“Love can never be lost, taken away, or destroyed. It just grows and grows and grows.”
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
When my daughter was fifteen and navigating the awkward stage of middle-teendom, she accused me for the first time of loving her brother more than I loved her. In the years that followed, I heard her say it not twice, not three times, not ten times, but so many times that I eventually stopped keeping count. I tried to explain that I didn’t love her brother more, but differently, because he was on the autism spectrum and needed a bit more care and time, but not more love. Love is like air: it’s limitless and renewable and grows to fill the space it’s given, so it cannot be split, measured, or compared. Put differently, the more love you give, the more love you have to share.
Two decades later, I asked myself a question that somewhat resembles my daughter’s reproach. Do we love some people more because we don’t mourn for them properly? By properly, I mean with copious tears and an outward display of emotion. The answer I gave myself was the same one I’d given my daughter. We don’t grieve more or less but differently because grief is a form of art that is unique to each individual. And, like the artwork that is painted red, yellow, and orange, the hues of grief can range from the ashen-gray, dull ache that lingers in the bone marrow for years to the inky, overwhelming waves of sorrow that crush us abruptly and acutely for a few moments. Surprisingly, it is never blue, as one might expect from the “feeling blue” cliché, because blue represents serenity, an emotion that is never present when grieving.
By origin, I am an immigrant who sailed across the Atlantic to settle on the Pacific coast, so my family’s meetings are rare and far between. When people are physically separated, they mourn the loss of shared experiences and memories rather than the physical object or person. Physical loss, however, has an exceptional impact on us. I recall coming back home from the hospital with my newborn premature daughter to notify my parents of her arrival. They knew the pregnancy was difficult and waited impatiently for news. It was the early nineties when phone calls were expensive, the internet was still trying to crawl, and staying connected meant waiting weeks for letters or saving up for long-distance calls.
Three weeks later, I received a reply. As I opened the envelope, panic fluttered in my gut since the letter was written in my mother’s round and sloppy handwriting, not as always in my father’s precise and neat type. Instead of reading the opening line, my eyes went straight to the second paragraph: “We just got back from the cemetery, where we put some yellow chrysanthemums, your dad’s favorite, on his grave.” That is how I learned my father passed away while I was in the joyful bubble of new motherhood. As I kept reading and the pain settled in, no tears came, but my heart turned into a cement block that invaded my chest, making it hard to breathe. But even that didn’t last because I was pulled away by my four-pound baby’s wail, reminding me that life goes on even in the midst of tragedy. I loved my dad dearly, and the news of his passing was devastating, but I had to feed, change, and cuddle the child, who would later stab me with, “You don’t love me as much as you love my brother!” whenever she was grounded.
When my kids were six and nine, I divorced their father, who, after years of refusing to treat his mental health issues, became increasingly volatile and unpredictable. The divorce was difficult for all of us but ultimately necessary for our safety and well-being.
It was an acrimonious process that not only left me grappling with the aftermath of the breakup but also surfing the complexities of co-parenting with someone I no longer trusted and who showed little regard for our financial well-being. It was a challenging time, and the grief I felt, compounded by the stress of trying to create a stable environment for the kids, was heavily tinged by crimson anger. In fact, at the time, it was fire-engine red!
During that challenging period, I worked long hours, struggled to make ends meet, and missed human company. That’s when a work assignment led me to a local dog shelter. Despite cautioning my kids, who were begging for a pet, that we couldn’t have one, we left with a pup we named Vicky.
The dog and I quickly formed a powerful bond. Although I had always loved animals, I never realized the profound impact a pet could have on a person’s mental well-being. She was the first to greet me at the door, slept under my desk while I worked my second and third jobs, and accompanied me on walks when the kids always said, No, thank you. Pokémon is on TV.
Fast forward nine years. I had found love again; the children were in their late teens, and everything appeared to be going well. Until we had to say goodbye to Vicky. But unlike the time when my father died, I could not stop crying. In fact, I poured an ocean of tears as large as the Atlantic, which I had traversed years earlier! And because I felt too ashamed to acknowledge that I had suffered more for an animal than for the people in my life, I cried quietly and exclusively in the bathroom. My grief was dark and oppressive, like a cloud that refused to lift, overshadowing everything I did. It took months for me to recover and learn that mourning a pet is okay because their love and presence in our lives may be as significant as any human bond.
Two years later, the man I decided to spend the rest of my life with and who’d become an amazing stepdad to my children unexpectedly fell ill. His cancer was swift but incredibly painful, and he required my constant attention. For three months, I hardly slept, ate, or washed. I had never felt so physically and emotionally drained. Despite the pain medication, my partner was in constant agony, and it broke my heart to see him suffer. He also became irritable and snappy, which was difficult to handle on top of everything else.
He died one Monday morning when the city was still asleep. The last time we looked at each other, I saw relief in his eyes, and it turned my grief of losing him, which until then had been tainted by the green demon of hurt, white because it was combined with peace—his and mine.
During the rush of activity that followed, I was once again unable to cry. It wasn’t until months later that I let myself examine my emotions. By then, my grief had acquired a pearly sheen of appreciation for the time we had spent together, and I understood that I had been unable to cry because I had to keep moving forward and complete the task of raising my kids.
I am sixty-one now and once again going through the process of losing a beloved pet that I welcomed into my life after the passing of my partner. I seem to keep repeating the same pattern of finding solace in dogs’ unconditional love during times of loss. It is as if I were intentionally setting myself up for a cycle of healing and comfort through the companionship of these loyal animals, knowing full well that I must lose them sooner or later and, more likely, sooner rather than later. My friends ask me if it is worth it, knowing the heartbreak that inevitably follows. I always answer yes because the love and companionship pets provide during difficult times are one of a kind.
I have heard people say that there is just one shade of black. But they are wrong. I once saw an obsidian knife at an Oaxaca museum whose darkness was so deep that it seemed to absorb all of the light around it. The analogy that comes to my mind when I lose a being that I love is that of a knife because it cuts through me with its deep, impenetrable blackness.
I have reached a point in my life where I attend more funerals than weddings. In the coming years, as I see people depart, I will likely blend a wide range of new pigments into my sorrow palette. None of them will hold more or less importance—they will merely represent different shades of grief. Until it is time for me to leave and paint my own hue onto someone else’s canvas.
Polish by birth, a citizen of the world by choice, JB Polk’s (she/her) first story was short-listed for the Irish Independent/Hennessy Awards, Ireland, 1996. Since she went back to writing in 2020, more than 100 of her stories, flash fiction and non-fiction, have been accepted for publication. She has recently won 1st prize in the International Human Rights Arts Movement literary contest.
Bluesky: @jbtrans.bsky.social
Instagram: @jolantapolk