The Pile

There is a pile of clothes on my bedroom floor.

It has been there since October 4th.

I know exactly what time it started. Around 4 in the morning, Bruno woke us up in agony. He jumped off the bed and collapsed, and the sound he made was the kind of sound you don’t forget. I knew we needed to go to the vet immediately - but I also was supposed to be on a plane for a work trip later in the day. My flight wasn’t until noon. The plan was to pack fast, get him to the emergency vet, make sure he was stable, and then go. So I packed. Fast and sloppy. I moved through the house in a frantic blur, pulling things off shelves and out of drawers. I left things where they fell.

I didn’t know that when I left him at the vet that morning, I was saying goodbye.

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What you need to understand is that the summer before that morning had already taken everything it could reach.

My husband’s father. Then Moose, my other Weimaraner, who danced his own little dance and then was gone. Then my stepdad Charley, who was home and safety and a hundred summer mornings. Three losses in eleven days. And I kept moving. I kept functioning. I got up, I made coffee, I answered emails, I held myself together in all the visible ways.

I don't even remember half of what happened after those losses.

And then Bruno. My soul dog. The naughtiest, most joyful creature I have ever known, who woke up happy every single morning of his life. I left him at the vet on October 4th. On October 5th, in the middle of a conference session surrounded by strangers, my husband called to tell me he was gone. I stepped out into a hallway and fell apart in the only way you can when you have nowhere to go. And then the next morning, it was Laura calling about Momo, a woman who had been family for twenty-six years.

That was when I gave up. Not on life. Not on anything dramatic. I just stopped pretending I was okay.

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When I came home knowing he was gone, I walked past the pile and didn’t touch it.

I added my suitcase contents to it when I got back from the work trip. Just dumped everything on top. At some point it stopped being a pile of clothes and became something else entirely. A monument, maybe. To the last morning I pretended to be ok, to when the performance finally ended.

I don’t even know what’s in there now. Probably all the socks and underwear I’ve been missing for months. But I couldn’t touch it. Touching it felt like finally having to admit to myself it was all real and it had all really happened.

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I think we have this idea that giving up is the worst thing. That it means weakness, or failure, or falling apart.

But sometimes giving up is the most honest thing you can do. Sometimes it means: I am no longer going to pretend this doesn’t hurt. I am no longer going to hold my face in a shape that makes other people comfortable. I am going to let grief take up exactly as much space as it needs.

The pile was grief taking up space. Quietly, privately, in one corner of my room, where no one had to see it.

Grief doesn’t always look like crying. Sometimes it looks like a pile of laundry you can’t bring yourself to wash.

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Today, for the first time, I picked up a few pieces of clothing.

Not all of it. Just a few.

I stood there for a minute before I did it. I don’t know what I was waiting for, exactly. Permission, maybe. Or just readiness. The two things feel different from the outside but the same from the inside.

I picked them up and put them in the wash. The world didn’t end. Bruno didn’t disappear any more than he already had. The floor underneath looked like just a floor.

I thought I would feel something dramatic. I mostly felt tired. And a little lighter. And then sad again, in the quiet way grief arrives when you stop bracing for it.

Picking it up didn’t mean I was going back to pretending. That’s not what moving forward means. It just meant that today, I could carry a little less.

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If you have a pile somewhere, in your house or in your heart, I’m not here to tell you to clean it up.

Maybe you needed to give up too. Maybe stopping the performance was the only true thing left to do. Maybe the pile is not a failure. Maybe it’s the most honest thing in your house.

Grief has its own schedule. And when you’re ready, not to go back to how things were, but to take one small step forward without pretending it doesn’t cost anything, the first piece will still be there.

Waiting.

Keep Moving

Rachel