Crying at a Gas Station in Commerce – Notes on Grief

Once, when I was in college, my tire blew on the freeway in the middle of nowhere. I drove a car older than my sister, so it was bound to happen. I was going to be late for class and miss a presentation, I was crying to the AAA lady trying to tell her where I was. There wasn’t a discernible landmark in sight. I’m a nervous driver anyway, so I couldn’t contain the whimpering.

About three years later, a college friend of mine passed away in a car accident. Her celebration of life was in San Diego, so I left early, early, early on a Friday to get down there before work hours. Five miles from my house, the very beginning of a two hour drive, my tire pressure light went on. Going seventy-two on the 5 freeway past Stadium Way. It was miles and miles until I could stop, and it was half past six in the morning, so almost nothing was open. I didn’t know how to check my tire pressure. I was terrified to blow a tire again, to have to pull over to the shoulder on an already crowded freeway, to be in a similar position that was my friend’s last. “Good for you/you look happy and healthy/not me” has never hit so hard, so thanks Olivia Rodrigo for being the soundtrack to my car sobs.

That’s how, last December, I ended up crying at a gas station in Commerce at six-thirty in the morning, watching the sun rise into the smog, trying to make sense of an instructional YouTube video from my dad, and hoping for the best.

Grief is fucking hard. Grief is suffocating, and it feels like you’ve been hit by a ten foot wave that does nothing but suck you under and roll you around. Disorienting, sand ripping across your face, can’t catch your breath. And then you have a good day, you feel like your lungs have finally cleared a bit, only for the wave to crash over you again.

Alice was the most full of life person I’ve ever known and will ever know. People say that about those they’ve lost, of course, but with Alice, it’s the truth. And sometimes I still can’t get in the car without pulling over to cry. I can’t look at a car stopped on the side of the road without thinking about the accident. Can’t stop thinking about how much it hurts for everyone who loves her so much.

And it never stops. The grief. The loss. I can’t turn around without getting a call or text that someone I love has lost someone they love.

I didn’t sign up for this! My twenties were supposed to be full of life and love and mistakes and late nights. Instead of stumbling through the door at two in the morning after too many gin and tonics, I’m clawing my way through the stages of grief. All the time.

I wonder why they call them stages. Stages implies that they happen in order and in a timely manner. You can pencil them into your calendar. Today we’re in denial, next week is anger, next month is bargaining. Checkpoints to pass on your way to acceptance and then it’s over. But they’re messy. There’s no order, no timeline, and no rhyme or reason. You’re fine, reading a book, sitting at a coffee shop, laughing even! and then you have a question about a French translation and you get halfway into a text to the only person who can answer it before realizing nobody’s on the other end.

Oh crap, now I’m crying at my coffee shop.

I’ve tried to make it bearable. Calling the stages by the names of their respective Haunting of Hill House characters. Today I’m feeling very Theo. It helps, I guess, to tie it to something almost tangible. Something to make it make sense.

I’ll be asking “why?” forever. Why now? Why them? When I was kid, mostly everyone I knew who died was a grandparent or someone elderly. Of course, that doesn’t make it any better, but it feels more endurable. I’m too young for this! Too young to be losing friends, for my friends to be losing siblings and parents and friends. It just makes everything feel so impossible.

I guess I’m feeling pretty Shirley today, too.

There’s no real way to make sense of it, I suppose. Maybe I should stop trying to. What did Taylor Swift say? Insurmountable grief. That sounds about right. Crying alone in my room some days (most days) and then shaking it off to continue existing in a hell hole of a world, searching for the littlest pieces of light to turn them into joy.

Today that means I’m going to go sniff some candles and buy something good on vinyl. Nellie Crain, you can come around any time now, thanks.