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
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‘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