How to Make Friends with the Dark

by Kathleen Glasgow

Will she visit you? You know, like show up. You’ve seen movies like that, where dead people appear to the living, to comfort them.

It would be nice if once, someone would just say, “Girl, you are in the shit and you will not be getting out soon. So here’s how to make friends with the dark.”

“You don’t have to joke about sad stuff.”

Oh, so this is what it’s like, laughing with a sister, getting tangled up together in a car.

I also want to have fun. I mean, not too much, because I’m just so super sad right

I have no idea how I am going to live with such a giant piece of sadness in my body all the time, knowing it will never get any smaller.

Weirdly, I feel relieved to say all that aloud. I mean, nobody here is going to look at me strangely, or walk on eggshells,

What we try to remember, most of all, is that grief slips into every part of your life, every day, every minute.

“But Grief Life? That’s forever. And it’s going to really suck. It does suck. That’s the Big Suck I was telling you about.”

They’ve been carved out, too.

“No, it’s for any life-altering traumatic event. You want to forget, but your mind won’t let you. The smell of a person’s clothes. Maybe seeing a car the same color as they had. Things can set you off, make you panic, disoriented.”

But you don’t realize what it feels like, this hole, this missing, until it happens to you.

I feel a little let down that she didn’t, like, question me more.

Maybe this time, I just want to float, and see what happens.

“It’s hard. It never stops. I cry in Claire’s when I go to Park Mall for earrings. I cry in debate prep. I cry during debate. I cry in the shower. I cry opening a can of tuna for my cat. I’m surprised I haven’t drowned in my own tears.”

It sucks. I mean, it sucks!”

the fact of the matter is that you are gonna walk around for the rest of your life with a huge hole in your heart. Like, Grand Canyon big, girl.”

“You don’t know. You don’t know how it feels, when someone goes that way, and you never will.”

But I don’t think he’s ever actually had anyone die, or he wouldn’t even say half the stuff he says, honestly. I walk around like my skin’s been removed, cooked, and put back on me. That’s how I feel. Like a walking piece of hot, bloody meat. My hair is falling out. I make myself puke up my meals. It’s like my mom is on the other side of the swimming pool, and we’re both underwater, and I can see her mouth moving? But I can’t understand

Every day you go on, just like everyone tells you to, and every day, you feel more and more invisible.

“Like if you keep giving away their stuff, eventually you won’t have anything left of them.”

“Just love who you want, you know? Life is so much shit. We should just be able to love who we want.”

Someday, when people ask us about high school, and dances, and kisses, and all that stuff, I know that what we’ll remember most of all is how normal was stolen from us.

No answer. I’m getting used to that by now.

I take a running start and when my body slices through the water, I feel as free as I did all those years ago in The Pit, my body weightless and ignorant of the pain to come.

“You can keep those. That dress you came in with? My God, that dress oozed pain. I could barely hold it, Tiger. Whatever the story is behind that dress? You are ready to write ‘the end,’ my girl.”

“Tiger, the last thing your mama probably wished for you was to be happy. Not to wear a dress until it’s falling off you. Not to hurt yourself in her memory, and to lash out at others. No mother wants that.”

“You don’t honor your mother by wearing a dress, honey. You honor your mother by remembering her, and holding her dear, right here.” She taps her heart.

“Sometimes you need to open yourself to the possibility of the miraculous, Tiger Tolliver. Sometimes you just do.”

“But that doesn’t mean I’m not ready to be a sister, okay? Does that make sense? We can do this, together. I know we can. I want to.”

know I can never be a parent-parent to you. I can’t be your mom. Your mom is always your mom, you know? And I didn’t have the best role models growing up. But I’m going to do better. I swear. Look, I’ve already started studying.”

I thought I was done with death, at least a little bit, but death wasn’t done with me.

“I’ve been doing this for quite some time and you know what? It’s a shame that it costs so much to tell the whole world that someone you love mattered to you, it really is. And I know we want to put every little thing in here because we want to show such a good, full life, don’t we? Even if it was a short one.”

I know he’s done bad things. Hurt people. Messed up a lot. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t matter to me, to the puzzle of my life. He has a place somewhere with me and within me, he’s a piece.

Sometimes you’re so hungry, so thirsty for something to fill you up, you’ve craved it for so long, but when you finally have it, it hurts going down. It’s not a medicine for what ails you. It might just be the thing that is keeping you sick.

When people die, it’s like they kind of take your ability to form words with them. You come up empty a lot of the time.

“Write me a letter telling me how to live for the rest of my life without you.”

You must go on. I can’t go on. You must go on. Because what other choice is there, really? You have to make friends with the dark.

There’s so much I wish I didn’t have to know about living.

And I do find it comforting that maybe when you die you get back all the things you’ve lost, like your legs, or your parents, or your daughters, or even your mom, and you get to eat all the ice cream you want, finally, and it doesn’t hurt one bit.

do you only realize how many broken lives are around you when you have a broken life of your own?

We must do better by our young people. We must engage in open conversation about depression and mental illness. Our schools need more resources, more support.

I don’t have the answers; there’s no blueprint for grief. What there is, is a lot of stumbling around in the dark, looking for a warm hand to hold on to.