KIRA LOGAN / DAILY NEXUS

I am 9 years old. I am sitting on my grandfather’s magenta-turned-lavender rocking chair with him, and we are watching Sunday Night Football. 

My mind jumps to a 14-year-old version of myself, inconsolable in the John Muir Hospital intensive care unit hallway after saying goodbye to him, holding onto the fact that hearing is the last sense to stay with the dying. Holding onto the hope that he could hear my goodbye. 

Most would say I’m grieving; I say I’m a time traveler. Grief makes me one.

Time traveling is considered to be a great feat, something no fancy scientist or theoretical physicist has figured out yet. I, however, wish it away — for it tugs me out of bed and pulls me out of conversation, forcing me to engage in past and future versions of myself. “Remember your grandfather’s death, Kira?” Yes, Grief. “Remember your grandmother’s death, Kira?” Yes, Grief. “Remember your first heartbreak, Kira?” Yes, Grief. It’s always “Yes, Grief,” and that’s the end of that. 

It’s during my spells of irrevocable time travel that I question concepts of fate, destiny, love, hope and loss. What constitutes loss, and when do we lose? I lose a piece of my grandfather every day, like paint slowly chipping away on a wall after a coffee table rubbed up against it for too long. Would loss cover a decade-long time period or is it less gradual and more instant? Chalk it up to my nostalgic tendencies or premature self-protective measures, but I consider myself to be losing every day. Was loss when my grandfather left our shared home for the last time, taking 16 years’ worth of memories and advice with him? These questions precede me yet do not stop me from the involuntary action of time traveling. 

I’m studying for finals on the fourth floor of the library when I am taken to a 6-year-old version of myself who just got the door shut in her face. Her father was leaving indefinitely for Chicago. She now heavily relied on the dilapidated house phone to tell her father about her school achievements.

I’m sunbathing on an oddly warm January morning when I am taken to a 12-year-old version of myself who just helped her grandfather get back on his feet after his fall. He is becoming less able-bodied and I can see the worry in her eyes. She sat with her grandfather, anticipating her mother’s arrival any minute while answering his repetitive questions with pleasure.

I’m making myself a grilled cheese for dinner when I am taken to a 17-year-old version of myself who just finished packing for college. She is writing notes to hide around the house to comfort her mother, because the house will become significantly emptier in 12 hours. She now has similar notes her mother wrote her taped up in her college bedroom, three years later. 

How does one timestamp the experience of grief when it’s everflowing and all-evolving? When does grief start and where does it end, or rather, have I inherited a new part of myself? 

As I flood myself with questions, the revelation meets me in the bathroom mirror every morning before class: Grief is inevitable. The cruel truth is that someone has to leave first, with no extenuating circumstances. Just as life was created with mountains and oceans and extra cream and sugar in coffee and dance parties, doors shutting and goodbyes and one last sunset are on the other side. 

Grief is the best acrobat I’ve ever seen, for sometimes I can’t even recognize its shape. Grief meets me more logistically in the form of tears at 11 a.m., anger in the late afternoon and sorrow in between my bedsheets as I fall asleep. 

Grief also likes to morph itself so that I, its victim, can barely recognize it: into sunsets that remind me of my grandmother’s favorite color (periwinkle), in between the pantry shelves in my childhood home (my grandfather always prepared me snacks), when someone refers to me as my old nickname that only a select few important people know (Keeks) or when the Trader Joe’s frozen meal aisle smells strikingly similar to Dior Sauvage Eau (my ex-boyfriend’s signature scent). 

The beauty and pain of grief embraces my life like an oversized blanket; Grief and I spend a lot of time together at the beach with a panoptic view of the Pacific Ocean and everything I’ve ever lost, coming in and washing out with the tide. 

I do not believe that grief is meant to be defined by life-changing events and feelings in one’s life but rather an accumulation and spectrum of things (people, experiences, trinkets) gained and lost. 

With this metric, grief is in a race with happiness for preceding the human experience. According to Newton’s third law of motion, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, the interplay of joy and sorrow is more direct than what it feels like. For every time I time travel backwards, an equal and opposite reaction of appreciating my ability to love so deeply appears. For every heartbreak I’ve gone through, every goodbye I’ve begrudgingly given, there was stubborn love stuck underneath my grief, like plywood covering up stained glass windows. 

The longer I sat with my grief, she unveiled her truest form and she was really just love.

Kira Logan familiarizes herself with the concept of grief, enough to forgive it for taking away everything she loves.

A version of this article appeared on p. 14 of the January 30, 2024 print edition of the Daily Nexus.

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