Go Now. Get Born. Live.

On the poetry of my grief, and saying yes.

Hi friends,

It’s been a little while since I’ve written here. Let me tell you why. Last week I was in Florida, where most of my family now resides. I got a little sick there, and very sick when I came home. In that time, I’ve been less “productive” in the traditional sense. By which I mean—I didn’t write.

Here are two truths I am always balancing:

1. The capitalist pressure to churn out a steady stream of content while capoeira-ing through grief is absurd.
   
   and
   

2. Writing, when I let it be, is my highest form of self-care. It’s the thing that makes me feel most connected—to myself, to a larger (sweet) community, and now, to Andrea.
   

So here I am, returning to the page. Voice literally hoarse, fingers figuratively rusty. Wanting to give this life meaning by giving it language. Wanting to find eternity in the dailiness. The miracle in the mundane.

---

When Andrea died, my mother (Annie) was among the many people in our home. The morning she woke up in a world without Andrea, she had a dream. Dream isn’t the word she uses. To her, it felt more like a vision.

She saw Andrea walking through the doorway of the guest room, a bundle in their arms, a mile-wide grin on their face. “Annie, I have the baby!” Andrea said.

And then my mother woke up.

The baby, we both presumed, was my brother’s daughter—still in utero then, still three weeks from being born. “It felt so real,” my mother kept insisting. She’d repeat the story to everyone she encountered, her personal diamond in this cave of dark. 

That evening, NBC News posted a video I hadn’t seen before, but one I’ve watched dozens of times since. It’s Andrea reading me the entirety of their poem, Love Letter from the After Life, in our front yard while our puppies tumble through the grass. Filmed three months before their death.

How shy they seem, blushing, as if it were the first love poem they’d ever read to me. Instead, it was the last. 

One line struck sharper in the new context of Andrea’s “absence”, sharper still in the light of my mother’s vision:

“One day you will understand
why I read the poetry of your grief
to those waiting to be born,
and they are all the more excited.”

When I hear that line now, I close my eyes. I imagine some old wooden attic, flooded with light. Layers of thick carpets, books lining the walls, a harp glinting in the corner, waiting to be touched. And my niece swaddled in Andrea’s arms, as they read her the poetry of my grief.

What is the poetry of my grief, exactly?

Is it me, standing outside,
drenched in the storm,
singing Andrea’s favorite song into the dark
because I am convinced they are listening,
convinced they are lightning?

Is it me, every night, whispering
“put your arms around me.”
to an empty bed?
The fact that I’m not able to fall asleep
until I’ve uttered that?
Until I’ve somehow felt the phantom weight
of my favorite arms again?

Is it me, sending frantic texts
to a turned-off phone?
Messages that say: “Come Back”?

Or that it seems so much more likely to me
that Andrea will soon round a corner in our home,
with their messy hair and their brilliant thoughts,
than the fact that they never will again?

How interesting—how characteristically Andrea—to insist that these images might make someone more excited to experience life, and not less. “I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain,” they wrote. How Andrea, to call this beautiful.

In Florida, I got to meet my niece. Charlie is her name. I was perhaps unfairly expecting some cosmic recognition—that she, just three weeks old, might sense me entering the room and shoot her infant arms in my direction: You! You’re the one with the grief! I’ve heard a lot about you! Come here, Sad Pants!

The reality, of course, was a bit different. Charlie is the most chill baby on planet earth. During my first two visits, I had to ask my brother what color her eyes were. Throughout my hours in her presence, she hadn’t opened them even once. She’s the Patron Saint of Sleepy Time. A Tiny Buddha in a peach-print onesie. She’s cute (she looks just like me) but a conversational dud. She certainly doesn’t act like someone well-versed in poetry. Mostly, she’s into milk.

On my third visit with her, late at night, when my brother and his wife were in another room, I snuck a whisper onto her heaven-scented, velveteen head.

“Hey Charlie. So…did you meet Andrea? Did they read you the grief-poetry?”

I was kidding, kind of…

But then Charlie’s eyes shot open (they’re blue!) locked on mine, and she initiated a five minute staring contest of unparalleled intensity.

Between us, the full spectrum of emotions cycled through our faces. There was sorrow and laughter. Tears and awe. There was discomfort, confusion. Connection. Recognition.

I felt that Charlie had a message for me. It sounded something like this:

Yes, I’ve heard it all.
I know you cried into your birthday cake.
And that your spouse’s funeral was on the same day as your eleventh anniversary. And that my father was pinning my ultrasound photo to his fridge the same moment you placed your lover’s urn on your desk.
Yes, I was just with Andrea. Yes, they are part of me now.
But even more so, they are part of you.
And can’t you see? They’re still in the room.

Maybe that’s too much to put on a newborn. But still—I like to imagine that celestial attic. All these eager-souls bouncing on Andrea’s knee. Andrea, as always, reading to a captive audience. Telling them that this world is full of sickness and singing. Of being leveled by storms and then rebuilding. Andrea was always expert at convincing us weary ones that life was worth living. 

And here you and I are. Not in some room in the sky, but embodied, on our own patches of dirt, our own devices. No harps, no heavenly light. I do not have the wisdom of the dead. And you are not an infant. But perhaps you are reading this, curious, asking me the same thing those infants must ask: God it looks brutal. Life. Love. Loss. Is it worth it?

And I am here, reading you the poetry of my grief.
Yes.
Go now.
Get born.
Live.

Love,

Meg [+ Andrea, forever] + Charlie, too.

PS. Here’s a video of Andrea singing “Sweet Child of Mine” to their godson, Meaux, who calls Andrea “Ankle” (because it’s a mix between Aunt and Uncle). You’re welcome.