Grief. It’s a funny thing. Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, all the stages played before you, something happens. You’ll be brushing your teeth, leaning over the sink to rinse out the paste and it’ll get stuck. You’ll hear her voice; think she’s calling you from the kitchen. You spit out the paste and watch it make swirls into the running water. Slowly saying to yourself, It isn’t her voice, and she’s not calling you from the kitchen.

But there you are, tooth brush in hand running down the stairs to the kitchen. Breathlessly staring at an empty table where a chair has been placed. The chair in her spot at the table, where for the last two years there wasn’t one so her wheel chair would fit. But there it is, empty and laughing at you. Snickering.

When it first happened you didn’t know what to do or how to act. Everyone showering you with this sympathy. Your sister is heaving sobs on your shoulders, while Mom can’t even walk down the aisle without the help of your brother and father. And all of those people in the church, packed in the pews, weeping over the same thing, don’t matter to you. You’re eyes are blurry, like your wearing glasses that have been dragged through a parking lot, trying to remember the last time you saw her. The last smile you shared, the last laugh. The last time she said your name completely, even before the stroke. That’s the voice you hear now.

Nana’s voice before the stroke that slurred her words and made her one eye get that fleck. Her “wide-awake Winston” blue eyes, and the left one with the fleck in it. Those eyes that hold all of your love. Those eyes that no one has. Not even Great Aunt Jene or Great Uncle Brian. When you see them, though, it still makes you cry, because they are so close to hers, so damn close, that you get lost trying to find Nana’s warm arms behind them. Their eyes don’t even compare to Nana’s, you know that deep down. But you always look for her when you see them. No matter how much it hurts.

The pain doesn’t go away really either. You mask it well. But you must never forget her. So you live with the pain. You put it into a little dust pile in your heart and pretend that your walking on air. Sing songs. Tell jokes. Talk about someone else, talk about something else. Talk about anything else that won’t disturb the house of cards holding your sanity together. But it doesn’t matter at all anymore. You still think about her, and how much you miss her.

When your day is autumn and the leaves change you miss her because she would have sat on the porch painting it. She would have asked you to open the jar of paint for her. It is funny after all, how much you miss her. How much the grief makes a mockery of her love; of your love for her.

All the “well-wishers” tell you that she wants you to be happy and live your life, Bridge. But when you are happy and living your life, it gets worse. You feel irreverent and lonely. You want to share it with her so badly you find yourself talking to a picture or a piece of jewelry; a coat. It’s those same “well-wishers” who don’t make it any easier when good things do happen. They mention her as if you had forgotten. As if you didn’t already come to that realization. The bitter realization that yes it would have been fucking nice if Nana could be here to see this.

Anger. That’s a stage you often want to go back to. There was palpable sting at your core. Everything you drank was like a bee-sting cocktail, everything you ate went down like thin strips of metal splintering into your esophagus. The pain was so real you could name it, feel it, and then be so exhausted from the taxing toll it was taking, you could sleep well. Remember sleep?

That’s another way grief gets you. As if living with the gerbil doing its 500,000th spin on the wheel isn’t enough, grief finds a way to tiptoe into your sleep as well. You’ll be dreaming something normal, like buying groceries with your kindergarten teacher at the zoo. And then in the check out line you’ll see her trying to get out of a car in the parking lot. You’re running, sprinting, jumping over animals, to get to her before she falls. You want to help her out of the car so badly you are pushing the lines of people and chimps out of your way. Pushing them hard. Kicking when necessary. You’re about to get to her; you are so close and just in time because she’s going to fall onto the pavement. That’s when your boyfriend wakes you up. It’s very dark out. That blue-black time of night, but you can see his eyes are filled with confusion. You were screaming and kicking me, telling me to get the hell out of the way, he says holding your shaking shoulders. The only thing you manage to say before the tears start to soak the pillow is, she was going to fall.

He doesn’t understand. None of them do. They didn’t know you when she was alive, they didn’t know her at all. How can anyone every really get to know you without knowing how much she means to you? How much you love her, and how great she is? But then that’s the other great thing about the grief: it ensures that it will stay on life support in you forever. Even if you get settled into a routine with new people and close friends, there comes the time when they ask some kind of a question that makes you say, oh no, she passed away.

It’s not only boyfriends either. Sometimes telling the boyfriends and new people is easier. Because they don’t see how much it hurts you to say it. They don’t see the flinch your eyes make while the words are coming out of your mouth. Only the close friends of yours know what to look for. Telling Jess in Susan’s kitchen while washing the dishes, and Mrs. Laganella at her dinning room table.

Both of them have known you since birth. Both of them hadn’t known about it. Grief rages its ugly head sitting next to you while you tell it again. Mrs. Laganella bumps right into the elephant in your room. You are having such a lovely dinner, when you say something inferring to her passing. Mrs. Lag stops cold, and puts her hands in prayer pose to her lips. You don’t want to look up from your cavatelli and broccoli. Oh no Bridget, no. She didn’t know. But you have to tell her, and you have to tell her right then and there.

Your new friends would think you are quite composed. You have an easy way in telling it, because you don’t want to really think about it. But Mrs. Lag knows. She shakes her head back and forth disbelieving. She feels what you are trying so hard not to show. Grief wins that round.

It wins every round, because you are engrossed in it. Everything you own, everything you do reminds you of her. You want her to be around and not just one more day. You want her to be here forever. But you can’t. So to get through it you make up games. For the first weeks after her passing you counted, a week ago today, two weeks ago. Now it has become months, one year and 11 months ago. You also catch the clock at 11:11, many times by accident but equally as many times on purpose. You fathom, it’s Nana’s way of check in and saying Hi!

Looking at yourself from afar you realize just how pathetic your life has become. Just how much you don’t believe she’s dead. How morbid your actions are now. Everyone who looks at you and hears the clock story immediately thinks you tragic. You are not the same bubbly, smart and funny Bridget. You are damaged goods, an infomercial of a normal looking product with a lemon in its box. You are a crazed twenty year old holding a wet toothbrush in your kitchen staring at a chair that shouldn’t be there, hearing voices that don’t exist.

Grief. It’s a funny thing. Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, all the stages played before you, something happens.