When I was pret­ty young, my grand­fa­ther’s best friend took eight or nine low­balls of bour­bon, my step-broth­er’s bike, and a tree that was mind­ing its own fuck­ing busi­ness, and got him­self killed—though not before one of those heart-wrench­ing con­cus­sions and a non-respon­sive coma that make the deci­sion about what to do impos­si­ble.

The next day—days before the deci­sion to unplug a tan­gled nest of wires and hookups was made, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, well after it was clear that such a call would need to be made and there was real­ly no sense delay­ing it—I walked in on my grand­fa­ther cry­ing. Not just a sin­gle tear run­ning down a thou­sand-yard stare out the win­dow at the blue jays or some­thing. He was sit­ting on the edge of the bed, bent over with his face in his hands, tak­ing huge hitch­ing, heav­ing, gasps of unadul­ter­at­ed sob­bing. Just… absolute­ly keen­ing.

“Grand­pa…?” I hes­i­tat­ed, tak­ing a step clos­er.

He jerked his head up and looked guilty, like I’d found him doing some­thing scan­dalous.

“Go on, Chris!” He shout­ed. “Go away!”

I won­der if we ever know when we’re hand­ing some­one small a moment that will shape their world for­ev­er. That they will nev­er untan­gle. That even if they man­age to over­write it with ther­a­py or years of expe­ri­ence, will still be under the new coat of paint like a primer. I won­der if we’d be par­a­lyzed with inde­ci­sion at the grav­i­tas of it all if we had any idea how much pow­er we had to realign their entire world for bet­ter or for worse in a sin­gle for­ma­tive moment.

I turned to walk back up the hall. I heard the door shut behind me and the sob­bing con­tin­ued, but qui­eter. More dis­crete.

“I am in pain—go away,” was already an under­cur­rent in my sto­ic Ger­man­ic fam­i­ly. And if you did­n’t leave some­one to their psy­chic dis­tress, you got snapped at pret­ty good. We were not a fam­i­ly to hug it out or ask what would feel sup­port­ive. We were not a fam­i­ly to hold space. We were not a fam­i­ly to have sen­ti­men­tal talks or exter­nal­ly process. If it was­n’t anger or joy, it was one of those “weak­ness feel­ings,” and you dealt with those away from oth­ers.

I was too young to real­ly under­stand what was going on. I might have been ten or eleven. I only bare­ly knew what death meant, and I had no idea what grief was. ADHD cre­ates a cer­tain sort of object imper­ma­nence, so unless some­one had per­me­at­ed my ner­vous sys­tem, I griev­ed them on a very dif­fer­ent time­line and in a very dif­fer­ent way. Great grand­par­ents, step par­ent fam­i­ly mem­bers I’d met once, and pets did­n’t real­ly give me a sense of what grief real­ly meant.

I did know what get­ting yelled at meant. I got that mes­sage loud and clear. I could­n’t help, and he did­n’t want me there. Per­haps the strongest message—grief isn’t some­thing you share; it is some­thing you hide. He was embar­rassed to be caught sob­bing. He was embar­rassed that his grand­son saw him in that state. And so, in a moment that could have gone so many ways, I learned a poignant les­son that no kid should have to learn.

Grand­pa was a WWII vet who para­chut­ed out of glid­ers behind ene­my lines and even­tu­al­ly got cap­tured and spent almost a year in a Ger­man POW camp. He killed some­one whose face he could see. He had two Pur­ple Hearts. He was not a per­son giv­en to maudlin expres­sions of his feel­ings (at least in front of me) oth­er than the ridicu­lous­ly rare flash of anger. Instead, he drank him­self to sleep every night, smoked, over­ate, and died at my age.

We nev­er spoke of emo­tions again. Grand­pa retreat­ed to back rooms a lot that vis­it, but the doors would always close behind him.

It was a for­ma­tive moment for me in pro­cess­ing grief—and any heavy emo­tion, real­ly. And when some­one around me is stand­ing in their over­whelm­ing fee-fees, my first instinct is to leave them alone to process by them­selves. It took me years of work to real­ize some­one might want a hug, or for me just to stick around and hold space and not just slip away to give them some privacy—an action which, in case you just showed up to the par­ty, looks sus­pi­cious­ly like bug­ging out the minute some­thing got real.

The worst part was­n’t how I treat oth­ers. It’s how I learned to deal with my own emo­tions. “Hide that shit. Reg­u­late alone. Con­ceal, don’t feel. (Wait… that’s Frozen.) No one wants to be around you when you’re not easy.” Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is a weak­ness. It was a mes­sage I’d been hear­ing as back­ground music, but that day it was screamed into my face and hard­ened into mar­ble.

I won­der how dif­fer­ent my life might be today if he had asked me to come sit with him, told me what he need­ed from me, even if it was just a qui­et hug (even if it was to gen­tly tell me that what he need­ed was to be alone for a few min­utes instead of yelling at me to go now and leave him, like he was the Phan­tom of the Opera or some­thing), and showed me that hav­ing feel­ings did­n’t mean you had to clois­ter your­self from the world, and even that cry­ing when you’re sad is okay.

It would­n’t be THAT much longer until my grand­fa­ther suc­cumbed to his meth­ods of self-med­ica­tion. Not both­er­ing any­one with warn­ing signs of poor health—embodying the sto­icism of “the great­est gen­er­a­tion.” And I would sit at his funer­al feel­ing the lump in my throat and the tears so bad­ly want­i­ng to come, and I would be strong. I would­n’t let them see me cry. My mom kept ask­ing me what I want­ed, and all I want­ed was to eat and lis­ten to my Star­ship tape over and over again. Grand­pa would have been proud.

I mourned him only lat­er in my room. Alone. That is when I sobbed with my face in my hands.

And to this day, one of the hard­est things in the whole fuck­ing WORLD for me to try to say is, “I am in pain. Will you please stay?”