It’s the socks. They’re unmissable even in this setting, a faux pas that should be called out here and now. Bright and swimming with a medley of colors that takes squinting to identify, echoing the tie-dye t-shirts so popular decades ago. Except this exact clothing has no apparent order to its look-at-me visage; it’s all entropy and devoid of style, dominated by something approaching pink and turquoise. And oh my, is that actually burnt orange? With each passing second, my shock mounts with intensity, while the wearer of said socks, a tall and lanky man, quietly coughs and moves his fist to his mouth, before lowering his hand and falling silent again, gazing forward like everyone else in the immediate radius. He dons a dark green suit that a rapid scan tells me wasn’t cheap nor easy to construct. With a straight back, he sits on a white fold-out chair that’s too small for him and mere feet from me. His hands lay clasped over his lap, while his sinewy legs extend slightly forward to reveal shiny, black shoes and the unusual choice of hosiery.

I find myself nearly overcome with three items at once: the art that isn’t art on these purported socks (they must be wool), a deep confusion as to why he felt it appropriate to wear such socks here, and importantly, why no one else seems the least bit phased by their presence. Then, a whisper comes from my right, “Did we get the flowers wrong?”. That would be a cousin of mine, probably noticing my distracted appearance. Suddenly racked with guilt, I adjust my dark blue sports jacket and whisper back, “No, they’re perfect. Thanks.” My cousin replies with the very faintest of smiles. But his question promptly guides me back into the torrent of emotions, the proceedings at hand, where a late morning sun beams overhead, tree branches sway timidly in the wind, and a cherrywood casket inches its way into the earth forever.

If only I could speak with my twentysomething self that day. Like most anybody, if bestowed with a H.G. Wells-grade time machine and I was just allowed to influence the cascading events of my life, I’d choose those precious few minutes after that funeral to stop myself after stepping away from the well-manicured grass. From the throng of mourners, consoling me and one another. I’d catch myself seconds before twentysomething me climbed into his car to drive away. I would tell my younger self that in the coming weeks, months, and years, the grief I’d just taken on without a shred of preparation, would become agonizing beyond human understanding, quietly and loudly destructive. But, I would assure him that, if one holds fast to love and memories, then getting through it all would seem more possible, signs of betterment would bubble up, though far down the line.

Grief is something that’s abruptly there, sometimes even before the thing that precipitates it. The body knows before the mind does. It seems to anticipate the existential sinkhole ahead. No amount of preparation from medical professionals, friends, what we’ve seen in movies or read in books, rightly prepares us for the stunning reality of loss and the pain left in its wide wake. Right up until it happens, death remains this sort of surreal idea only experienced by other people; fantastic, formless, and always at a safe distance. It’s not something that happens to you and those you love. In fact, you are to be shielded from such an ordeal, and why wouldn’t you be? Your universe doesn’t have room for such tragedy or disruption; there simply isn’t the space to be hurt that much for that long. Yet right there and then, in a very sobering moment, is when we are faced with a new reality that yes, bad things can happen, and no person is exempt, no matter how much we try to barricade ourselves from this truth.

As many of us know, grief has five stages of emotion according to the Kübler-Ross model. They are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Over the years, I have experienced each of these, in order, out of order, and a few times, simultaneously. But a question pulled at me then and still does now. Why doesn’t ‘comprehension’ have its own stage? From birth, we’re so instructed on how to interact with each other, how to share, how to be kind, how to handle the presence of other people. Though very little is made of other people’s absence; how do we handle it when someone is permanently gone? This could be because adults have trouble conveying such a weighty concept to people with delicate minds just starting out in the world. This could be because grownups still, decades into our own lives, don’t comprehend what human loss actually means and the energy it wrestles from our bodies. To have a person in your life and then be forced to compute that that person no longer is. Scientifically, it checks out. Emotionally, it seems too confounding to ever fully absorb as fact.

Relief comes though. Eventually. It’s as late as a popstar to his own concert. But it does arrive. This tidbit of reassurance can be traced back to a handful of memories from my childhood, hazy as they are, beginning when I was 12 years old. I used to visit my aunt and uncle in Miami during the summer. Just me and them for two whole weeks. My parents still swear to this day that the initial trip was intended to help me be more worldly. But apparently, it took five more consecutive summers during my teen years to become "more worldly". Anyhow, my aunt and uncle owned a beach house, a quaint, two-story abode constructed in the early 1960s, planted less than 300 feet away from the pale blue shore. Interestingly, I never once saw my uncle go near the water in all the time I was there, not even to dip his toes into the wet sands. When I asked him why he didn’t get close to the ocean that was so accessible, he replied to the effect of, “That place is too big for me and feels too out of my control. I like to keep to what I can control and craft. Besides, your aunt insisted we take this house.”

The craft in question was his full-time hobby: wood carving. It was an art form he adopted in his early thirties and never really let go of. His preferred material was red cedar wood obtained from a woodwork store located further inland. Red cedar wood, turns out, was “pliant enough to mold, but thick enough to hold” as my uncle explained with a grin. Fully invested, he supplied himself with an assortment of tools and spent north of three months on each piece. He made sure to keep the wood at the right temperature, protecting it from moisture and preserving its aesthetic integrity as best he could. By the time I arrived for my visit at midyear, he was already halfway into a new project. Incidentally, with each piece, he used a technique called relief carving. The man would build everything from foxes scurrying through a field to a cornucopia of produce. Each summer trip to Miami brought creations that were more advanced, more finely detailed and astonishing to look at than the last. My uncle worked vigorously, making sixteen pieces in total of various sizes during those years. All the while, he used what I naturally assumed was cedar wood from dozens of trees once rooted in the state's land.

It was much later when we both attended a family birthday party in our Texas hometown. I was well into my thirties, grief having visited me by then, while my uncle had retired from his day job and a charming, if overpopulated beach. As the festivities began to wrap up, balloons strewn about with a large, half-consumed cake atop a dressed-up table, he and I found ourselves clutching sodas in the corner of the living room. I took that moment to tell him what I fondly remember from those summers and what he made. I remarked how incredible it was that he helped recycle all those trees and repurpose them in such an artful, meaningful way. A few awkward seconds passed between us. Then my uncle raised an eyebrow at me and replied, “I don’t know what you’re going on about. That was all done from a single tree.” He quickly held up one gnarled digit to emphasize this revelation. Sporting a quizzical look, I asked him, “But how could a tree that’s not alive still generate so much?” My uncle exhaled audibly and answered flatly, “Well, it didn’t. I did.” With that, he gave me a faint nod and headed straight for a slice of cake on the table.

By Jaymes R., Communications Specialist                                                                                                                                                           

About the Author                                                                                                     As though he were using a feather quill pen, Jaymes has written several blog articles for our website, exploring annuities, voluntary benefits, and basic finance tips, among other topics. You can check out some of those articles on our main ManhattanLife Blog page. 

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