This is how I survive early sobriety, which turns out to be one long Return of the Ache. I say to myself every few minutes: This is hard. We can do hard things. And then I do them.
Fast-forward ten years. I have three children, a husband, a house, and a big career as a writer. I am not just a sober, upstanding citizen, I am kind of fancy, honestly. I am, by all accounts, humaning successfully. At a book signing during that time, a reporter approaches my father, points toward the long line of people waiting to meet me, and says, “You must be so proud of your daughter.” My father looks at the reporter and says, “Honestly, we’re just happy she’s not in jail.” We are all so happy I’m not in jail.
One morning, I am in my closet, getting dressed, when my phone rings. I answer. It’s my sister. She is speaking slowly and deliberately because she is between contractions. She says, “It’s time, Sissy. The baby’s coming. Can you fly to Virginia now?”
I say, “Yes, I can. I will come! I will be there soon!” Then I hang up and stare at a large stack of jeans on my shelf. I am unsure of what to do next. During the past decade I have learned how to do many hard things, but I still don’t know how to do easy things, like book a flight. My sister usually does easy things for me. I think and think and decide that it is perhaps a less-than-ideal time to call her back and ask if she’s aware of any good airline deals. I think some more and begin to wonder if anyone else’s sister might be available to help me. Then the phone rings again. This time it’s my mom. Her voice is slow and deliberate, too. She says, “Honey. You need to come to Ohio right away. It’s time to say good-bye to Grandma.”
I say nothing.
She says, “Honey? Are you there? Are you okay?”
How are you today, Glennon?
I’m am still in my closet, staring at my jeans. That’s what I remember thinking first: I have a lot of jeans.
Then the Ache becomes real and knocks on my door. My grandma Alice is dying. I am being called to fly toward the dying.
How are you today, Glennon?
I do not say, “I’m fine, Mom.”
I say, “I’m not okay, but I am coming. I love you.”
I hang up, walk to my computer, and google “how to buy plane tickets.” I accidentally buy three tickets, but I am still proud of myself. I walk back into my closet and begin to pack. I am both packing and watching myself pack, and my watching self is saying: Wow. Look at you. You are doing it. You look like a grown-up. Don’t stop, don’t think, just keep moving. We can do hard things.
Surprisingly, now that the Ache has transformed from idea to reality, I feel relatively steady. Dealing with the dropped shoe is less paralyzing, apparently, than waiting for that shoe to drop.
I call my sister and tell her I have to go to Ohio first. She already knows. My mom picks me up at the Cleveland airport and drives me to the retirement home. We are quiet and soft with each other. No one says she’s fine. We arrive and walk through the loud lobby, then through the antiseptic-smelling hallway and into my grandmother’s warm, dark, Catholic room. I pass her motorized wheelchair and notice the gray duct tape covering the “high-speed” button, which she lost her right to use when her hallway velocity began scaring the other residents. I sit down in the chair next to my grandmother’s bed. I touch the Mary statue on her bedside table, then the deep blue glass rosary beads draped over Mary’s hands. I peek behind the table and see a small calendar hung there, the theme of which is hot priests. Each month’s priest wears a full vestment and a smoldering smile. This calendar is a fund-raiser for something or other. Charity has always been important to my grandmother. My mother stands several feet behind me, giving my grandmother and me time and space.
I have never in my life felt the Ache more deeply than I do in that moment, as my mother stands behind me, watching me touch each of her mother’s things, knowing exactly which memory I am recalling with each lingering touch. Knowing that her daughter is preparing to say good-bye to her mother and that her mother is preparing to say good-bye to her daughter.
My grandmother reaches over, rests her hand on mine, and looks at me deeply.
This is when the Ache becomes too powerful to resist. I am out of practice. I don’t stiffen. I don’t hold my breath. I don’t break eye contact. I unclench and let it take me.
First it takes me to the thought that one day, not long from now, these roles will shift. I will be in my mother’s place, watching my daughter say good-bye to my mother. Then, not too long from then, it will be my daughter, watching her daughter say good-bye to me. I think these thoughts. I see these visions. I feel them, too. They are hard and deep.
The Ache continues to take me with it, and now I am somewhere else. I am in the Ache. I am in the One Big Ache of lovepainbeautytendernesslonginggoodbye and I am here with my grandmother and my mother, and suddenly I understand that I am here with everyone else, too. Somehow I am here with everyone who has ever lived and ever loved and ever lost. I have entered the place I thought was death, and it has turned out to be life itself. I entered this Ache alone, but inside it I have found everyone. In surrendering to the Ache of loneliness I have discovered un-loneliness. Right here, inside the Ache, with everyone who has ever welcomed a child or held the hand of a dying grandmother or said good-bye to a great love. I am here, with all of them. Here is the “We” that I recognized in Josie’s sign. Inside the Ache is the “We.” We can do hard things, like be alive and love deep and lose it all, because we do these hard things alongside everyone who has ever walked the Earth with her eyes, arms, and heart wide open.
The Ache is not a flaw. The Ache is our meeting place. It’s the clubhouse of the brave. All the lovers are there. It is where you go alone to meet the world. The Ache is love.
The Ache was never warning me: This ends, so leave. She was saying: This ends, so stay.
I stayed. I held my grandmother Alice Flaherty’s paper hands. I touched the wedding rings she still wore twenty-six years after my grandfather’s death. “I love you, honey,” she said. “I love you too, Grandma,” I said. “Take care of that baby for me,” she said.
That was it. I did not say anything remarkable at all. It turns out that a lot of good-bye is done in the touching of things: rosaries, hands, memories, love. I kissed my grandmother, felt her warm, soft forehead with my lips. Then I stood up and walked out of the room. My mother followed me. She shut the door behind us, and we stood in the hallway and held each other and shook. We had taken a great journey together, to the place where brave people go, and it had changed us.
My mom drove me back to the airport. I boarded another plane to Virginia. My dad picked me up, and we drove to the birthing center. I walked into my sister’s room, and she looked over at me from her bed. Then she looked down at the bundle in her arms and up at me again. She said, “Sister, meet your niece, Alice Flaherty.”
I took baby Alice into my arms, and we sat down in the rocking chair next to my sister’s bed. First I touched Alice Flaherty’s hands. Purple and papery. Next I noticed her gray-blue eyes, which stared right into mine. They looked like the eyes of the master of the universe. They said to me: Hello. Here I am. Life goes on.
Since I got sober, I have never been fine again, not for a single moment. I have been exhausted and terrified and angry. I have been overwhelmed and underwhelmed and debilitatingly depressed and anxious. I have been amazed and awed and delighted and overjoyed to bursting. I have been reminded, constantly, by the Ache: This will pass; stay close.