Wintergrass

Loss can be a place where beauty starts.

The first time I met TJ, he was interviewing me. Not for a job, but for a podcast he was hosting for the radio show he was working on at the time. I noticed his big curly hair and big dark eyes and nice square, even teeth. I remember his shoes—black Adidas—and I also remember his attention to detail. He was like a surgeon in the studio. I’d never seen a performer also act like a scientist; his accuracy—even in the way he sound-checked me—held my attention. The right sided creative and intuitive part of my brain is dominant. But he was sitting across from me with both sides of his brain—creative, intuitive, as well as logical and analytical—chugging along in tandem. I was mesmerized.

We will always have a recording of our first conversation and a photo someone took right after we’d wrapped. I awkwardly asked if I could hug him as I was leaving his studio. I didn’t know if that was normal, didn’t know if it was as strange as, say, asking to hug your doctor at the end of your check-up, but I went with my gut. He said sure, and gave me a very polite hug. Definitely not a hug that made me think we’ll probably make babies before too long. Good thing, because that kind of hug would have scared me.

I think about the year leading up to that day. There were moments I was so profoundly sad, I wondered if I’d come back. My prayers became vague. I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. The things I’d wanted had hurt me. I mostly just asked for help; I knew I could do that honestly. There had been a husband who’d fallen in love with someone else. There was another boy who’d left because he couldn’t heal me, after all. I moved to New York City and felt like a ghost. I’d walk through a city that was so vibrantly alive—still, it felt like a snow globe. I could touch it, sure, but couldn’t fully enter in. I watched it and wondered what was left. I wondered if life on the outside would be enough.

But there were times I forgot myself. I walked to the nearby bodega and bought food for the week. I was on my own for the first time ever, and, eventually, felt a little strong about it. I bought the tiniest milk container, smiled because I thought it was so cute. Surely, someone who is smiling at milk must be living, I suspected. I splurged on fruit snacks, mixed berry. Ten year old Jess would be thrilled at this, I thought.

There is an American poet named Gregory Orr whose childhood was eclipsed by a tragedy. The first time his father took him hunting, he accidentally shot and killed his younger brother. He manages to make beautiful poetry—entire worlds from words—out of this single, tragic event. My favorite restaurant in Boston was called Island Creek Oyster Bar (RIP; it didn’t make it through Covid), and it boasted a stunning wall of pearly white. Upon closer inspection, you could see the wall was actually thousands of oyster shells. Isn’t this just like art: creation from a thousand deaths. Castles from bones, gardens from the seeds of plants that have bloomed their last.

In his poem, Not To Make Loss Beautiful, Gregory Orr writes:

Not to make loss beautiful,

but to make loss the place where beauty starts.

Where the heart understands for the first time

the nature of its journey.

Love, yes.

The body of the beloved as the gift bestowed.

But only temporarily.

Given freely,

but now to be earned.

Given, without thought,

and now loss has made us thoughtful.

Orr talks about how, being raised in a religious home, he was forced into what he calls premature consolation. Wanting to spare a twelve year old of the horror of grief over his own brother who was now dead by his own hand—albeit, accidentally—his community rushed him into, “It’s okay, because he’s in heaven now!” There was an effort to make the loss itself beautiful. And it wasn’t. It was ugly, unfair, never meant to be. But he wasn’t allowed to wrestle with the truth. Instead, he was assured that everything happens for a reason—a sentiment so shallow, it didn’t allow him into the depth of grief the crisis of his brother’s death called him to.

Not to make loss beautiful,

(Or meant to be)

(Or praise worthy because of heaven)

But!

But to allow grief to take us through the darkness and eventually find that loss can be a place where beauty starts.

Where God meets us.

Even here?

(Even here.)

I think about the days after my divorce and my subsequent heartache over a relationship that was for-a-season-but-not-forever. I was sad for a very long time. I marveled at the river within; for how else did I produce such a steady, seemingly unending flow of tears. In an interview in which Gregory Orr discusses grief, he says simply, “The way forward, I think, is also through more dark.”

There is a story in the Old Testament where the Israelites who, having been freed from slavery in Egypt, are on their way to the Promised Land. But, unexpectedly—and on the path God has mapped out for them—they are bitten by poisonous snakes—some of the Israelites are even dying. Terror ensues and God tells their leader Moses to melt down gold into a statue of a snake and to hold it high, so whenever anyone is bit, they can simply face the image of the snake, trust in God, their Healer, and they will be healed.

The way forward is also through more dark.

In the dark, we face the thing that feels insurmountable.

The thing that has broken us; the thing that has bitten us.

This might be an early iteration of what modern psychologists refer to as exposure therapy. To choose to see what is terrifying us. To do it with intention, head on.

After my son Luca died right before his due date, I remember going through the clothes I’d bought for him. I went through the box tenderly—taking inventory of each piece slowly, a ritual of grief. Before that, I’d held his body, touched his face, kept him on me as long as they let me. I faced his death then, and I faced it again and again. Now I wake with it, and it is not the sharp glass it once was. It doesn’t cut me like it did then. It’s now a familiar weight, I have learned to move with this stone in my pocket, this boulder on my chest. It is an anchor, I am okay, I miss him, I have him still, I miss him more than have him. I have him still.

I do not understand exactly how the winter feeds the spring, but I know it does. When I was grieving, I found myself at a youth retreat, helping to lead worship. I was also a little shocked by the temerity of what churches do to youth. All the yelling, the psyching up, the rizz, as the kids say. It’s fun, it’s not wrong—but I didn’t understand it against the backdrop of my grief. I wanted ancient texts that stood the test of time. Old prophets that assured humans just like me that laughter comes after weeping, that joy comes in the morning. I didn’t need a dare, I needed lament. Less rending of clothes, more rending of hearts, to match my own.

It was February, and I took a walk outside in the deep snow. I felt God remind me that underneath the snow is the grass. Winter grass. It’s still there, even though I can’t see it. It will be green, visible, verdant and ubiquitous again. At some point, the air won’t hurt my face. I will be able to cross the barrier from inside to outside in whatever I slept in, the world a caress against my skin, the wind, a zephyr, a song, a harmony to my own breath. And the winter wasn’t wrong, it was simply now. As was grief.

No matter what I do, I cannot skip from Christmas to April. I have to walk through—embrace, even—the months that take me to spring. I have also noticed beauty there, too. I have seen the snow make new architecture of the trees; seen that a tired, grey world is one storm away from being washed white. I cannot rush winter. I cannot rush grief. I cannot rush the days that have brought me here. Somehow, they have become beautiful, too.

This is Frankie and I hanging out.

My book is available now here in paperback or on your e-reader. Thanks for reading!