Grief is a Steep Hill to Climb

creative nonfiction
by Tracie Adams

I was a voyeur watching with fascination like a child at a holiday parade, except I wasn’t watching the funeral procession for entertainment. I wanted to see their faces, contorted with grief at the loss of someone special. Maybe a grandfather who had lived a long and good life. But what if it was a brother or best friend who had lost his battle with cancer, leaving a wife and child alone in the world? I knew it wasn’t a child who had died because their shoulders were too straight for that. Their heads were not bowed enough, their steps too brisk toward the small brick church down the mountainside, clutching purses and white handkerchiefs.

I stepped out onto the front porch when I heard the church bells ringing. I thought about putting on my boots and walking down the hill to get a closer look.

I knew it wasn’t just a congregational meeting or a spaghetti supper because the men were putting on black suit jackets over crisp white dress shirts, getting out of their cars, parked at a forty-five-degree angle on the mountain roadside. The women adjusted and smoothed their white dresses and hats as they stepped out onto the sidewalk, balancing their bodies, heavy with loss, on tip toes, their high heels clicking cautiously toward the church doors.

I knew from experience that it was not uncommon for black women to wear white to funerals as a way of celebrating the departed’s life and their entry into Paradise. Like so many things I have learned, I found this out the hard way when I was the only white woman at the funeral for my elderly black neighbor. My single white body, clothed in black, a speck of pepper floating in the salty sea of dark bodies adorned in white.

In the past few years, I attended the funerals of my best friend, my nephew, my uncle, my cousin, and too many others. I learned to grieve the hard way, wailing when a song on the radio brought up memories, hiding in my bedroom when a photo on my phone pulled me under, or staring blankly at the walls to avoid feeling anything at all. And so, I studied the faces and the movement of these mourners on their grief journey, searching for secrets in pinched expressions and bloodshot eyes, hoping they might teach me how to do it the right way. There must be an easier way.

The church doors opened, releasing a wave of mourners under a green awning, returning to their cars one by one, followed by the solemn sound of an organ playing Amazing Grace. Their flashing lights lined the narrow street as they followed the police car in procession to the graveside.

Mourners don’t look like normal people in their cars. They don’t do normal car things like scrolling on social media at stoplights or chatting excitedly with their passengers. As SUV’s and sedans crawled slowly up the hill, a few of the bereaved drivers looked over at me, wrapped in an oversized grey blanket, the same dark color of sorrow. As they passed, I tried my best to comfort them through the compassion in my eyes.

Through fingerprint-smeared glass, their tear-stained faces spoke to me. There is nothing more to learn. There is no easier way.

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Tracie Adams, author of Our Lives in Pieces, writes flash memoir and fiction from rural Virginia. Her work, widely published in literary journals, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. More HERE and X @1funnyfarmAdams.