Death, Grief, and Nature

Eileen Elizabeth Waggoner writes, “…And in perfect isolation… I am held together by water and ritual and grief.”

*

This autumn I’ve been driving a lot. Chicago and back, Mt. Pleasant, my two alternating jobs, east and west, driving an inverted cross all over Michigan. My favorite drives are the ones that take place at dawn and dusk, the soft, peach lighting that washes over everything. I keep music playing the whole time as I shoot through the veins of the Midwest.

I started the two-hour drive to Eric’s apartment before the sun rose, a thick fog smeared over the dark Sunday morning. The streetlights sliced through the fog; the air looked tangible like weighed down fabric. I could see cars driving over the hills far before they made it over the curve, their headlights bleeding through the blackness.

The sun came out. Miles and miles of golden grass, trees on fire, the sky was shining golden-pink and puffed up with clouds. There’s a wide, calm body of water on the way upstate; the fat part of Collier Creek. The sky was reflected entirely in the lake, every curve of the warm clouds resting on the surface, a perfect mirror. I wanted to stare at it until it shifted from my front window to my rear windshield.

The state name “Michigan” is derived from the Chippewa word “Michigama,” meaning great lake. Michigan is a state cut up by rivers, creeks, lakes, and ponds. There’s water everywhere, we are surrounded by every color of water; dark blue, murky green, dark gray reflecting the constant overcast.

The overcast exhausts me, it weighs on my shoulders, presses me back into bed, under the covers. I am just like Michigan, just like the water.

*

I have a new job as a nanny, and I feel jealous of the family. It feels like a sitcom, a beautiful house on a tree-lined street, sidewalks lining both sides of every street, and in this beautiful house is three nuclear families living in perfect harmony, their three children playing together in their sunlit upstairs.

I like the kids, I like driving there, being on my feet for four hours, I like the family a lot. The mothers are sweet and intelligent, all doctors. I like their grandmother, the way she shells peas at the table, her hooked nose, her smile, her Arabic. She reminds me of my grandmother, my taeta. The boys call her that, “Taeta! Taeta look!” My heart pangs. I want my taeta, too.

My grandmother was a strong woman, broad shouldered and religious. Her favorite color was maroon, burgundy, a deep and dark red. My mom told me that, and I wonder how much I don’t know about her, how much I’ll never know. I know she was a victim of FGM, I know she didn’t let her daughters undergo FGM, that she told everyone with daughters not to do it too. I know she saw saints. I know she read the Agpeya with a scarf over her black hair in the morning, the silver of her hairline peeking out under her sharb. She wasn’t afraid to ask for help, she wasn’t afraid of anything.

I liked lying in bed beside her, trying to communicate in two languages, finding our footing. She made delicious, warm meals; oily okra soup, macarona Bechamel, stuffed grape leaves, kabob, koshary. The best baker in the family, probably the best baker in the world. I liked the gaps in her teeth where there were just gums.

I miss her. I want her back on earth. I don’t like remembering the live stream of her funeral or the video my uncle sent of her coffin being mechanically lowered into the grass and dirt. I want her to make us tea with milk, so we can drink it with the birds outside. I liked making her food. I wanted to impress her.

In heaven I don’t think about God or what He’d think of me. I think of my grandmother. What would she think of me? Would she be proud of me? I want her to be.

I visited an old woman from church and found that her granddaughter had written her a poem on the fridge that said, “You are like God to me.” You are like God to me, as in you are the most comforting and safe place I can conceive of. You are love. I stared at the poem, feeling my heart pull itself apart again.

When I’m in their beautiful house, their grandmother walks around in house sandals and socks, tidying up, hair pinned back. Once I stood, looking over her from upstairs, and for a moment I let myself pretend that she was my own grandmother on the living room couch.

*

According to Project Geo, Michigan’s great lakes were carved out by preglacial river valleys. The glacial period in North America was at its peak around 25,000 – 18,000 years ago, but before that was when the lakes and rivers of Michigan started to form. Most of Michigan’s lakes are less than 1 acre (38,728).

A map of the lake locations depicts them as thousands of tiny blue freckles covering the lower and upper peninsula. If Michigan is a mittened hand, then a good chunk of the lakes are located on the metacarpal bone of its geological thumb. Another cluster of lakes appears where the upper peninsula meets the roof of Wisconsin.

Traveling in Michigan entails driving over a lot of bridges. Even crossing over the border into Canada involves either going under water in a dark tunnel or over the Ambassador Bridge over the navy blue Detroit River.

I have this fear where I’m driving over a bridge, and the bridge collapses beneath me, submerging me in the cold water. I can’t remember if you’re supposed to wait for the car to fill up with water before you climb out or if you climb out right away. I’m not afraid of drowning, I’m afraid of being trapped in the car, being helpless in a shell of metal of glass.

Another fear I have is that I’m picking up speed going through an intersection when another car T-bones mine, sending me flipping in slow-motion all the way through the intersection, the metal of the car grinding to a halt on the asphalt. In this fear, my body is trapped in a heap of metal and upside down, still fastened to the seat.

Something about dying in a car crash scares me to no end. My palms are sweaty when they grip the wheel, I check my speedometer religiously, I pray a lot in the car. I’m afraid of being stopped by the police, or of sideswiping another car, or of another car sideswiping me.

Regardless of my immovable fear of cars, I enjoy driving. I like the alone time, when the car is warm like an oven and the music is playing loudly, I feel alternately peaceful and panicked as I cruise down I-96 trying to get where I need to go in one piece.

I’m really afraid of sudden, shocking death. When R- died by suicide, it felt like a car crash: irreversibly fatal, intensely painful, completely suffocating. I think that’s how it feels when anyone dies, even if it was entirely expected, it was still largely unexpected.

*

My friend Austin has a job where he marks trees whose leaves and branches are too close to powerlines so DTE can trim the leaves. You can tell which trees have been trimmed, circling the powerlines, sometimes completely sheared on one side. Sometimes I wonder if the tree is older than the powerline or if the powerline is older than the tree. It’s always the tree that has to accommodate the electric wire.

It’s weird to see a tree’s leaves hugging the dark lines of cable. I think about what people say about how grief stays the same and you just grow around it, but sometimes I wonder if my grief is the tree or the powerline, energy pulsing through it so fast your heart will stop if you look at it.

*

I saw a documentary once about the sand and dust movement from the Sahara to the UK to the United States. Dust and sand blows across nations, floats up into the clouds, gets rained down again, dispersing itself over the world. I know R- was cremated, and sometimes when I go outside and see a thin layer of dust on my car, I wonder if there’s a chance a little part of him is here, so close I could touch.