Growing Up Grief

As a young girl, Grief lived in a fantasy world. She painted her room bubblegum pink and collected china dolls. Her favorite toy, however, was a grinning theater mask that she wore to cover the drooping corners of her lips, pale moon-grey skin, and bloodshot eyes. After school, she loved having tea parties with her imaginary friend, Denial. Denial and Grief played outside, as well, and skipped around in dandelion summer dresses even on blustery winter days.

As Grief grew older, her imagination grew dimmer, and Denial faded away. The new girl in town, Anger, barged into Grief’s room, shouting at her to stop moping over Denial’s departure and break something. Grief’s room grew cluttered with the torn-off heads of her once beloved china dolls, whom she blamed for Denial’s disappearance. When Anger came to play, Grief’s parents tiptoed around her room. Grief kicked her dog and spilled milk on the floor. She screamed bloody murder, dyed her hair black, and got four tattoos of her new favorite expletives. Her parents breathed a sigh of relief when Anger was sent to juvy.

Soon, Bargaining knocked on her door. Lonely from Anger’s departure, Grief was easily drawn into a cheap sale. She didn’t notice the stains on his thrift-store suit or his untrimmed mustache as she gazed longingly into his suitcase of wares. He promised her the world, offering to help her bring back Denial and Anger for the small price of babysitting his child, Depression. Grief agreed, of course. She invited Bargaining in to wait for Depression to arrive. He walked in, leaving his moth-eaten shoes on as he limped through her living room. He faced Grief, and lay down the truth: he couldn’t bring her friends back. It was all Grief’s fault, he said, and had she just imagined harder, had she sheltered Anger, they would be here with her now. The news crushed Grief, and Bargaining packed up his suitcase. As Bargaining opened up the door, a small, broken child walked in.

Depression ignored Grief, and hobbled up to Grief’s room. She stripped the sheets from Grief’s bed and lay curled on the unforgiving spring mattress, sobbing. Grief, horrified at the loss of her friends and saddened that Bargaining didn’t exactly keep up his end of the deal, laid down, as well. After that day, Grief and Depression spent many years as friends, locked away in Grief’s blacked-out room. Depression slowly whittled away Grief’s life, encouraging her to drop out of school and give away what was left of her china dolls. Together, they wrote poetry and listened to sad songs. They stopped eating. Their bones grew prominent, their nails brittle, their hair sparse. One morning, Grief woke up to silence: Depression’s sobbing had ended. Her body was stone cold. Grief tried to move, and realized that she, too, was freezing cold, her body limp.

As their last breaths mingled together in the stale air, Grief’s curtains flung open to reveal the bright sun outside. A glowy yellow being, the angel Acceptance, floated into her room. As Acceptance collected the scrawny body of Grief in her arms, Grief felt her bones radiating with warmth and light. Her friends were all gone, but she felt filled with the peaceful stillness of the universe. Most importantly, she knew she’d soon join her friends in heaven, and this gave her hope.