Translator: Rosa Baranda Reviewer: Megan Mrozek
She forgot one very important thing, which was 'extremely sweaty person'.
(Laughter)
If you're wondering like,
'How do you get through an event like this?'
I had napkins in my armpits earlier.
I was like, 'Remind me to take these out',
but instead, they fell through the bottom of my skirt.
(Laughter)
So it's just an efficient way of sweat absorption,
and that is the topic of my talk tonight.
(Laughter)
So, it's going to be a good one.
I don't know about the rest of you, but for me the year 2014 was ...
a doozy?!
I miscarried my second child on October 3rd.
On October 8th, my father died;
he had had esophageal cancer for six months,
and then it just went everywhere.
And on November 25th,
my husband Aaron died of brain cancer, after three years,
and he was 35 years old.
So, as you can tell,
(Laughter)
I'm known for being the kind of woman who just brings up the energy
in any room she steps into.
It's not just you; people say that about me.
People are like, 'We should invite Nora over. She's so fun!'
(Laughter)
'She's like, always talking about the worst things.
We love it!'
(Laughter)
So, all of that happened, and I was completely fine.
I was fine!
I wrote a book for Harper Collins;
I started this non-profit in honor of my husband Aaron,
and eventually, I started a podcast with American Public Media.
So what proof do you need that I haven't already given to you?
People ask you this question a lot when your husband dies.
And I answered always the same way
that I'd answered since before my life fell apart.
I said, 'I'm fine.'
Duh.
I did this for two reasons:
One, because I didn't think I was lying.
I'm - if you can't tell -
I'm a white woman
(Laughter)
who is straight and able-bodied and has most of her immediate needs met,
so I am OK.
(Laughter)
And two, I knew it was what everyone wanted to hear.
And you know that too
because at least once a day, a co-worker asks, 'How are you?'
and they don't even wait for the answer.
And your answer could be
'Thank you for asking because I'm having a nervous breakdown.'
It doesn't matter, because Janice is already in the conference room.
She's got the printouts, she's got the dial-in,
she's ready to start.
(Laughter)
And I'm guilty of that too.
I'm also a person who has taken a huge and meaningful question
and reduced it to small talk.
If people even asked me how I was at my husband's funeral,
and I said, 'I'm very sweaty, and I wish I was wearing more deodorant.'
(Laughter)
And that was basically the most honest I was for a very long time.
This is a very important number.
I want all of you to look at it,
commit it to memory,
make it a part of your lives.
It's my college GPA.
(Laughter)
(Audience) Wooh!
Thank you!
(Laughter)
I think that it's a shame that we work so hard for four years,
and then no one cares about that number.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
I'm not OK with that.
I'm not OK
with dedicating so much time to something that people will say,
'You're 34. Take it off your resumé.'
(Laughter)
Why?
I'll take it off my resumé and I'll put it in a TED Talk!
(Laughter)
(Applause) (Cheering)
I'm telling you this because I loved getting good grades,
my entire life.
So all of that stuff happened,
I lost that many people, and I thought,
'I'm going to go,
and I'm going to get an A in grief.'
Why wouldn't I, right?
I mean, I'd gone from being a great student,
to having a good career,
to being a pretty good girlfriend,
to finding myself in the unexpected role of cancer wife,
which I was very good at.
Aaron and I dated for one year
before he was sitting at work and he had a seizure at his desk
and he was rushed to the emergency room,
where they did all kinds of tests and they told us, 'He has a brain tumor.'
And then we found out that the kind of brain tumor he had
was a stage 4 glioblastoma,
which is a medical term for 'very bad brain cancer'.
(Laughter)
I Googled it.
It's really bad.
A month after his first brain surgery, Aaron and I got married -
in this Coca-Cola commercial.
(Laughter)
A year after that, we had our son Ralph.
He's cute.
(Laughter)
And then we just lived our lives.
We worked 40 hours a week, we took two weeks of PTO,
we separated our garbage from the recycling,
we mowed our lawn, we just did life stuff.
And in between, we did the cancer stuff.
And those were the hardest years of my life so far,
but they were also the happiest years of my life.
Because I was doing a good job for Aaron.
And right before he died, when we were lying in bed,
I'm suddenly filled with this wave of doubt, and I asked him,
'Was I any good at this? Did I do a good job for you?'
And he said, 'No,
(Laughter)
you did a great job.'
So I got my A in cancer,
my grief point average.
I just thought of that, but - right? Pretty good.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
My grief point average was already pretty high,
but now I wanted an A plus in grief itself.
And what would that even mean?
I had no proximity to traumatic loss.
My grandparents died, and that was sad,
but they were also old, so it wasn't tragic.
The only reference I had happened in 7th grade:
My uncle Tom worked construction, and he had an accident at work, he fell.
And he was in a coma, and he died shortly thereafter.
This was my mother's little brother.
And I saw my parents' devastation when the accident happened,
I saw them fall apart when he died, I saw them weep at his funeral,
and then I didn't see anything.
And I know now that it wasn't over for my mother.
I know it will never be over for my mother;
she's Irish catholic, one of nine.
It does not super matter that the eight surviving siblings
are not all on speaking terms.
(Laughter)
It's like a very complicated web of who is and who isn't cool with one another,
but it doesn't matter; that is a very deep and loyal love.
It's always there.
But what I saw was that grief ends with the funeral,
when the casket closes, when the headstone is laid,
but Aaron was cremated, and he didn't have a regular funeral.
We filled an art space in Northeast Minneapolis
with a thousand friends and family, and I think some strangers.
(Laughter)
And we served cheesecake and beer and wine,
and I had too much of one of them,
(Laughter)
and ended up at an afterparty at a karaoke bar,
where I sang Meatloaf's 'Anything for love'.
(Laughter) (Applause)
You should be clapping because it's 19 minutes long!
(Laughter)
And it's a duet, and I sang both parts! -
(Laughter)
(Applause)
after explicitly being asked not to by the staff.
(Laughter)
We'll get into that later.
So ...
it wasn't over,
but it felt like it was, and I didn't know where to go.
A hundred years ago, I would have taken a cue from Queen Victoria
and I would have dressed all in black,
maybe for months, maybe for the rest of my life,
and that widow costume would have been a symbol,
and it also would have been a signal
to people who knew me and to total strangers,
like, 'That's a woman who's been through something,
(Laughter)
for sure.
Maybe don't engage.'
(Laughter)
'You never know what she's going to cry about.'
(Laughter)
But in 2014 Minneapolis,
when you are a 31-year-old widowed mother,
nothing happens.
The rituals were done,
and the grief was just beginning,
and the problem was there wasn't any time for it
because I live in a culture that has standardized and compartmentalized grief.
We have it figured out in the immediate aftermath of a loss, OK?
It starts with Hallmark.
We are going to find something non-denominational and vague.
(Laughter)
Maybe a floral, maybe a landscape;
it will not say 'death', 'dying', 'dead' or 'die' in the card,
it will offer 'sincere condolences' or 'warm condolences' -
which to me sound like a baked good that I would love to eat.
(Laughter)
I mean, I will take a warm condolence, thank you!
(Laughter)
These are so flaky!
(Laughter)
Send me your recipe!
We feed you.
It doesn't matter if you are not hungry
or if you have no appetite.
If we see that your heart is broken,
we'll try to mend it with carbs and cheese.
We will just heal you with a hot dish and ask you to return the pan.
(Laughter)
And then we'll show up in all black or something appropriately morose,
and we'll stand around ackwardly,
and we will maybe return to a basement
in a building that we only go to when something bad happens,
and eat some ham sandwiches.
And then we will just move on with our lives
because it's over!
When you lose someone,
your standard American grief process will go something like this:
Tuesday your husband dies - I'm so sorry.
Friday, you're going to have the funeral,
and then Monday, you have to go back to work.
And if you think I'm exaggerating, I urge you to review your HR policies.
Because most American companies offer five days of bereavement leave
when you lose your spouse.
Now, it's a different story if you lose a parent or a child or a brother
because then you'll get two days.
And if you lose a grandparent or an uncle or a best friend,
you could -
I suppose you could use some PTO,
or maybe you'll have a manager who looks the other way.
And also this assumes you have a full-time salaried position,
and if you don't, I guess you just don't get to be sad.
Whatever specific grief traditions your heritage has,
they have to fit within their HR policy because your hiring packet was very clear:
if you lose the love of your life,
you will report back to that cubicle within five business days.
Warm condolences.
The problem here is not just our bereavement policies
or the fact that we live in a culture
that puts bereavement and policy in the same sentence,
it is this pervasive idea that we should be good and we should be efficient
at something that is messy and is impossible to master.
This is a news story about Aaron's obituary.
He and I wrote it before he died, and it went viral,
and it kind of explains how I ended up with a book and a podcast and this talk.
That message went everywhere;
that obituary -
fun fact: they're not fact-checked.
(Laughter)
Go home and write whatever you'd like!
(Laughter)
That obituary went everywhere, and then my inbox filled up,
and it was filled with people who were basically saying,
'I'm going through this awful thing, and I wish I were stronger;
I wish I were more like you',
and I thought, 'Like me?!
The me who is filled with a hot boiling lava of grief
just below the surface?
Who lets it spill out indiscriminately
and burn bridges and relationships from her past, willy-nilly?
The me who is so lonely
she can't get into bed without half a bottle of wine first?
Or the me that I was presenting to the world?
The me who was traveling, the me who was still putting on makeup?
The me who pretty much looked as fine as she said she was?'
These people weren't spilling their guts to a stranger on the Internet
because they didn't have friends and family;
they had friends and family who assumed
that this awful thing was best left untalked about,
who thought that the person emailing me was fine,
probably because they said they were.
Why, in the face of tragedy, do we just return to small talk?
Why is it that I ask how you are without wanting to know the answer
and you reply to me with a lie?
And I'm not saying you should leave this auditorium
and go to Wallgreens and unload your emotional baggage on the checkout person.
(Laughter)
That's not appropriate.
And that's what I do.
(Laughter)
That role is spoken for.
(Laughter)
You'll find your own retail establishment.
(Laughter)
OK?
What I am saying is that loss is always lonely;
it's lonely even if you're surrounded by people who love you, like I was,
and like I somehow still am.
And I made that lonelier myself.
Every time I said 'fine', I put that word between me and the people who loved me,
and I made it impossible for them to see me
or know me or help me in any way.
I made myself this lonely little prison,
and three years later, I'm still trying to break out of it like the Kool-Aid Man.
And I don't want that for you.
I don't want that for anyone!
Because that was a commercial, and it's not as easy as it looks.
(Laughter)
Truly, I think it all comes down to this.
Everyone in this room knows what it is like to lose someone,
and if you don't, just wait!
(Laughter)
This is why I'm so popular.
(Laughter)
Because I am the kind of person who will sit at dinner with you
and remind you that everyone you love is going to die, OK?
I will remind you that sometimes parents have to bury their children
but children will always lose their parents.
That the young die too young,
and that the old die after everyone they love ...
(Sighs)
I'm a blast!
(Laughter)
What grief has taught me
is that the beauty of life is in moments like this.
It's in these moments of respite between losses,
but also, that there is beauty in grief too,
and it is not something that you are supposed to ace.
It's not something that you can ace;
it's not something to be rushed through, it's not something to be cured,
and it isn't small talk.
So, like, what do we do?
(Laughter)
What now?
People always ask me that, like, 'Nora, you know so many dead people.
What do we do?'
(Laughter)
I do.
And I'm like, 'I don't know!'
I know that we need to stop acting as if there's a standared -
'Standared'?
Google it, 'Standared'? Is that how you say that word?
I do know that we need to stop acting
as if there's a standard operating procedure for grief,
and like grief would care if we made one.
And I know that this question acts as if there is,
so here is what I am proposing.
I will swear
that I won't ask you this question
unless I actually want to hear the answer,
if you will swear that you won't reply with anything except the truth.
Because everyone we love will die,
and we can't protect one another from that,
we can't shield each other from that loss,
but we can do so much better than just fine.
(Applause) (Cheers)