The Size of Grief

Topbar was the only place open late on a Tuesday in my shitty little hometown. Years ago, at this very table, a college boyfriend had etched our initials into the wood on a particularly boring night of karaoke. If you squinted just right, you could still make out the faint outline of a heart around the letters. It was well past the time I should’ve been out on a work night, but I didn’t care. I hadn’t seen Becca in years, and it had been way too long since my stomach hurt this much from laughing.

She was in the suburbs of Chicago, doing the rich-husband thing, the three-gorgeous-kids thing, the stay-at-home-mom, pilates-in-the-afternoon thing. I went the opposite way. The stable job, never-have-a-day-off, single forever thing. We were simultaneously jealous of each other, and also grateful to not have the other’s life.

Two drinks into the night, my phone buzzed on the old, wooden high-top.

The screen lit with a name that had never called me before. My stomach sank before I even reached to answer it.

“I’m sorry, I have to take this.”

I scurried out of the bar, past a group of people gathered at the picnic tables lined up on the deck outside. I inhaled the chill fall air before I clicked answer.

“Are you sitting down?” the voice asked.

A few words later, and I crumpled to the sidewalk—torn down to my knees from the sudden weight of my existence.

My best friend Delila was dead.

The sounds I emitted on that fall night were unlike anything I’d heard myself make before. Still, no one came over to ask if I was okay. No one said a word as I asked questions between sobs. How could this be? I’d talked to her two days ago. She’d just called me, nearly choking on laughter after running into an old fling who’d gone bald.

And she was…gone?

I hauled myself up in a daze, and made my way back inside.

“Oh God, what happened?” Becca asked.

“I need you to take me home. Delila…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence before another sob strangled my throat.

Becca hopped off the barstool and threw an arm around my shoulder to help me to the car.

We drove the whole way home in silence. There was nothing to slice through it except my ragged sobs that would not stop, no matter how deeply I breathed or how much I concentrated on stifling the sounds.

We pulled up to my driveway. Both of us knew what came next.

“Do you want me to stay with you? For when it gets here, I mean.” Becca squeezed one of my hands.

I swiped at my eyes, like that would somehow make the tears stop. “No. I’m sure I can handle it.”

She unbuckled herself and wrapped her arms around me in an awkward car-hug. “Text me if you need anything, okay? I mean it.”

***

Ugh.

I shoved my key into the lock, twisted, and then sank into the couch to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

It was midnight when a knock rapped on the door. For a moment, I didn’t answer. Maybe it would go away or give up if I ignored it.

But the thumps grew louder, and I hoisted myself off the couch to open the door.

And there it was.

I imagined Grief would be smaller when it came knocking—but it was damn near monstrous. Actually, no, it was a monster. The thing stood nearly eight feet tall with shaggy gray fur covering an absurdly oblong body. Its face was so small and smushed it reminded me of the world’s ugliest pug.

And it was way too fucking big for my one-bedroom house.

Great.

“You’re huge,” I said to it, incredulous.

It simply blinked its black eyes at me, and shoved its way into my home.

“Wait, you’re going to—”

CRASH.

The table lamp my great-grandmother had given me shattered across the floor in a hundred tiny pieces.

The monster continued its stroll inside my house, ducking to avoid the ceiling. It was completely oblivious to the family heirloom it had just smashed to bits, looking around like it would be staying a while.

Which I knew it would be, but God... Why hadn’t anyone told me how big Grief was?

Its long, hairy tail swept around, just as a mug caught in its path. I was faster this time—running across the room to catch it before it fell off the dining room table.

This would take some getting used to.

“Okay. Listen. We need to have some ground rules here before you destroy everything I—”

Its black eyes blinked at me.

“Yes. Listen. How long are you planning to stay? I’ve never had this happen, so… When do you leave?”

It tilted its ugly pug-face to the side. Did it even have a mouth? And were those…tiny horns?

I woke up to a face full of gray fur, and shot up in bed.

The hideous thing was snoring—loudly, sprawled out like it owned the place.

I groaned and went to the bathroom to shower and get ready for work, desperate to get away from it. A shower was just what I needed. A reset. A distraction.

But as soon as I turned the water on, the gray beast was moseying to the door.

“No, you don’t need to come in here!”

It shoved into my suddenly too-small bathroom, and proceeded to sit on the ground with its knees pulled up to its chest.

I rolled my eyes and took the longest shower I could stand, peeking through the curtain to see if it had left yet.

It hadn’t.

                   And thirty minutes later, when I grabbed my keys to leave for work, Grief stumbled out of the door behind me.

                   “No. Absolutely not. You are not coming with me!”

                   Grief blinked, and shoved itself into the backseat of my car.

                   Grief clearly did not care about personal space.

                   Walking through the cubicles to get to my office normally drew little to no attention, but almost everyone gawked or stared on my way in.

“Morning,” Kelly chirped as she strode through the door. She stopped at the foot of my desk, and glanced upwards quickly. “…Morning.”

“Just ignore it,” I said. “How’s the report looking from last quarter?”

Kelly shifted uncomfortably. “It’s…” She cleared her throat. “I sent it over this morning.”

“Good.” I looked up from my computer when I realized she hadn’t moved. “What?”

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said. “Is that all?”

Her gaze flicked back up over my shoulder, where I knew Grief loomed behind me. I could feel it breathing down my neck, tickling my arm with its gray fur, staring quietly at everyone that entered the office. But no one wanted to acknowledge it, least of all me.

As the days passed with agonizing slowness, Grief followed me everywhere. To the grocery store, where a child had almost fisted an entire chunk of gray fur before I’d noticed.

Or at my home, when I’d tried to drown out the feelings that threatened to creep up my throat again with a movie—but Grief was there, sitting on one end of my couch, tilting the other slightly off the floor.

Or when a small amount of fur had gotten caught on fire as I cooked dinner.

Or when it shoved its way into the bathroom behind me while I brushed my teeth.

It was everywhere.

“You’re too fucking big,” I snapped one night, wagging my toothbrush at it. “You can’t stay here anymore. You have to go! I’m sick of this! You’re everywhere, and I can’t do anything without feeling suffocated by you. Leave!”

It blinked under the fluorescent bulbs of my bathroom.

I groaned and threw my toothbrush into the sink.

The insurmountable need to get as far away from the monster overcame me. I stomped out to the living room and collapsed onto the couch. I needed a minute of quiet.

I unlocked my phone and tapped around.

A photo memory notification popped up.

ON THIS DAY, FOUR YEARS AGO, it said.

It was the stupidest picture we’d ever taken.

We had gone out to see Delila’s favorite musical for her birthday, and got caught in the snow walking back to the hotel in the city. Our faces were blurred and red, clearly laughing too hard to hold the camera still. Grins plastered our faces while snowflakes dotted along our eyelashes, our hair, our hats, our eyebrows. No one would know by the picture that we had been violently shivering through laughter that night.

My eyes burned at the memory, blurring the phone screen, and I clutched the phone to my chest like maybe it would bring her closer. Or bring her back.

Grief stepped forward, and sat on the floor near the coffee table.

“I don’t want you,” I said to it, voice hoarse. Tears trickled down my cheek in a stream I couldn’t hold back any longer. “I want her.”

It blinked at me.

And then offered its paw.

It was…holding something. A ticket stub for the musical.

I sat up, looking at it questioningly as I reached for the stub. “How did you get this?”

It merely curled its paw back on itself, and produced a small bracelet Delila had given me for my twenty-first birthday.

My eyes welled again at the memories that coursed through my mind. Instead of fighting back the tears, this time I let them free. I let myself cry and heave on the ground next to the monster. I let myself lean against its gray fur, wailing from the sadness and the pain that bubbled up out of my throat. And Grief sat there with me, unmoving. Tethered to its spot on the floor.

After that day, Grief never truly left. It was there every morning, and every night. When Delila’s birthday came around, it wouldn’t fit through the door again. When I was out with Becca, or my family, it became so small, I could tuck it into my pocket for the night.

There were days it would grow, and there were days it would shrink.

And there were times I’d come home, plop my keys on the entryway table, and find it sitting on the end of my couch, with the other end tilted off the floor.

“Move over,” I said—and curled up next to it.