heartbreak and devastation
turned into embers of something different and beautiful.
What had me in a pause and an ellipsis moment
to remember what was, to be present for what is,
and to manifest what has yet to be for my life.
Grief is not the limitation.
It has shown me that I am limitless, that I am me in spite of my grief.
I am deeply-rooted in the lifelines that were Deirdre, my mother,
Juanita, my grandmother, and Edgar, my grandfather.
I am living, breathing, ...
building with their lifelines forever intertwined with mine.
They are the grounding beneath my feet, the very rhythm of my heartbeat.
I am still me. And I am still living.
(Applause)