Contained

“There’s normal life,” my friend Grant said, “it’s like this glass. Everything is contained so we can get through our days. But grief… grief is a lake.”

I pictured Crater Lake. Crater Lake is a caldera of the bluest water, the deepest lake in the United States. It’s in the Cascade Range in Oregon, a line of volcanic peaks. Wizard Island is a spur of volcanic material that breaks the surface of the lake. You can take a boat there – I have not done this, I have only seen the island from the edge of the caldera – and stand surrounded by the bluest deepest lake in the United States.

About a year and a half ago, my stepfather, David, called to tell me he’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He didn’t have much time left, my brothers and I would need to help my mom. Oh, and he did not want me to write about it. Please don’t, he said, so I didn’t. He’s the one who had cancer; you respect the wishes of the dying.

I understand not wanting to be raw material. When you write about family, you run the risk of crossing a line, of alienating your people. The only thing I got from my brothers when I wrote about losing our Dad was a cursory sort of fact check – which I appreciated. I don’t know if my dad even read my writing. I know David did, because sometimes, he would tell me so and ask me questions about what I’d written, and once, he wrote a piece for me. If I wrote it, he would read it, so I didn’t write.

Grief is a lake of unwritten words.

I think I was barely 18 when my mom wrote to tell me she was getting remarried. “You’ll have a new dad,” she said, and I remember having none of that. My dad was hardly a role model, and I was too old, and halfway across the world already. I imagine my response — nope, he won’t be my “new dad” no way no how no thanks — seemed cruel at the time, but the handy filter of time has made me think what I would have said if I’d had the words was, “That ‘Dad’ thing didn’t really work out so great. What else have you got?”

What she had got was David. He liked things that were well made — I have a bookshelf he built to fit a specific space in my kitchen. Everything had a place. We would not have got on had we needed to live together for any period of time, I am too disorganized and messy, but that didn’t matter, and I was building my own life anyway. What mattered is that he really loved my mom. We all should be loved the way David loved my mom.

Grief is a lake. The deep parts hold loss that isn’t even yours, but you know it’s there.

We went to visit my mom and my stepfather; my stepfather died ten days later. We were going to the Oregon coast after our visit and I had forgotten to pack a jacket; it had been very hot. David gave me a zip front hoodie, faded dark blue, an old one with a metal zipper. “I’m not going to need that back,” he said.

“Thank you?” I said. With the question mark.

The coast was clear and bright, if a little too windy, the drive was beautiful. At one point we were at the top of a pass looking out across a spit of land that divided the Pacific Ocean from Netarts Bay. There was a steep grassy slope below us covered in coastal wildflowers. This particular point had once been a favorite jumping off spot for a local hang glider. He’s since died; there’s a plaque there with the hang glider’s name on it. I cried when we got to our hotel. I knew we weren’t going to see David again.

That evening we ate good diner food in a local pub – I had an oyster sandwich – and we fought about the kind of things people have been together for a long time fight about. I was tired, I hadn’t slept well since leaving home. It was the start of about two weeks of not really sleeping. The worst of that was the four nights during the hospital visits. In the hospital, I was still wearing the blue zip front sweatshirt, it was in the car, and the hospital room was cold. The pull tab for the zipper kept getting locked in an odd sideways position and knowing what I know of David, I wonder how this did not aggravate him.

Grief is a lake. The wind blows across the surface, a stone rolls down a gravely slope and touches the edge of the water and the surface ripples in a way that only this particular action can create.

David died and we went home. I unpacked my bag and repacked it and went to California for a writer’s conference. My mom, my husband, they both told me to go and so I went. It seemed like a good idea at the time but my patience was thin and I was more candid than usual – which is saying something, because I am unvarnished on good days. People would ask me how it was going and I would tell them the truth.

On the third afternoon, I went to my room with a bag of snacks from the nearby supermarket and watched TV. A migraine was knocking up against the inside of my forehead and I had nothing to offer. I like the company of good writers and I enjoy talking wonky writerly nonsense, but I was too tired.

“Dying seems really hard,” I kept thinking, “it should be easier to die.” That is not a thing anyone wants to hear from you at a writer’s conference. I stayed in my room for a good 12 hours, talking to no one. It helped.

“Maybe you should write about not writing,” said Grant, two weeks later. “Maybe that’s what you need to do. I’m really sorry about your loss.”

The waiter arrived with my giant slab of cake. “Thank you, I have cake,” I said, and we both laughed. What else are you going to do?

Grief is a lake, the waters reflective and blue and cold. We contain it as best we can, but we do not control how completely it contains us.

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We lost my stepfather, David Begun, to cancer on Tuesday, August 9th. Stepfather maybe isn’t the right word, it doesn’t quite fit, so I’ll just say this: He was family and I will miss him.