Grief is a Box of Broken Jewelry
A very rough draft piece from my next book (like sandpaper rough)
It’s been a hot second (or a couple thousand spicy seconds) since I’ve put words out into the digital world. I have been writing like crazy, but giving it away to people, and inevitably to the void that is the internet, has felt…well…insignificant. Since my last post, I allowed my brain to win — it told me that my words didn’t matter amidst the absolute dumpster fire of a political landscape we are watching unfold globally. I had a nice little pity party for myself, thinking, The world is falling apart — what could my little batch of words possibly do? Then I remembered who the fuck I am and that oppressive people and systems love an apathetic girlie who is frozen by fear and existential dread.
I took to nature, re-read parts of my favorite books, read new books, and grabbed my pen. Waking up to a new flavor of bullshit each morning being broadcast on every media outlet had an icy chokehold on my creativity. The only way I know how to get rid of that is to create more than I consume, and the best way I know how to create is with a pen.
What could my little batch of words possibly do? Well, words got me out of freeze mode, so maybe it will help others get out of it, too? Maybe they’ll reach one person who needs to hear them? Maybe sharing despite the horrors will give others permission to do the same? Who knows. What I do know is that working on my second book and going all in on my creative practice has pulled me further away from freeze mode and fear (fragile fascists love scared women) and closer to clarity and community (fragile fascists hate loud creatives that honor their souls). So, here is a “little batch of words” from the very rough, raw manuscript I am working on.
I appreciate you sticking around to read/listen.
All love, no brakes,
Sam
Greif is a Box of Broken Jewelry
I opened a shoe box yesterday that once held a pair of Jessica Simpson heels from the early 2000s, which means they had way too many buckles, a chunky heel, and likely stayed in your closet long after I graduated high school and decided they were not fashionable anymore — I am sure you cooked up several ways to prolong their life. I wonder if you painted or bedazzled them, or if they just sat in your closet, trapped in an idea that you didn’t have the energy or time to make real. You had no shortage of ideas Ma, just a shortage of time and attention given the overwhelming mental and physical load that comes with five children, an absent husband, and the crushing isolation within womanhood.
The only reason this shoe box ended up in my hands is because of Hannah. She was the only one brave enough to return home after you died in hopes of retrieving the remaining bits of you before Dad threw everything out. Ma, she truly is a youngest child with lioness courage that gives zero fucks, but I am sure you knew she would inevitably step into that uniform. Once it hit me that you would never be on the other side of the door, I decided I would never go back to that house. I was ready to grieve all the trinkets and childhood art I’d never see again because the thought of crossing the threshold into that world again twisted my stomach like how one twists a wet towel to ring out all the unwanted water — tight with pressure and pain, yet no matter how much you squeeze and drain, it is still soaked and heavier than you want it to be.
I didn’t avoid going back because doing so would force me to replay every chaotic, unsavory moment that now has me in therapy. No, I kept my distance because if I went back, I’d have to reckon with pieces of you that I didn’t understand or recognize while you were here. I’d have to own the guilt I have for ignoring those pieces while you slowly broke into more of them. I’d have to learn your unknown parts through relics hidden in jackets and desk drawers, or worse, I’d have to relive all the moments I saw you yield and shrink parts of yourself in service of your husband. I’d have to come to terms with the fact that maybe you were not the woman I wanted you to be, or maybe you were and I didn’t appreciate it enough while I had you. I was avoiding the film reel that would replay the archives without having you there to say, “Hey, there’s more to this story than you know. Let me tell you.”
I almost didn’t open the shoe box. I thought about throwing it away and dealing with the lingering mystery of not knowing what it held. Sure, it wasn’t the same as opening the front door on Ellis Road, but I knew it held parts of your story that I might not be ready to reconcile. No matter how small, cheap, or seemingly insignificant, whatever was in there was a piece of your mosaic, which is what made it big and scary. To leave those pieces, the truth of you, hidden would have done exactly what this world loves to do to women: keep them inside boxes. How was I to call myself a cycle-breaker, cycle-starter, or whatever the trendy new wellness term is if I didn’t have the courage to explore you in this way?
The bottom had a matte gold finish, dull and flat — an aesthetic choice in perfect alignment with the Millennial minimalism craze (something you would certainly hate). The white textured top had Jessica Simpson’s elegant signature overlayed on a watercolor pinkish-purple feather. Despite the soft, dainty, non-intimidating-early-2000s design, my nerves were vibrating shades of blue and red thinking about the treasures and triggers that might be inside.
In it were broken pieces of costume jewelry from a number of thrift stores and maybe a few pairs of earrings from Claire’s, the dollar store, or perhaps Building 19. You were never one to pay full price for material things, you hunted the discounts like a hungry matriarch in winter trying to feed her cubs. Missing backs, makeshift clasps, hair elastics as extenders. The box smelled like metal, cigarettes, and a lingering perfume that coated the pewter and rusted silver as if to say, “I am worn, but I’m holding on.” The fragrance was sweet, mature, yet slightly cheap — a cover-up for bad habits formed by a woman against impossible odds. If my nose remembers correctly, it smelled of Exclamation and Clinique Happy, a combination you would layer on as if two cheap perfumes were more powerful than a single good one.
I untangled the necklaces in the way you untangle a toxic thought— you know you won’t keep it, but you want to hold on to it a little longer because it feels familiar. Rhinestones, cloudy and cased in tarnished aluminum, small pieces of tape holding rings together so they’d appear stacked and sturdy, even though a gentle wind could topple them. There wasn’t a single piece that didn’t have some fixing in its future. Each necklace, ring, and pair of earrings was in desperate need of care or perhaps of letting go, but women from your generation were not the “letting go” type — you believed in the beauty of things, in saving and salvaging, in repairing and rebirthing broken bits into something new. It’s no wonder, you were raised by a woman who barely had rights. Having hope as a girl or woman was audacious, dangerous even. Maybe that’s why you hung on to most of everything, even though it all hurt you time and time again — dad, toxic friends, a bottle, your trauma. You had to believe there was beauty in their fragmented pieces, you had to imagine a world better than the one you were in, so you imagined it within the things and people right in front of you. You held on to everything like someone who keeps broken jewelry worth pennies in an old shoe box, promising herself she’ll fix it all one day. Promising herself all those pieces will have a new life, a life worthy enough to wear for the world to see.
I thought about saving all the bits of jewelry. I even thought of keeping the box itself. The accessories weren’t wearable, they weren’t heirlooms or keepsakes to cherish, yet I felt a pull toward saving all of it. Perhaps your hope was lingering in my bones, coating my every impulse and inclination, or maybe I was repeating your pattern of hope without boundaries, playing the martyr and trying to mother things that we should just let go. Perhaps I feared forgetting you, so my grief was hanging on and dreaming up all the ways you would have worn the jewelry had you lived longer — Halloween costumes for my daughter, “just because” events, brunch dates together, mother-daughter trips. But those are exactly that, dreams. You were not sober when you died, nor were we deeply connected like we once were, but that box of jewelry flooded me with what we could have been and what we could have had. “Could have” is a tricky phrase — you think it focuses on the future, but really it is a mask that grief wears when it wants to keep you tethered to the past.
I threw it all away, Ma. Then I went and bought myself a new pair of earrings. A pair of tiny double-loop gold hoops that fit snugly on my ears. They are drenched in newness without a trace of “could have.” They are not something you would wear, but I think you would look at them and say, “Those look beautiful on you.”