On Comfort & Grief

(Learning from a lost carpet and a painted rose)

My first memory of grief was when I lost the carpet in my closet.

I don’t remember exactly how old I was – first or second grade perhaps. I had lived in the same room of my Minnesota house my entire life, and it was the same and it was safe. My bunk bed was always the same, with my bed tucked underneath and the bed above waiting for a cousin to sleep over. The fan was always the same, planted in the corner and wafting a comforting breeze across my room.  And my closet was always the same, with the faded carpet that was scratchy between my toes.

I don’t remember why my parents decided the carpet had to go. I suppose it was old and faded, and perhaps they were looking ahead to the day we’d have to sell the house.

I just remember the spike of anguish I felt when I was told the carpet would be replaced. I remember going into the closet and lying on the floor, grabbing as much scratchy fabric as my small hands could hold and pressing my face into the carpet so my tears could soak into it. Nobody teaches a child how to mourn a carpet, but I was doing my best.

To be clear, there were no profound memories attached to this carpet. I didn’t spend much time in my closet, and I doubt I thought at all about the carpet until I was about to lose it.

But it was a tiny yet essential part of my comfort zone. The world outside my room was frightening and unknowable. Other children could be cruel. Teachers might get upset with me for reasons that I could not decipher. My family might take me to a restaurant where the sensations of chatter and smell would assail and overwhelm me.

But in my room, I was okay. I had control. I could close the door to block out all noise, feel the pleasant sensation of the fan across my face, take my toys on an uninterrupted imaginary adventure. I didn’t think about my closet carpet, because I didn’t have to. Every time I padded into my closet, I knew what to expect, and I knew it would be okay every single time, and I never had to be afraid.

I adjusted to the new carpet eventually. But I never found a way back to that perfect security of my childhood room, with the door closed and the fan blowing and everything safe and good.

I think that’s okay, though. It is a unique gift of childhood that you can have so many experiences that are both good and safe. But real life often requires you to choose between safety and joy.

The week before I graduated college, I went with the girl I loved to a tunnel underneath a bridge. I was about to move away and our relationship was about to end. We wanted to create something permanent, to make a physical representation of what we had meant to each other.

So together we painted a rose, and we wrote a lyric from our favorite song, and we dipped our thumbs in the paint and pressed them together to the tunnel wall. Then she picked up her brush again and added some splashes of red.  When she leaned away, I saw that she had made the rose bleed.

I asked her why –it seemed like a grim addition to a symbol of our relationship. She smiled and said, “Daniel, when something bleeds you know it’s alive.”

I didn’t understand at the time (and the security guard who caught us trespassing and shooed us away prevented an explanation!) But looking back, I understand.

It was her way of saying “Losing you hurts because we made something real together – and that’s worth the pain.”

The “safe” path would have been for us to stay walled off from one another. We could have treated the relationship like a superficial fling, just for fun. We could have hardened ourselves instead of becoming tender.

But if we had, my grief for her would have been like my grief for the carpet – forgotten after a few days.

Instead, there’s a part of me that will always be shaped by what we shared. Even if the fingerprints we pressed to the tunnel wall fade away, the fingerprints we left on each other’s souls will remain. My life is so much richer because she was in it, even though it was temporary, even though it hurt to lose her.

Real life doesn’t happen inside a room by yourself, with the door closed and the fan on and nothing ever changing. Real intimacy can’t happen inside your comfort zone.

If you want to live fully alive, you’re signing up to bleed.

But man, it’s worth it.