When I moved out of college in May, it seemed as if all the creative aspects of myself had been packed away with my things in the storage unit. I forgot about this blog, I hadn’t picked up a pen, and I certainly hadn’t drawn anything; as corny as it is, I left a part of myself in Meadville.

This summer, I taught in California–I’d left home, which didn’t please my mother, and I’d brought two suticases of clothing and left everything else behind. Really, what’s more interesting about that is that I didn’t really care too much about my life being across the country, but in fact my life seemed to care that I was gone; when I returned home, nothing was the same. So, perhaps this is an apology for neglecting this blog, or perhaps it’s also me trying to understand absence.

I searched “absence” on Google and was told it’s something being far away from another thing, or the nonexistence of something. And despite the simplicity of this definition, psychology suggests that, in fact, absence holds more power than we could possibly imagine. The idea that something is gone, or missing, or never returning is a concept that people are still studying–why the brain takes it personally. What I’m really most curious about is if absence is simaultaneous with grief. Does mourning mean understanding the lack of something, or is it really the brain not being able to quite grasp how something suddenly is gone forever, sitting in a box on the top of my cabinet in the living room?

Psychology suggests there are three types of grief: common grief, which can be understood as sadness over loss that lasts for no more than a year or two, chronic grief, or severe depression that doesn’t improve for several years, and most interestingly, absent grief, which implies the bereaved is unaffected in their day-to-day life. Many people choose to just simply avoid this unavoidable heartbreak by loving no one, but I don’t think anyone can really do that; the brain is not designed to be alone.

When I returned home from California, a week before I came back to college, I noticed the absence of many things in my house, but mostly there was an absence of joy. Grief had subsided my home; my mother’s uncle had passed just the week prior to my return, and it felt as if rather than eggshells we’d been walking around on top of knives that would severly damage you if you stepped on them the wrong way. I couldn’t decipher anyone’s reactions. My mother was angry, her husband drank a lot, and the kids needed me to balance the two out. I was meant to be the joy-bringer of the home when my plane landed: a responsibility I’ve beared my entire life. In the face of absence, this responsibility never truly leaves.

I found this environment to be more difficult as I was facing my own grief; I had found out my biological mother was asking about me, and that my sister did too, and in fact all summer all I could think about was the image I had of them before I left. In truth I miss them, and it’s hard to make other people feel better about their absence when you’re dealing with the complexities of your own. I check my biological mother’s Facebook every day.

Another form of grief that psychologists study is what they call anticipatory grief: the idea that you know something is dying, or going to die, and you are grieving their death before they have gone. Before I’d returned home, I experienced this idea once: when my parents (the biological ones) overdosed on opiod medication. But I came to realize the feeling of anticipatory grief is much different when the thing actually dies, despite the fact that you’re expecting it; I guess, in some ways, it was worse.

My cat died while using the litter box on August 11th. He’s been dead for a month now. I guess if I were handling his death better I’d have written a real essay–one with craft and pretty words–a long time ago, but I’m not sure I’ve really ever left the “denial” phase of grief since his death. My mom’s husband, who found his body, thinks that perhaps he had a heart attack trying to get out of the box. He’d been barely four pounds, and he couldn’t really walk. I was watching him die. But when it came, his death, it felt more unreal, like it was impossible, like he was still the same as when I’d left. I think he had cancer.

I held his body before they’d taken him to be cremated. He’d been in rigor mortus. It’s not easy to describe how difficult that is–the death itself was hard, but actually feeling his body, looking at it, seeing the lack of movement in his chest, it all felt quite surreal. I had imagined it was fake.

I often still see him out of the corner of my eye. My bookbag makes a noise because of a keychain I have that replicates the sound of his bell; I’ve since taken it off. When my friends show me their cats, I think that I’ll be going home to see him–I imagine picking him up, sneezing because his hair has gone up my nose, and letting him eat a churu out of my hand–but when I walk into my dorm room and see his toy sitting on my desk, I remember he’s dead. Dead. What a strange word. Rolls off the tongue much too easily.

Since his death, I’ve dealt very seriously with the overwhelming fear of dying, which psychologists identify as another symptom of grief. I can’t imagine how he felt, knowing how he was positioned when he died. I don’t believe it was fast and I do believe he suffered. What happens when it’s over? Am I to never be able to experience life again, the nature, the smell of the ocean, the voice of my loved ones, the tune of music, the beautiful art of writing, painting…does it just end?

After he passed, I noticed the absence of other things much more. The absence of clothes that fit, of cool air, of kind words in my home. My inability to leave the farm felt much more incapsulating. The absence of my cat I’d lost two years ago felt harder to digest. Until recently, I felt the absence of my breath too.

So, in turn, all of this has resulted in the absence of a new post. I have been thinking a lot recently about what to write, but all that consumes by brain is this feeling of something being missing, lacking something. Perhaps this is my attempt at putting it into words.

grief is just love with no place to go.

-jamie anderson