At twenty-seven, YouTube sensation Ben Leonards is married to his work. If he's not whipping up lasagna with a side of science experiments, he's running statistical analysis of bitcoin during explosive behavior periods.
When a friend asks him to org...
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Kora giggles when I tap her nose. Her brown eyes widen when she sees my finger coming. She stills herself and tries to grab at my hand, to change its course and maybe this time prevent it from touching her nose. But I outmaneuver her and she laughs.
"Maybe you go after the spreading of the ashes, or in a month, when things settle a bit?" Amelie's advice is something I treasure, but her words don't feel right. "Let yourself grieve." She puts her hand on my shoulder and it's too much. All the big feelings around me and the unclear expectations of me are too much. I shrug her hand off.
"I'm going." I lower myself on my side next to Kora and try to encourage her to roll over. "Trust me. I need to take care of it now." My attention focuses on Kora. She's the only person who's unaware that what I'm doing is not up to some arbitrary standard. Doing the best I can means not changing my plans, not breaking my promises, altering as little as possible.
Mom, Amelie, pretty much everyone I talk to keep saying grief feels different for everyone, but they are shocked I'm still going to meet with Mo. They don't think grief and flying to New York go together. They do not see the contradiction. I fell apart at the hospital and even after the meaning of the words sunk in, I couldn't talk for the rest of the day. Words were in my head forming and changing, but they were refusing to come out. Mom was right to take me to their place, but not because I needed them, because they needed me. Tall was their friend and they've seen him every week for the last ten years.
Their reactions fit within a template, and I want it—a way to know that what I'm feeling or not feeling doesn't make me an evil person.
"At my age," Mom tells me, "every time a person I love dies, a piece of me disappears with them. The years of them knowing me are gone with them and there is a little less of me left in this world." Her grief is loud and full of tears, her days are at a standstill, her reactions do not raise eyebrows.
"Tall will be missed," Dad tells me. He turns on the day-long golf tournaments on low and reads through weeks' worth of newspapers. He's more silent, and he holds Mom when she leaves her room to join him on the couch. His withdrawal is within the allowed grieving script. No matter how many times I hear grieving is individual, there is a script, one I'm not privy to.
"With every death I think: this time it's going to be easier. I know how it goes. I'll do better," Amelie tells me. "And it's a lie. It's hard and I'm in pieces." She hugs everyone, and I let her hug me once, but no more. Her hugs are welcomed by tthe rest of the people in the apartment.
Mike doesn't say anything about Tall. He holds Angie when she cries. He shuttles Kora between their apartment and that of her grandparents and spends every spare minute between the two Dojang locations and he's the only one who tells me, "Keep busy, man. Fuck the propriety if keeping busy keeps you sane." His keeping busy is acceptable.
Angie writes a song for Tall and she sings us a line. "I etched words never written on my heart—the tattoo of your life on mine." I can't say that I get it, but Linda says Angie should try poetry. Everyone's eyes tear up. They are experiencing the grief together.
