Undefined.

A lifetime of memories, divided by zero.

Trigger warning: death and suicide.

The first death I remember is my maternal grandfather’s. My mom’s oldest sister, Mildred, was an educator and used every opportunity she could to teach me how to spell. I learned how to spell California because of a small souvenir tray she kept in a curio, and then learned how to spell Czechoslovakia after watching an episode of Jeopardy with her one afternoon. I would be put on display for her guests to show how smart I was. So it made sense that when my granddaddy was sick and I wondered why he had to wear plastic tubes in his nose, that she also taught me how to spell emphysema.

I also remember coming home after school and finding out that he’d passed. I could tell something was different because I watched how my mother spoke over the phone and the calm rushing that happened around me. It was as if everything moved in slow-motion and quickly at the same time. My memories of the funeral feel like a dream sequence—I’m not completely sure what is real and what has been made up in my mind over the years. It was hot and muggy, women waved their fans all around the church pews, and everything had a turquoise tint to it. It was as though the sun’s rays bounced around and off of the wood in the church, my aunt’s large glasses as she stood in the pulpit, the choir’s robes, and the flowers to give that memory one single color. That color also happens to be my favorite.

I remember tears on that day, both mine and my mother’s, but I don’t recall hearing much more about my grandfather’s life or death after that. He was here, and then he wasn’t. I learned to accept death in the context of life and how to properly punctuate one’s final moments with loved ones. I did not know that grief was part of it.

Whether it was because others’ grief was hidden from me or that my empathy was exhausted in times of loss, I had never mourned the way I saw others mourn. In fact, I held a hopeful view of both life and death. Once, I tried to explain to my mom that it felt like life was really just a state of consciousness, and I wondered if our consciousness ever really went away. When she incredulously asked, “So you believe in reincarnation?” my eleven-year-old self knew well enough that I’d broached a taboo, and this thought was best kept to myself. To me, death was a ceremonial transition to a life experienced elsewhere.

Although I continued to move through my life with a profound respect for death and the dying, I still felt limited in understanding grief. Or at least grief in the way it is typically presented. I did not understand when people would cry at random moments or when they would say they were feeling down because of it. I understood the feelings, but I did not understand why. Am I supposed to be emotional? Do I feel numb? Or am I just emotional in my own way? Have I been hardened by so much loss? Did I really love them? These are questions I ask myself every time I experience death and cannot access the same emotions I see others express, and truthfully, it fucks with me.

I have lost many people in my lifetime: my maternal grandfather, my paternal grandparents, great-aunts, and great-uncles, my godmother, a godbrother, a play cousin, a nephew, all of my aunts and uncles except one on my mother’s side of the family, a community grandfather, my grandfather-in-law, a dear friend, and an uncle on my dad’s side. In all of that death, I’ve only grieved in a recognizable way once, and that was when my friend took his life.

It wasn’t until then that I understood the heartache that accompanies loss. But it wasn’t because he was now gone. Instead, it was because he left. It felt abrupt. It felt inconsistent with what I understood about his life, and I could not make sense of it. I learned that my grief was selfish—I mourned the changes it brought to my life because he was so integral to my every day. I do not exaggerate when I say that I still think of him at least once every day. You can imagine, then, that the feelings of love and loss are complicated when among the universe of people I’ve lost, it was this person whose loss pulls at me more consistently. I felt accomplished when I discovered that I do, in fact, know grief. I thought it was an indicator that I had removed some walls somewhere or that I had softened to allow more of myself to be seen. If nothing else, I felt better equipped to support my friends through their grief.

Then, last Sunday, while driving home from New York City, I got the call that my uncle, my Dad’s closest sibling, passed away. My breath left my body, and all the sounds around me became muffled, much like when your ears become stuffy on the airplane. I felt the wheels turning beneath me and rolling over the bumps and cracks in the asphalt, and I-95 looked like a tunnel. I blinked and said, “okay.” My reaction felt typical but unexpected. I thought that my grief after Kevin would no longer resemble my grief before Kevin. Yet here I was, back in the familiar space where death is just part of life.

I called a couple of friends who’d known my uncle had been sick and shared the news with them as a matter of fact. I did not cry until later that night, while in my bed, I ran the reel of sweet memories I’d collected over the years with him. It was then that I realized it’s not that I do not grieve the person. Instead, I grieve my loss of them, and that loss is measured by the fullness of my experience against the amount of time I thought I had left. It’s like a math problem of sorts where the numerator grows, however slightly, while the denominator grows smaller. As the amount of time I think remains approaches zero, the more complete my experience feels. Indefinable. In every instance except Kevin’s, I knew my time was dwindling, and I began to grieve along the way. Grief, for me, looks like fewer missed calls, quicker replies to text messages and emails, longer hugs, taking pictures with my eyes, searing every living detail into my memory, asking questions I’ve always wanted to know the answers to, revisiting recipes, and journaling about our experiences—the things I don’t want to forget.

I began grieving my uncle when he was in the hospital last year. I had never before imagined him not being here, but that jolted me into reality. My world with him is full of birthday phone calls, punchy one-liners, delicious salsa, being the life of the party, hot summers at the pool, watching Die Hard in the dark, the gift of an aunt by neither marriage nor blood, an unhurried outlook on life, Black art, and tender care of my daughter. That is a life well lived and well-remembered.

I began grieving my mother when my aunt Mildred died, and with my uncle Dwight’s death, I begin grieving my dad. It’s not sad; it just is. I am grateful for the moments that push me along in this life’s journey—the ones that remind me that it will one day, always sooner than expected, come to an end. It’s how I keep from breaking, and it’s how I honor them in this life and the next. And so, as the giants in your life become fragile, their memories fade, and faculties dwindle, I hope your memories with them become more intense, more colorful, and more vivid.