I Thought Grief Would Destroy Me

Instead, I Made My Partner Into A God

I am writing this on August 18th. Today marks five weeks since Andrea died. Will Sunday nights ever collapse into Monday mornings without the tally in my head? Another week with Andrea gone? Another week of just me in this bed?

Believe it or not, I don’t want to lose track of the timeline. The anniversary I never asked for is also a tether, an axis in what might otherwise be the freefall of space.

Sometimes I worry it hasn’t hit me yet. Because mostly I don’t feel bald, stripped, deprived of Andrea. Their absence arrives in fragments. A shingle at a time. A winnowing.

Take yesterday, for instance. I lost my mind. Because I realized I’ll never see my love pluck a tomato from our garden again. Never see delight dash across their face as they lift it to the sun, place it on their tongue, savor the burst of it.

They’ll never offer me one; they no longer have hands.

That’s how grief hits. In tiny ambushes.

When Andrea’s death was still hypothetical, I did not imagine it was something I’d survive. Certainly not something I could stand through. Without them, I thought I’d feel like a house with the roof blown off, leveled by a hurricane of grief.

But instead of wreckage after a storm, I’m more like a flower in a season growing slowly colder. I am losing Andrea one petal at a time. 

What will blow the petals off, I am learning, is unpredictable. I am convinced I will cry in a yoga class, folded over in candlelight, in half-pigeon pose, where the hips are supposed to release their pent-up emotions—but I don’t.

I suspect I’ll yawn my way through a meeting with Andrea’s attorney. Instead, I can hardly speak because he said the word “Death Certificate” in the same sentence as their name and I think: No way. No freakin’ way. There cannot be a legal document declaring this as real. There cannot be something signed, notarized. Stamped. Approved. 

Who the hell approved this?

What’s wild is, I actually appreciate the sucker punch of grief. Because how extraordinary that love leaves us so permeable, so easily undone by a garden tomato?

The moments where my knees liquify, where I melt down the wall, where I wail on the cold kitchen tile—I don’t want those moments to stop anytime soon. They feel like an honoring, an altar my body builds for my love. They feel true. I don’t want to get over this. I want to be inside it for as long as I can. In the eye of grief, we still feel so close. So entwined.

Sometimes I go through Andrea’s phone. I’m not a suspicious spouse looking for dirt I won’t find. I’m a widow, looking for gold. For signs, whispers, something unsaid. Andrea would constantly text themselves at night—little reminders for the new dawn. I allow myself a few messages at a time. I am rationing them. I don’t ever want to run out. 

A week or so after they left their body, I was driving. Driving is where I miss Andrea most. They loved nothing more in this life than being my passenger princess as we rolled through our mountain towns, sipping coffee and daring each other to be a notch more joyful.

In that little divot in the driver side door where they used to keep packets of stevia for their beloved Americanos, I keep a lock of their hair in a tiny plastic bag. I call it my Emotional Support Hair. How lucky I am that it still smells like their glorious head. I pull it out when I need it most, breathe it in, and worry that one day the scent will vanish, and I will lose Andrea one more degree.

One more petal.

That evening, I was twirling their curl between my fingers, and the sky was the color of bubblegum. It inspired me to talk-text myself a little line of poetry:

Did you paint the sky pink today
because you knew I needed to see you
blush again?

I loved the idea that the entire sky was now Andrea’s canvas. That their romantic gestures, which were noteworthy in these limited human forms, can now be as vast and boundless as their heart always dreamed of. That they have no limits to their love. Forget diamonds, they can shower me in meteors now.

Since that evening, every time I see a blushing sunset—I think of it as Andrea’s valentine. Walking around the reservoir on a random Wednesday, I’ll watch the sky colors shift from water to rosé, and weep joyously, as if Andrea just got down on one knee and proposed to me again. “Show off!” I’ll shout into the ether on a particularly potent spill of hues. Somedays, the sunset means that much to me. Feels that personal. 

Despite how it sounds, I am not the most woo-woo person. Andrea was far more mystical, spiritual, esoteric than me. They often quoted Einstein, who said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

And because I far prefer a world where everything is a miracle, sometimes it's a conscious choice more than an inherent one to believe that the lightning, the mourning doves, the particles and dust that scatter light so gorgeously above the lake is an ethereal love letter that Andrea delivers to my doorstep.

And so I start to wonder—what if all faith was born from loss? What if the first gods were just exceptional people? People who seemed too good, too luminous, to be mortal? And so we invented an afterlife, reincarnation, signs? We interpreted dreams? Put way too much pressure on butterflies? What if we had to assign meaning to the meaninglessness to make it through?

And what if that made it real?

Before a fork existed in the hand, it existed in the mind. Thought is the blueprint of matter. If millions of us throughout time refused to accept that we just end when our bodies do, maybe that belief poured the foundation of eternity itself.

And maybe that’s all religion ever was: unbearable love, refusing to die. Which makes me think—why can’t Andrea be my god?

These days I move through the world guided by a private scripture: would this make Andrea proud? My life is measured by one question: does this honor them? In confusing times, I literally think: WWAGD?

Because I imagine Andrea is watching, I live brighter, fuller, truer. That faith feels like their hand pressed to my back, guiding me toward the best version of myself.

I am less afraid of death now; I believe Andrea will meet me there.

My mom called me the other night to tell me that she was having a bad day, and asked Andrea out loud for a sign. “And don’t make it vague, Gibby!” she said. “I’m walking into this TJ Maxx, and I want you to send a specific sign.” (My mom is a pretty demanding Maxxonista.) In the store, she got distracted by the discount racks and forgot her request, until she was checking out her purchases and she noticed the cashier’s nametag: Andrea.

After hearing that, I turned to Stef (who Andrea called “our atheist friend”) and said, “I want a specific sign, too.” With Stef as my witness, I spoke my request into the universe. We were driving to a taco joint. Try as I did to interpret every 90s hit that played through the speakers as Andrea’s message to me, the sign did not appear there. I did not find their likeness in a bowl of guacamole.

But as Stef and I were driving home, mid-conversation, we were utterly gobsmacked by a glowing orb in the sky. “Was that the moon?” I asked Stef.

”It may have been the Holiday Inn sign,” she replied.
“No, no, I think it was the moon!”

It disappeared behind some trees but I drove, fast, chasing it, taking strange turns down dark roads, hunting for that moon. And then we saw it. So big and low it unhinged our jaws. So bright it seemed more like a sun.

I was crying and shouting, “Stef! Is that my sign?! Is that my specific sign!”
And she was crying too and saying, “It is, Mega, it is! Pull over!”

(I imagined Andrea totally eating up that movement. Watching our atheist friend moved to tears as they moonwalked across our line of vision.) 

an iPhone can never capture the moon. only a poet can.

I’m not unreasonable. All of this is explainable. Spare me the lesson in astronomy, weather patterns. I know that the prettiest skies are mostly due to pollution. I don’t need someone to collude with me in doubt.

But listen to this: after I wrote the line about the blushing sky, after I was given the moon, I was looking through Andrea’s phone. I found a text they sent to themself on November 22nd, 2024. We were in the hospital that day. Maybe they knew then. Maybe they knew it would mean more for me to find this after:

“If I die before you do, you will know I'm with you in the full moon. I'll come to you in a sunset. I'll come to you on a soft pillow. Ice cream.”

Oh, love. Oh, grief.

For every petal I’ve lost, it seems Andrea is making sure another still blooms. 

***

While writing this essay, Alexa came on, unprompted. For the first time in my life, I live alone. Without the clomp of Andrea’s boots, or them shouting “Mega!” for me from another room—the house is freakishly quiet. No sound was coming from anywhere. No way Alexa could have possibly misheard her wake word.

The song was Fleetwood Mac, “Never Going Back Again”, which I wasn’t entirely sure how to interpret. But then it went directly into “Lean On Me.” And then “Stand by Me.” Two songs they sang all the time.

By this point, I was laughing, dancing again—which I wasn’t sure would happen anytime soon. I think Andrea knew I needed to dance, so they queued up a playlist. When I twirled around the room, I felt them twirl with me.

All afternoon, I felt beholden to Alexa. Like I couldn’t leave, had to see what my heavenly DJ would spin for me next. The songs were random, not following the kind of mood-pattern Alexa typically does. “I’ll stand by you” by the Pretenders felt potent, but I was surprised when a rap song came on. Until I heard the lyrics. Eminem chanting: “Guess Whose Back! Guess Whose Back! Guess Whose Back!” A 50 cent remix of “Stayin’ Alive.”

I’m worried you will think I am making this up. I am not. What I can tell you is I spent the afternoon smiling, giggling like a school curl with a love note in her locker. It was as if Andrea was crafting me an actual mixtape, just as they did ten years ago—the first gift they ever gave me.

Listen, Einstein. Everything is a miracle.

I’m certain of it.

Love,

Meg [& Andrea, forever.]