51. The Geology of Grief

My dad died 22 years ago today and I really, really miss him.

Grieving is weird because it works on geological time. Continental drift happens over hundreds of millions of years but continental collision and tectonic shifting can happen all at once. That’s what earthquakes are. That’s why we have mountains.

Collision.

Impact.

It’s violence on a scale that doesn’t seem comprehensible and yet it’s measurable if you have the right tools. The tallest mountain on earth was once a plain. The Appalachian Mountains are older than the rings of Saturn. …and because of continental drift, the Mountains of Appalachia exist simultaneously in the rolling hills of North Carolina and the rolling hills of Scotland.

That’s kind of what death and grieving are. They happen all at once and then the aftereffects happen over periods of time that transcend calendars and transcend miles.

Blink once and you might miss death. Blink a million times and you’ll never miss the grief that follows it. It’s layers upon layers of sediment and cooled magma and pressure and heat and cold and erosion.

Thinking back on January 28, 2003, I don’t now know the me that existed then. I was in college. I had long hair. I was only 3 years removed from military service and was still finding my way out of that and into a life that felt more like “me.” My brother and I weren’t talking and when we were talking we were more often than not yelling at each other. I had no idea what I wanted to be but had a vibe I wanted to chase. It all feels very vague and distant now.

I was young and my whole life was laid out before me with a winding path that I couldn’t see the end of. I was walking *that* path. But life and death have an interesting way of diverting if not halting the path altogether. The earth rumbles and it goes away.

Poof.

It happens that quickly.

I always knew in my bones and in my body that he would go before me. That’s the way it was supposed to happen. I just didn’t think it’d happen when I was so young and when I had so much unspoken stuff that I wanted to … say to him. I wanted to see him hold my children. I wanted to see him turn 56. And then 64. Then eventually 71. And 72. And 82. So on and so on and so on until he was a raisin of a person and I was at his bedside. Ready. As it should have been.

I thought we’d have more time.

Time. Such a bizarre concept. I sometimes didn’t think I’d ever get through my grief. I sometimes don’t think I ever made it out at all. My wife has said as much. I feel as much. She knew me before and she knows me now. I sometimes wonder if she grieves the me from before. He feels just as gone as my dad.

But time is relative. And time is dependent on mass. And time is dependent on distance. The me that lives on a remote planet ripe with life in the Andromeda Galaxy is looking at my ancestors squint in caves with their primitive tools and grunting communication. Me. My dad. They’ll see us someday.

If you were to look at the geology of grief you’d find fossils everywhere. Fossils of who I was. Fossils of discussions never had. Fossils of dreams unrealized. Fossils of false starts on a new life. Extinct civilizations that were attempted and forgotten because they didn’t fit into their time and place. Maybe someone will dig all these fossils up someday and display them in a museum for all to see.

No place is ever the same after the earth shakes it. I mean, not really. Something new will take its place but it will never truly be what it once was.

But all this time later, I’ve realized something kind of beautiful about geological time. Every grain of sand on the ocean was once a piece of a much larger rock. Every molecule of salt in the water was rubbed off from something so magnificent that it changed the taste of the water that eroded it… forever. We have magnificent oceans because of this process. We have life because of this process.

We only have valleys because we have mountains.

Rivers cut rock and wind blows dust.

Something new, something grand will always form after the collision.

… eventually.

It just takes a while.