Julia P.
Photography by Jessica Pentel
If you’re reading this, your grief is not a burden.
I talk about my mom a lot. Her name was May. She stood tall at four feet and eleven inches, and she had gorgeous, dark, wavy hair that laid effortlessly on her shoulders, always bouncing as she carried herself throughout space. She was remarkably witty, often making jokes at her own expense just so the room never got quiet. And her laugh—it was a sound so generous in quantity and somehow the perfect harmonic tone that could carry itself through our entire home. I hesitate to say that it was a contagious laugh because most of the time, her laugh was so perfect and so charming that people would just sit there and smile and hope it never stopped, resisting the urge to join in as they might potentially overpower the sound. I miss that laugh.
For the past year and a half, I have wanted to talk about my mom every day, because I think about her every day. I see her in the falling leaves outside my door and in smiles from strangers. I smell her in freshly made adobo and warm cookies, and I can hear her in the chapel bell that chimes each hour. I can feel her in my soul when I hug my friends—those hugs that start as a squeeze and end as an extended hold, because one more second of closeness might sew up all of the hurt. She is everywhere because she is nowhere. I feel her constantly.
But for the past year and a half, I have struggled so much in stopping myself from talking about her. Would bringing her up ruin the mood? Are people sick of hearing me talk about her? Am I a perpetually sad person? What if people stop inviting me to social gatherings because they just don’t want to hear about it? What about my friends who never got to meet her—do they even care?
For the past year and a half, I felt like such a burden. I often still do. I frequently feel needy and dramatic, undeserving of care because I have necessitated care for so long. I feel frustrated that nobody understands my specific grief, then annoyed with myself that I had any expectation of someone understanding. With grief comes so much internal dissonance, a constant wondering of what is too much and what is too little, what you deserve and what you can never have.
But very recently, I watched an interview where Andrew Garfield spoke about the death of his own mother. In it, he describes how we never have enough time with one another, no matter how old our loved ones are when they leave us. This is achingly true. But my favorite part is when he says this: “I hope this grief stays with me, because it’s all the unexpressed love that I didn’t get to tell her… and I told her every day.”
To love someone is never a burden, and if grief is unexpressed love, then grieving someone is never a burden either. We all deserve to be surrounded by people who not only let us grieve in our preferred ways, but who also want that for us. I have been fortunate enough to find people who constantly remind me that my grief is not a burden, and who ask me consistently about my mom because they are grieving her, too.
I am still learning how to live with my grief, trying to navigate how to build the rest of my life around this wound that nothing may ever be able to mend. But I know that there is no time limit on my processing, and no expectations or milestones that must be met. Grief does not inhibit you from joy or laughter or new moments of love—if anything, it makes those feelings deeper and more sacred. I have never felt more human than I have in the past year and a half.
I hope that if you’re reading this—whether you have lost someone close to you or not—you know your grief is always valid and real and never requires an explanation. Grief is heartbreaking, exhausting, comedic, and confusing. Nobody can tell you exactly how to grieve your person just as nobody can tell you exactly how you loved them.
I don’t know what healing looks like, or if I ever want to fully heal from this. Sometimes the tinges of pain in my heart are a reminder that she was real—that my love for her was real. But I do know that I deserve to feel it all, to allow this grief to stay with me forever, and to be surrounded by people who want me to grieve. And I know that you deserve it, too.
“Andrew Garfield Interview - The Late Show”
Julia P., University of Virginia
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