How to Be Cute Again

how, you ask? let people love you!! i love you! it's cute

I said no to a lot of plans this weekend and instead sat in my bed while the rain drizzled past my second story window. I told people that I had work to do, and I did, but each time I set out to do that work my body was given a go ahead to go sit in my bed and read. I haven’t allowed myself to sit and do nothing in so long; I haven’t had the time to sit and do nothing in so long. It was like being a kid and all weekend I was that child, curled up, reading about grief and praise / ungrieved war, money eating the world, the mother Ocean and how she can heal if you properly ask and she responds.

And then yesterday, in the middle of the day, my dad called me to say that my grandma died. Completely unexpectedly. And you know what I did? I sat in shock and said okay and asked my dad if he was okay and after all that was said and done I drove 22 minutes to pick up some chairs. I did all of that without a tear in my eye. Until a beautiful gray haired lady opened her door and invited me inside.

Before I go further, let me tell you a secret. I used to be cute because I would let people in. I’d let them comfort me. Now I’m not as cute, at least the way I see it—I’m stiff from years of working and trying hard. I’m not someone you can hold anymore. Not lately.

I think we all used to be cute and then we forgot to relax. We forgot how to let people love us. And so here this lady was, standing in her kitchen, showing me her chairs that had been in the family for years, and I started crying. I cried in a stranger’s house and it was really wonderful. She gave me a hug and I let her. Then I drove home and ordered food to my house—a thing I’ve never done before. And I sat down on a new chair and ate a dinner I didn’t make. I thought about my grandma, thought about Martín Prechtel and his book on grief and praise, and gave my best go at grieving. Sigh. I did everything I needed for myself and it wasn’t perfect. It was the way I grieved, and grieving is messy and never perfect.

My grandma was great at telling stories. She would have everybody laughing as her big pink cheeks smiled so big that the ends of her lips seemed to reach her hat. She always wore hats—the best hats! One time, when my grandma was much younger, she got bored at the beach and so she faked her own death with ketchup. Right there on the beach, in public, in the middle of the day. She just smeared ketchup all over herself because she was bored and then she was banned from that beach forever.

I’ve always been told that I’m like her and in return I’ve always hoped to be like her.

…

I didn’t expect this whole newsletter to be about my grandma passing, but I don’t know how it couldn’t be either. I haven’t lost someone close to me since Hanna and Hannora’s mom died and I had months of grieving before she was actually gone. This is something new. It’s not that I’m sad, we’ve all known sadness in different ways, I just feel differently than I ever have. And I’m scared to lose more.

I wrote in stickies yesterday morning: BEING HARD ON MYSELF DOES NO GOOD.

That was supposed to be the meaning of all of this, and yes it’s still true, but it ended up being something different. The funny thing is that usually these newsletters are written in an hour and sent without a third glance and this one has been the hardest one to write. I feel a little sucked up and withered these days. Like trying to float in a dried up lake.

BEING HARD ON MYSELF DOES NO GOOD!!

So, I’m not going to be hard on myself. I’m going to go sit in my bed and read some silly old Richard Brautigan while the sun is bright. And then eventually I’ll do something else, if I want. And all the while I’ll miss all of you who are far away. I think it might be time for me to come home one day?? We’ll see. That’s another newsletter, another brain, another Jo. May we all be cuter tomorrow.

“Grief expressed out loud for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.” - Martín Prechtel