Quinn Wiley

Grief Interrupted I keep trying to cry. I don’t mean the tears that suddenly fill my eyes when someone asks how we’re doing. Or the ones that come when someone does something so incredibly kind that, for a moment, everything catches in my throat. I mean REALLY cry. I keep thinking about that scene in Steel Magnolias. Sally Field is standing in the cemetery, completely shattered and furious, and she just wants to hit something. And Olympia Dukakis offers up Weezer. Where’s my Weezer?…. I think that’s what I’m yearning for. Permission to completely lose my shit for five minutes. To wail. To scream. To hit something. To fall apart. Five minutes where nobody needs anything from me. Where there isn’t somewhere to go, something to sign, something to replace, someone to answer, another decision waiting to be made. Five minutes where I don’t have to be strong. I don’t have to find the gratitude. I don’t have to search for the lesson or the silver lining. I can just be angry. My house burned down. And for five minutes, I want to be allowed to completely lose my shit about it. But somehow, I never seem to get those five minutes. I get close. I feel it coming. And then the phone rings. Someone walks into the room. Something needs my attention. And just like that, it’s gone. Grief interrupted. Sometimes I wonder if life is protecting me from my grief or simply postponing it. Because I know there is so much waiting inside me. I want to cry for everything that is simply gone. Everything I owned. Everything I worked for. Everything our family built together. And then there are the things that meant absolutely nothing to anyone else and everything to me. My favorite picture of my dad. It sat framed on a bookcase in our home. I walked past it a thousand times without ever thinking that one morning I would walk past it for the last time. Now the photograph is gone. The bookcase is gone. Reduced to ashes along with so many little pieces of our lives that I never knew I needed to say goodbye to. That’s the strange thing about losing everything. You don’t know which things mattered until they’re gone. And I’m angry. Why us? Why our house? Why were we the only ones? We cope with humor and say, If one house on our street had to burn down, of course it would belong to the guy in construction and the girl who works in home furnishings. Who better to rebuild it and fill it back up again? We laugh when we say it. Humor has carried us through a lot. But underneath the joke is still the question. Why us? There is no answer that makes sense to me right now. I miss my house. More than that, I miss my sanctuary. I miss sitting on my couch and looking out the window at the beautiful tree in my neighbor’s yard. I miss doing absolutely nothing there. The quiet. The solace. The feeling of being completely safe inside the place that was mine. You can buy another couch. You can fill another room. You can hang new pictures on new walls. But sanctuary takes time. And now we’re starting over. There is something strange about grieving everything we lost while realizing how little of it we actually need. As I’ve gone through the insurance process, documenting a lifetime of possessions, I’ve realized how much was simply stuff. I don’t want to rebuild our life with stuff. I want the things we bring into our lives now to mean something. To be useful or beautiful or loved. But the things that carried our history? The things that held pieces of the people we love? Those are different. Those are the things I ache for. And through all of this, people keep telling me how strong I am. Sometimes I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know if what I’m doing feels like strength. I’ve described this experience so many times as floating down a river on a little raft. The current is taking me wherever it needs to take me. I’m just floating. There is a surrender in that. I’ve stopped trying to control every bend in the river and allowed the current to carry me. But sometimes I wonder if I’m surrendering to what happened or simply floating because turning around and looking at everything behind me is too painful. I don’t know yet. I only know there is something inside me still waiting to be felt. And somehow, right beside all of that grief lives gratitude. So much gratitude. I’m grateful for where we’ve landed. I keep saying that if God had to place us somewhere for the next year, I’m grateful He placed us in this little paradise. Sometimes I sit in this temporary home and just listen. I hear our children. I hear the girls percolating in another room, chattering and laughing and just being themselves. And my heart sings. They’re here. We’re here. Our family is still making noise. Our laughter survived. Our love survived. And that is where grief and gratitude collide for me. I can desperately miss the home we lost and love the home that is sheltering us now. I can be angry that this happened and profoundly grateful for what remains. I can ache for what was and still believe in what will be. All of it can be true at the same time. And if I could go back to the morning of July 16, I would stop myself before I walked out the door. I’d say: Stop for a moment and take it all in. It won’t be here when you come back. Take a deep breath. Look around. Really look. Send love and gratitude to this place that has been your place. Touch the walls one last time. You will never feel them again. Walk over to the bookcase. Pick up your favorite picture of Dad. Look at his face. Really look at it. Kiss it. You won’t ever see that photograph again. Then stand there for one more moment before you close the door. And simply say: Thank you. Thank you for holding our family. Thank you for the laughter. Thank you for the celebrations, the holidays, the dinners and the ordinary Tuesdays. Thank you for holding us through the hard days. Thank you for all the moments we didn’t know would someday become memories. Thank you for being our sanctuary. Thank you for giving us a place to build a beautiful life. It was a life well lived within those walls. And today, almost two months later, I think that’s what I’m still trying to do. Grieve what was. Give thanks for what is. And somehow, make room for both.