Words of Tongue & Pen

In the week following the death of my Aunt Trisha—or Patricia, or Trish, or Tissy; mild variances of the same name that convey to me an image of a pendulum; our tepid relationship swinging in constant flux— I think about, speak of, and reminisce on her in swirling ellipses and speculative reflection.

I talk about her to friends over lunch, the wooden spires of chopsticks twirling and twirling the same lump of congealed Pad Thai, where I speak of my aunt in what feels like riddles and fragments. Talk to them of how much I had loved her as a child, how close of a bond we had.

(what I don’t say is that I gave her the nickname of “Tissy” when I was learning to speak, had had difficulty grappling with the /sh/ sound embedded in her name, could only formulate it with the hiss of a /s/ and a toothless smile—to which she broke down in tears of joy, a nickname bestowed; what I don’t say is that I wish I could have heard her tell that story again, could watch as the deep-rooted crinkles of her face—the delineating lines of life spent undulating between crushing pain and overwhelming joy—alight in the firm memory of both of our youths before distance ground it into a fine powder to be blown away; what I don’t say is that I have this memory of her gently grazing my face with her fingertips, her lips whispering a soothing, cooing nursery rhyme that always made my skin ripple with prickles before turning her hand palm up and chucking my chin as we both float in giggles and sighs; what I don’t say is that I try to Google this nursery rhyme, try to jumpstart the dying engine where my memories of her cycle through, and cannot find anything resembling the hum I hear in my head and ears—and I don’t tell them that, to my surprise, this deflated me; what I don’t say is that—until recently—I refused to recall remembrances of shared connections, for fear that I may actually allow myself to feel the weight of our fallout, the crushing gut punch of time that’s been lost to pride)

Today, I googled “grieving someone who hurt you.” I scan and scroll through psych articles, trying to find the meaning in something that has none. I read blog posts on “absent grief.” It’s described as showing little to no signs of the grieving process, ranging from an inability to miss the deceased to showing zero inclination to participate in its five stages. There is a staggering suspicion that agony goes missing when the bereaved are avoidant, and in denial of their loss. I’m not sure if what I feel is grief for her death, or grief over the forced hacking of a limb from our shared family tree. Is this the absence?

(here’s what I am sure of: what I am sure of is that—when I unlock the secret rooms within the crumbling palace of my memories—there’s a distinct and conflicting symbolism of our disintegration; here’s what I mean by that: what I mean is that the dashing away of our relationship feels ever palpable and present when I recall an ordinary instance from my childhood—perhaps this is magical thinking; here’s the instance: my Aunt Trisha had gifted me a souvenir from her trip to the Rattlesnake Rodeo—a decapitated rattlesnake head, mouth agape, suspended and imprisoned within spherical glass—and I fell in love with this enshrined danger, would carry it with me whenever I played in the sparse yard of our double-wide trailer in Arkansas, holding the bulb up to the sunlight—just so—so that the rays of light beamed through the elongated and translucent fangs, until one day I dropped it while walking up and down the black tar road, sending a jagged chasm through the serpent sphere, which caused me to abandon my love for it for fear that the snake head would emerge through this crack in necromantic fashion, its fangs striking the webbing of my fingers; here’s why this memory matters to me now: it matters because it speaks to how often I am blind to hidden venom when presented with an image of aesthetic radiance, it speaks to how when I discover the fracture within a relationship I toss it away, it speaks to the feeling I’ve always had that cherished things will inevitably fall apart; here’s what I am still unsure of: am I using my memories—ascribing metaphysical attributes and meaning-making to them—as a means to reconcile with the notion of a fixed futurity?; to be more concise: is this magical thinking an act of control, a way in which I’m forcing myself to feel—or not feel—the absence of grief simply because, in my mind, it was always meant to end this way?)

My daddy calls me on the evening of January 27th at precisely 4:04PM. The phone shudders in my lap as I stare into the blinking screen. I remember thinking I wasn’t going to answer—that I had just sat down at my desk to write and would be unable to find that rhythm again if it were disrupted—but I answer anyway, a nagging echoes in the pit of my stomach that something is wrong. He tells me that Trisha is on life support, has had multiple strokes over the course of the month, that her doctor’s did not expect her to recover and—even if she did—she will fall victim to strokes again and again. He tells me that they are pulling the plug and that if I have anything to say, now is the time. All I can emit from my cracking mouth is the gust of a what? why did nobody tell me? He only found out four days prior. He asks, again, if I have anything I want to say. The wheezing sigh of her ventilator and the rhythmic beeps of her heart monitor crescendo in the background, making the unreal real. I say yes and he presses the phone to her head, the curls of her dirty blonde hair—the same as mine—brushing over the speaker and crackling into my ear as he tells me she probably can’t hear.

(what I tell her is this: hey…um, Trish—Aunt Trisha. I hope—I hope…I hope you get to the other side, wherever that is, okay and…I just—just want to tell you that I hope your next life is better—happier—than this one was for you, so…yeah)

The phone call with my daddy ends with him telling me there will be no funeral, no services. That Trisha’s ashes will be sent to an extended family member in New Jersey. We both say that human beings are all born with the same blight embedded within our molecular design: death. I tell him I love you, he says it back. I remember thinking I wanted to go to Alabama, to go inside her house, and flip through the photo albums of years gone by; to dig through the artifacts of her life and find where the line between her ideas of reality and fantasy disconnected. My older sister texts me saying it just seems that our extended family gets smaller every year. We now have only two uncles (one of which lives in a mental reclusion so abstract that no one in our family can contact), one grandparent, and three cousins. My mama texts me asking how it went. I tell her I had one more thing to tell my aunt, but that the statement had clung to the lining of my throat even though I had wanted to say it so badly. She tells me she’ll have my daddy call me back, and he does, the pulse of the medical machines once again filling in the silences. I have one more thing to say, I tell him.

Mitchell Ryan Monahan

Mitchell Ryan Monahan is an emerging writer who lives in Youngstown, Ohio while pursuing an MFA degree at Kent State University. His nonfiction work analyzes the intersections between popular culture, queerness, sex, shame, and identity. In his free time, he obsesses over Britney Spears' Instagram and falls asleep on the couch watching horror films. This is his first publication.