The Remarkable 
Brevity of Grief

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Michigan In Color
6 — Wednesday, September 23, 2020 

So it begins. The bass 

drums through me as I move 
my body to the music, my 
eyes closed. Psi U is full of 
bodies, all moving in a haze. 
If I swing my hips too quick-
ly to one side, I find myself 
grazing a hip, but if I miss the 
rhythm, a hand creeps along 
my side. The dance floor is a 
careful game, where if you 
are with the music, you are 
rewarded — by not getting 
body slammed. There are 
rules. Never open your eyes 
or look for too long either, 
but I forgot that momen-
tarily. Beat. Eyes open. Beat. 
Eyes go to the front. Beat. 
I see you. How long has it 
been? A month since the last 
time we’ve seen each other, 
but 
months 
since 
we’ve 

looked at each other in the 
eyes like this. Beat. Another 
beat comes to mind, coming 
straight from my head, the 
music filling the room fades 
in my ears. I begin to hear 
“We Lied to Each Other” 
playing in my head and we 
lock eyes.

The average person lies 

two times a week. That was 
my first lie of the week. In 
reality, 
the 
average 
per-

son lies two times a day. So 
I guess that was my first 
lie of the day. I wonder if 
that includes sustained lies, 
which go on over time. Does 
your lie count go up automat-
ically each passing day, or is 
it just one offense? I thought 
about this whenever I cried 
about my dad, curled up into 
myself and alone. 

My mom and my dad met at 

the University of Michigan, 
where an engineering and 
biology student fell in love 
despite all odds. He was from 
Costa Rica, an international 
student proud of his Leba-
nese roots, who was destined 
to inherit his father’s com-
pany. She was from Ecua-
dor, more or less “fresh off 
the boat,” naturalized three 
years before starting college. 
They came together and, in 
the same breath, fell apart. 
My father wasn’t supposed to 
be with someone not Leba-
nese and definitely was not 
supposed to be with some-
one from Ecuador. It was his 
father’s company or her. My 
father knew that from the 
start. But she didn’t. When 
I grew inside her, he left. I 
stretched her belly, while the 
distance stretched between 
my mother and father, as 
he married the woman he 
left her for. I sometimes 
think about how my mother 
received her new baby as my 
dad received his new wife. If 
my dad did not lie about his 
circumstances, would I be 
here?

Here I was, in my moth-

er’s home country, and I felt 
like an alien. It’s funny how 
people associate you with 
an identity before you claim 
it for yourself. Before I even 
knew what being Hispanic 
was, I was it. There was no 
discovery. Just a comment 
about how I’m a funny wet-
back and here I am. If only 
they had seen me struggle 
to understand my mother’s 
tongue or witnessed how 
much I stuck out from the 
average 
Ecuadorian. 
They 

didn’t see it, but I did. I felt 
so removed from this place, 
and by extension, removed 

from my mom. I would never 
understand what it would be 
like to be truly Ecuadorian, 
to be forced to move to anoth-
er country. But under the 
clear blue water in Ayampe, 
I could exist. With the surf-
board pressed between my 
legs, I felt it all. I savor the 
Ecuadorian 
sun 
pressing 

against my back, the salty 
Ecuadorian water burning 
my eyes and, for a moment, I 
feel Ecuador. Standing pow-
erfully on my surfboard. I 
feel like my mother.

I feel like my mom every 

now and again, but never 
as intensely as I did in this 
moment, standing with you at 
the CCTC. We had been talk-
ing for two months. Every-
thing was falling into place, 
as I began to feel like my 
place was right next to you. 
You, who explained deriva-
tives to me in your “I’m an 
Engineering student” voice. 
Your roommates began to 
feel like mine. Your dorm 
began to feel like mine. You 
were mine, and I was yours. 
When I’m surfing, sometimes 
I can feel the board about to 
slip out from under me the 
moment before it actually 
happens. For a split-second, 
before, I am aware that I 
will fall and the board will 
shoot out from under me. 
We were walking back from 
a date, where you took me 
out to ice cream and poked at 
my cheeks for how messy my 
face got, and I was hit with 
the same feeling. Maybe it 
was the look in your eyes or 
how your pitch changed, but 
I just knew. As you cradled 
my hand in yours, we were 
over as quickly as we started. 

This really is happening, 

huh, at the CCTC?

You 
told 
me 
how 
you 

couldn’t lie to us anymore. 
Your parents wanted you to 
be with another Armenian. 
Not me. Your breath catches 
for a moment. You push out 
the rest, how they’ll stop 
paying for college if you stay 
with me. You held my heart 
in your hands and now it’s 
bleeding. A part of me won-
ders why I’m not yelling at 
you for getting me into this 
mess, for letting me fall 
in love with you when you 
knew it was non-viable. For 
using one of your two lies 
of the day to lie to me about 
what you wanted. I couldn’t 
help but think about what a 
waste this all was. A waste 
of 
time, 
energy, 
vulner-

ability. And then it hit me. 
I was my mom. Is this also 
where my dad ended things 
with her? What did she feel 
like when she heard the very 
same lie? Did she also feel 
like her heart was torn out 
of her chest for someone who 
was unworthy of her love? 
Are we bound to repeat his-
tory over and over again like 
our parents? I laughed at the 
sheer irony, and you looked 
confused. I laughed till my 
stomach ached and the bus 
came to take me back to my 
own dorm. I laughed as you 
turned into a small figure 
and the bus moved farther 
and farther away from you. 
I laughed as I pressed my 
face against the glass, will-
ing myself to look away 
from you. I laughed until my 
breath caught and I thought 
to myself, “Is this what it 
took for me to feel closer to 
my mom?” I laughed until I 
heard my mother’s voice on 
the phone, which brought me 
to my first tear. So it begins.

puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com

By Joe Deeney
©2020 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/23/20

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

09/23/20

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2020

ACROSS

1 Bits of trash often 

swept up with 
popcorn

6 Outdoor party 

rental

10 Creek croaker
14 Like much beer
15 “Dude!”
16 Nashville 

highlight

17 University 

offerings

20 Open patio
21 Original angel on 

“Charlie’s Angels”

22 Driver’s role 

in “Star Wars” 
sequels

23 Easiness 

exemplar

25 Johns in Scotland
26 Bob Dylan title 

lyrics that follow 
“in my heart you’ll 
always stay”

31 Hopeless, as a 

situation

34 Tears to shreds
35 Cause of some 

royal insomnia

36 Leave out
37 Ties together
38 Go no further
39 Hill worker
40 Works in 

Silverstein’s 
“Where the 
Sidewalk Ends”

41 Provided light
42 “The Wrestler” 

Oscar nominee

45 Gets moving
46 Luau finger food
47 Lead-in to 

a texter’s 
afterthought

50 Words said in 

disbelief

53 Canadian 

metropolis

55 Judge’s words ... 

and a hint to this 
puzzle’s circles

57 MM and MMXX, 

for two

58 Tire (out)
59 Beat, with “out”
60 Enzo’s eight
61 Where Southwest 

Airlines is LUV

62 Puts in like piles

DOWN

1 Words often 

suggesting unmet 
goals

2 Fed. security
3 One-eighty
4 Port on Italy’s 

“heel”

5 Watch 

surreptitiously

6 Sched. 

uncertainty

7 Shows one’s 

humanity?

8 Zip
9 Hitchcock thriller 

set in Bodega 
Bay

10 Piemonte city
11 Confides in
12 Region
13 Start to 

function?

18 Bahrain bigwig
19 Charcoal pencil 

shades

24 Like “Halloween,” 

and then some

26 In good shape
27 Mobile payments 

app owned by 
PayPal

28 Finally arrives 

(at)

29 Second-lightest 

noble gas

30 Stare slack-

jawed

31 Linguist 

Chomsky

32 Luxury hotel 

name

33 Prejudiced 

investigation and 
harassment

37 Father 

Flanagan’s 
orphanage

38 “__ sells 

seashells ... ”

40 Actress/author 

Holly Robinson __

41 Mountain resort 

aids

43 South Korean 

subcompact

44 Solar panel spot
47 Reason for spin, 

briefly

48 Limited message
49 Hospital sections
50 Refuses to
51 Newsman Lewis?
52 LAX postings
54 Rock’s Ben Folds 

Five, surprisingly

55 NBA great Ming
56 Minecraft material

SUDOKU

5

2
4
7

9
3

3
2

6
9

7

9

2

6

9

5
3
2

6

1
5

5

1
8
4

8

1
6

2
7

“60 characters. 
Bare your soul.

 Get featured in the Daily!”

WHISPER

Introducing the

WHISPER

“Happy fall
everyone! Go 
throw some 
leaves.

“I don’t think 
this is the right 
way to pick up 
girls...”

‘Circles’

E15, MONTAÑITA, ECUADOR - ANDRÉS MEDINA VIA UNSPLASH

 KATHERINA ANDRADE 

OZAETTA

MiC Columnist

The hospital has a distinct 

smell. A smell I have tried in 
vain to find a worthy com-
parison for, an alternative the 
rest of the world could under-
stand, maybe the smell of gaso-
line, or nail polish, or moldy 
socks, or dirt or a locker room 
that hasn’t been cleaned in 
months. You see, the smell of 
the hospital is so particular, 
so stubborn, that it renders 
itself immune to any attempts 
at description or computation. 
It is a smell that burrows itself 
underneath your fingernails, 
within the strands of your hair, 
the fibers of your clothes, coat-
ing your nerve endings, seep-
ing into the folds of your grey 
matter, so that in time, the hos-
pital no longer becomes syn-
onymous with healing and care 
and new beginnings but rather, 
soley that smell. 

It is the smell of grief, of 

remarkable grief, the kind that 
blurs your vision and boils 
your blood so that it roars in 
your ears, of dirty parents who 
haven’t showered in days, of 
bad news, news so bad it flips 
your world onto its axis, elimi-
nating all that is familiar, all 
that is known; news deliv-
ered by doctors with plastered 
smiles, just the right mix-
ture of synthetic sympathy, a 
twinge of relief perhaps, that 
this is not their life, this is not 
their pain. It is the smell of 

shattered glass, of fatigue, of 
broken dreams, of wishes made 
on shooting stars, of prayers, 
of meals with the consistency 
of cardboard that only man-
aged to get by FDA regulations 
simply because they met nutri-
tional value standards and 
nothing else, the smell of the 
knowledge of the inevitable, of 
death and of the tiniest shred 
of hope.

The timeline of my life is 

divided into B.C. and A.D., 
Before Cancer and After Diag-
nosis. Much like in the years 
leading to the coming of mod-
ern religion, my reality was 
primitive, ruled by kingdoms 
whose lifeblood was fantasy 
and naivete, where constel-
lations 
danced 
and 
leaped 

across the night sky, where 
dragons breathed fire and the 
flick of a wand was a worthy 
opponent to the world’s great-
est problems. Grape popsicles 
that melted within a minute of 
opening, rivulets of violet sick-
ly sweet staining the notches 
in my hands, the lines etched 
in my palms, pooling into the 
valley between my thumb and 
my finger, so that in due time 
corporate America’s idea of 
what artificial grape flavor-
ing should taste like became 
infused within the twists and 
spirals of my DNA. The utter 
and raw simplicity of child-
hood being the only thing that 
could bend the laws of the uni-
verse. In the year of our Lord, 
my anno Domini, in the way 
that worship and faith brought 

advancement, 
progression, 

chaos, and divisions, cancer 
swept through my brother’s 
life and in effect mine with the 
same ferocity. It is an anomaly, 
it creates chinks in the social 
chain, tearing big, gaping holes 
in the already threadbare fab-
ric of your life, and it has no 
mercy; it will gnaw muscle 
right off the bone, it will fray 
heart string, it will pulverise 
connective tissue all without 
discriminating by race, gender, 
religion, socioeconomic status 
or power.

When I was 11 years old, 

my brother, 6, was diagnosed 
with stage 4 Medulloblas-
toma. A tumor in his brain 
no larger than overripe plum 
upended my life. Of course as 
with anything we regret, there 
are so many what-if’s, what if 
we had realized it was a flaw 
in his genetic code, that all 
that needed to be done was to 
switch an A with a T, what if 
we had caught it sooner, that 
his slurred speech and inabil-
ity to walk straight were some-
thing much deeper than viral 
meningitis. For 10 hours, he 
was suspended on the thin line 
between life and death, they 
sawed into his skull, prodded 
within the crevices of his mind 
with cold, foreign instruments 
that had no business being 
there, haphazardly snipping 
nerves and nicking arteries, his 
blood splattered on their shoes, 
smeared across their clothes, 
embedded within the granules 
of their white latex gloves. My 

brother was born again, with 
a crooked face, and eyes that 
were unable to close, and sores 
in his mouth, and arms marred 
with grey residue from medical 
tape, and thick white bandages 
that oozed yellow pulp. So that 
doctors, young doctors with 
an aura of smugness, know-
ing that they were the very 
embodiment of the American 
ideal of success, in the way 
they carried themselves, in the 
way they handled stethoscopes 
with whip smart accuracy, told 
us my brother would never be 
able to read or write again. 

I read in some magazine 

somewhere, a waiting room 
with peeling walls and flick-
ering fluorescent lights, or in 
line at the grocery store, or in 
the school library reading as 
a desperate attempt to mask 
the fact that I had no friends, 
that the sense of smell has 
the longest evolutionary his-
tory out of any of the senses, 
that the body’s sense of smell 
and memory retrieval have 
an instantaneous connection. 
Like how the smell of wax 
crayons and soap remind you 
of the irreproachable purity of 
kindergarten, or how freshly 
cut grass and barbecue invoke 
the sense of summer or how 
the smell of the hospital, still 
so tenacious after all these 
years, reminds you of pain and 
grief and scratchy eyes from 
no sleep, and wilting flowers 
and half deflated helium bal-
loons and sick brothers and sad 
moms and desolate dads. 

 SARAH AKAABOUNE

MiC Columnist

