The House of Grief - July 12th, 2021
And therein lies an overarching theme of grief: There is a very basic failure of language.
My dad’s funeral will be Friday, July 16th, at 11 AM. Viewing at 10 AM. It will take place at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Corvallis, Oregon. All are welcome.
We have decided to establish a scholarship in my dad’s memory for OSU College of Education students. In lieu of flowers, please consider a gift to my dad’s scholarship fund. Gifts can be made to the OSU Foundation at osufoundation.org or mailed to OSU Foundation, 4238 SW Research Way, Corvallis, OR 97333. Please indicate that the gift is in memory of Mike O'Malley.
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So much of the past 11 days has been about confronting emotions I didn’t (and don’t) understand. Before my dad died, I’d been sad, but I hadn’t been sad; I’d been angry, but I hadn’t been angry; I’d been lonely, but I hadn’t been lonely; I’d been restless, but I hadn’t been restless; I’d been in pain, but I hadn’t been in pain.
And therein lies an overarching theme of grief: There is a very basic failure of language.
In hindsight, none of the words I read before 11 days ago about grief, and longing, and pain, made any sense to me when I read them. Some of them still don’t, but at least now I know what someone meant when they said they felt empty, when they said they felt angry at the world, when they said they felt depressed.
When language fails, I think the answer can sometimes lie in analogy, or metaphor, or allegory. I think that maybe if I tell you I’m sad, you’ll be like, “Okay! I know what that means. And Emmett is experiencing that thing that I know.” Because that’s what I did for 23 years: I knew breakup sad, I knew basketball-loss sad, I knew failure sad, I knew social-catastrophe sad. And I figured those versions of sad were what people meant when they said they were sad. But the specificity of this sad probably requires a bit more time. So I’m going to try that.
I’m conscious of the fact that the 11 essays I’ve written since my dad died are gradually bending away from eulogy and towards introspection. Hopefully this essay makes a bit more sense of that. It’s hard to say anything is intentional in the middle of grief, so I won’t. But even if the below seems overwrought (it probably is!), just know that I’m trying to be intentional about it.
If only there were a person around who I could workshop every idea I’ve ever had with.
Many of the analogies about grief I’ve come across — the graphics and paragraphs you might have read that start with “Grief is…” or “Grief is like…” — involve water. Many of them say some version of “you don’t get over, you get through.” Many of them reference a somewhat common experience among grievers. Most of them mention grief in relationship to love.
None of them feel very personal. All of them seem right-ish. Many of them get set against backgrounds of flowers or oceans or mountains. (I wonder if Pinterest has a particularly high per-capita rate of grievers. Seems like it.)
For the past three days, as I’ve tried to figure out how to convey my grief, I have settled on the following as a rough analogy of my experience.
Here goes.
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When I found out my dad died — at 8:23 AM on Thursday, July 1st — I was dropped into a tub of water inside a dark room. In this tub, the spout was running, and the water was brimming. I had to figure out where I was, I had to get air, and I had to see how I could move and how I couldn’t.
By the time I was back in Oregon — about eight hours later — I’d started to figure out the walls of the tub, the temperature of the water, and the slickness of the floor. But I couldn’t turn the spout off, and I couldn’t drain the water faster than the new water was coming in. As long as I stayed in the tub, the water stayed at the surface; the spout kept running.
I was trying to shut the water off. But if I tried to shut it off, the valve just spun around in my hand. And it spins such that you keep thinking you’re about to get it — that you’re about to shut the water off. And just when you stop spinning the valve is when you have the thought, “Maybe I just need to try it this way.” And then you spin it more. And you don’t get any closer. And the water keeps running.
When you finally get so frustrated and pained by the spinning of the valve, when your hands and skin start to prune in the cold water you’re stuck in, when the frigid steel walls of the tub start to grate against your skin, you realize that maybe you can get out of the tub.
The room is dark. You don’t know where you are. But you realize that maybe you can get out of the tub.
So you stand up. The air bites at the water droplets that remain on your skin. The water is still running. And it’s still running just faster than it's draining. You realize you now know the equilibrium of your discomfort. You think you do.
If you choose to stay in the tub, you will let your skin prune and prune and prune, you will forget to eat, forget to drink, forget everything about your life from before you were in the tub. You can stay there, or you can get out. And at first, you can’t believe you have that choice. And you don’t know where to go once you get out. So you don’t move.
This is the Room of Pain. And when you stand up in the tub in the Room of Pain, you see that there is a small glimmer of light beneath a door. When your legs are sore and your feet feel like they’re cutting against the base of the steel tub — when your shoulders are shaking from either the cold or from the lack of food — you go towards that glimmer beneath the door.
You press on the door from which the light glimmers. It swings open, and inside this next room your best friends are waiting for you. They have food for you, they have clothes for you, they have laughs for you, they have games for you. You step into this room, and as you do, you stop hearing the water behind you. You step into the new room, the fun room, the laughter room, and everything seems...normal.
You stay in this new room. You think you can stay in this new room. It is warmer, and you can move inside of it. You know its walls. You might even seem okay. Sure, you’ll twitch more than usual, and you’ll jolt at any loud noise, but it will be okay. You’ll try to only let certain people into this room. You’re self-conscious about this room, because this new room will feel fine. You’ll like it. You are numb in here. There is junk food. There are bars. There are beautiful women. There are basketballs. There are funny stories from your past.
This is the Room of Denial. And while you’re in it, the spout in the Room of Pain only started spouting more intensely. The water is overflowing in the tub now. And it is leaking into the Room of Denial. Your feet are wet now. So you start trying to move faster, to talk more, to be more animated. Maybe you won’t notice how wet your feet are if you don’t stop moving. But your feet only get heavier and heavier. Your feet only get wetter and wetter.
And then one thing happens — maybe a song comes on, maybe a person you weren’t expecting shows up, maybe someone hugs you — and the water that’s overflowed in the Room of Pain sucks you back in.
And then you are back in the tub. Not eating. Asking yourself every goddamn question that ping pongs around in your mind.
The water is colder than it was before. And you’ve forgotten how to move around in the tub. You can’t find the walls, and you’re underwater again. And you’re alone again. And it’s square one again. And it’s July 1st at 8:23 AM again. And you just want to get back to the Room of Denial.
So you start thrashing harder than you did before. You are desperate to get back to the simple pleasures of the Room of Denial. And you bang into the cold steel walls of the tub. And the whole room is soaked. And you realize there is nothing else in the room. It is just you and the tub and the valve that won’t stop the water. And you have to get to the surface of the water before it gets to you. And you just want to get back to the Room of Denial.
You make plans to get back to the Room of Denial. You try to stand up again, you try to call the people who were in there with you. And you force yourself out of the Room of Pain. You’re back at the gym, you’re back on the bike, you’re back at your friend’s house.
You didn’t fix it, and you didn’t make things better. You just turned away. Your feet are wetter. But you’re back in the Room of Denial. And the tub — the one you will be back in soon — is only getting colder and staler and lonelier while you’re away.
It’s waiting there for you.
There is a third room in the House of Grief. But you have hardly been in it yet. It is visible from the the Room of Denial. It has books in it, it has therapy in it, it has stories in it. But it is hard to get to this other room from the Room of Denial. You cannot have what you have in the Room of Denial in this room. The only way into this third room is if you walk through the Room of Denial with your head down, moving past the beautiful distractions that will only temporarily blunt the pain of your loss before thrusting you back into the Room of Pain.
This third room is the Room of Learning. It is where all the people that have been through this before are. It is where the great books are, the thoughts on death, the meditations on life. It is where you can find solace, where you can connect with centuries of people who know pain, where you can find ways to support your family.
But it is so quiet in the Room of Learning. And it requires so much focus to stay there. It requires so much focus to not read one thing and be sucked back into the Room of Pain. It requires so much energy to not talk to one person and be back underneath the surface of the cold tub. It requires so much discipline to not leave the silence and solitude and struggle of the Room of Learning for the manic numbness of the Room of Denial.
And you can’t stay in the Room of Learning either. It is too tiresome. Too painful. Too brain-splitting. Too fucking exhausting.
And these three rooms — of pain, of denial, and of learning — together make up the House of Grief.
I am in the House of Grief. And I am in the Room of Denial. And I am in the Room of Pain. And I want to be in the Room of Learning.
And I want this analogy to make sense.
I want things to make sense.
Ack, Emmett, this is spot on. I’m so sorry you have to endure this terrible education — it’s not the kind of thing any of us wants to learn about, and especially not at 23 years old. Keep writing. These essays are astonishingly powerful. And they will, I trust, help you process this nonlinear journey, as you move in and out of the rooms, and eventually into other rooms. This will always be the “Before/After” moment in your life… with everything that happened before you lost your dad cast in one light, and everything after, in another. -Sue Rodgers
This analogy is absolutely accurate. I think what will change over time (a lot of time) is how long you spend in each room. The pain will be the same in the Room of Pain, but you won’t be there as often or for as long.