Her loss was a physical thing. It held my heart in a vice, gripping it like the claws of some hideous beast, piercing me until my grief trickled out from the wounds like blood. Mourning was a poor word to describe such a feeling. It was a feeling more than sorrow - an emptiness, a void somehow absent of anything yet filled with pain. The kind of pressure that leaves you begging to be taken away, once and for all, to a place where things like human emotions cease to exist and numbness truly takes control. If only such places were true.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it all. The real truth, the guilt beyond the grief, was pain beyond comparison.
I stayed in bed for weeks. My parents brought food to my bed, but even the sweets I’d loved since childhood seemed to turn sickening on my tongue. Sips of water felt as salty as the tears I had become well accustomed to. Day by day, my blankets seemed to harden around me like a chrysalis. My grief was melting me down into something new, yet I had no desire to be reborn.
For what I had done, I deserved only the worst.
It was on the fourteenth day following my loss that I met the Grief.
The house was empty. The soup on my bedside table had turned cold. The book sitting upon my lap lay unread. I stared at the stars etched upon the ceiling of my childhood room. She’d painted them there for me years ago. After each one had been completed, I’d made a wish. As I looked from star to star, I silently wished for the same thing, wondering if some vestiges of childhood magic could bring the impossible.
“Wishing is useless, you know.”
At first, I thought I was hearing my own thoughts. It was the croaking laugh that startled me out of my melancholy. Rolling over in my bed, I came face to face with the most bizarre creature I had ever seen.
It looked like a frog, but covered in a thin layer of grey fur. Huge black eyes glittered as though they contained stars, and as it opened its mouth to laugh, I saw thin greyish tongue flicker between toothless gums. Most significantly, it was skeletal. Its fur did nothing to conceal the fragile bones of its delicate frame.
I tried to scream. Days of near-total silence had stolen my voice.
“Don’t be afraid.” The creature sat beside the abandoned bowl of soup. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m just your Grief.”
“My Grief?” My voice was almost as croaky as the creature’s.
“Indeed. Everyone has one, after they suffer a loss. I’m a special kind of companion, you see. I help you recover while you grieve. It’s my job to get you back on your feet and back into the world of the living.”
Hope had flared through me for a second - and then disappointment. The creature wasn’t here to hurt me. This ridiculous frog-like creature thought it could help me. Pointless. I knew I was beyond help. I didn’t deserve help.
“No, thank you.” I rolled back over in my bed.
The frog clicked its tongue. “What’s wrong?”
“You don’t know about my grief.”
“But I do. I know about your grief - and your guilt.”
I shivered. Images flashed through my mind. Long white corridors. Incessant beeping. People rushing in white coats. A silence that stretched on, and on, and on.
“Then you know I don’t deserve to be helped.”
“Everyone deserves help. Even you.” I rolled my eyes, but a lump had risen in my throat. “Let’s start with something easy. Tell me something small about your loss.”
I wanted to ignore the Grief. I wanted to push it away, throw it into the bowl of soup, or just ignore it until my mind re-entered the state of numbness where only guilt and grief could find me.
And yet.
I turned to face the Grief again. Stars sparkled in its eyes like wishes.
“My nan…” I began before the lump in my throat threatened to overwhelm me. It was a few moments before I could collect myself. “My nan loved the colour red. Even in her sixties, she had her nails manicured and painted bright red every month. The exact shade of her purse and boots. She even dyed her hair red, to hide the grey. She said red was the colour of life, and she never intended to stop living it.”
The Grief smiled. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For feeding me.” The Grief belched. “Your grief sustains me as much as it burdens you. Every memory you share with me frees the burden of your grief a little more, but it feeds me as much as a meal feeds you. Grief demands to be fed. If you keep telling me stories, your loss will weaken, but I will grow stronger. It’s the only way we can both survive.”
It was a remarkable deal. “So if I tell you stories about my…loss, I’ll feel better?”
“You’ll be able to live your life again, just like your nan would have wanted.”
I took a deep breath. It felt like the first I had taken in a long time. “Then I’ll tell you.”
“Good.” The Grief smiled. “I’ll see you again tomorrow.”
I never saw how it disappeared. I was just beginning to feel aware of a distant lightness in my chest. So weak, like the faintest breath, but it was there.
I sat up in bed. The stars above my head seemed to twinkle.
***
Every day, the Grief came back. And every day, I told the Grief a new story.
“My nan was the youngest of three sisters. Her parents named her Sam, just Sam, not short for Samantha. At the beginning of the school year, teachers would always see her name and assume she was a boy. She ended up on lists for the boy’s football teams instead of the girl’s hockey, stuff like that. But she’d never say a word until she showed up, just to see the looks on their faces.”
“One time, when my mother was pregnant with me, my grandparents decided to try weed for the first time. They bought edibles and tried a piece, but nothing happened, so they took another. And another. And another. An hour later, they had called both my mum and an ambulance, convinced they were having heart attacks. The paramedics joked that their bungalow smelled like a student’s dorm. My nan used it as a cautionary tale right before I went to university, but she couldn’t tell the story without laughing.”
“Every year after school ended, my nan would take me shopping for clothes to wear over the summer. My mum wanted her to pick out modest, feminine clothes - floral print dresses, long skirts, blouses and all that. But when I was fourteen, I had a goth phase. Nan thought it was brilliant. The look on my mum’s face when I came home with armfuls of black leather and a pair of Docs is something I’ll never forget.”
With each telling, the Grief grew fatter and fatter. Soon, it was the size of a cat, then a small dog. Meanwhile, the burden on my own heart was growing less. I grew to find a cooked meal manageable again. Sometimes I got out of bed to stretch my legs. I brushed my hair for the first time in weeks. My parents were shocked at the sudden change, but didn’t question it, thinking I was coming to terms with the loss of my nan at last.
But at the back of my mind, the guilt remained as strong as ever.
One day, my dad came to sit with me in my room. “How are you doing, sweetheart?”
“Okay, I think.” I almost managed a smile. “Better than before, anyway.”
“That’s great! I found something that might make you feel even better.” He handed it to me. It was a small bottle of red nail polish. Something churned in my stomach as I looked at it.
“What’s this?”
“It belonged to your grandmother. You know how much she loved this colour. Maybe you can wear it and think of her?”
I couldn’t respond. The colour seemed to flash behind my eyes as a deep feeling of dread opened up in my stomach.
Since when had my nan liked the colour red?
***
I kept telling stories every day. But the feeling of dread didn’t go away.
The Grief never asked questions - he only grew and grew. But I began to falter in my stories. First, I forgot my nan’s favourite drink. The one she always had every time we visited her bungalow. Then, it was the place we’d visited on holiday every year since I was a little girl. I could remember the taste of the ocean air and the smell of fish and chips by the sea, but nothing else. I knew things were bad when I showed the Grief old photos of her marriage and couldn’t recall her maiden name.
“What’s wrong with me?” I despaired. The Grief was now as tall as my shoulders. “Why am I forgetting so many things?”
The Grief only smiled. “Tell me more about your nan. I’m feeling especially hungry today.”
I sank down into my bed with a sigh. “I don’t feel like it.”
“You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
I raised my head. The Grief stood over me, expectant. It bared its teeth in a ferocious grin. How long had it had teeth?
“W-What do you mean?”
“Tell me stories. I’m hungry. Tell me stories. I need something to eat.”
Shivering, I pulled back from the Grief, but it only leaned closer.
“What’s wrong? Don’t you have any stories left?” The stars in its eyes seemed to have a menacing glow.
“Of course I do! It’s just that- that…”
I tried to picture my nan. She had red hair - or was it brown like mine? I tried to recall the things I loved most about her. Her smile. The tittering cadence of her laugh. The way she danced with my grandfather after too many glasses of wine. How she held me after I broke up with my first high school romance. Even the colour of her eyes.
Nothing. It was all gone.
“How did you do this to me?” I gasped. The Grief towered over me like a horror from a nightmare. Its black eyes seemed to draw me in. My fear kept me in place. I couldn’t move, even if I tried.
“You have fed me, and I have taken your grief, just as I promised. The deal is done. But I am still hungry.”
“You can’t do this!” Tears threatened to spill down my cheeks. “Why can’t I remember my nan?”
“Without your nan, there is no one to grieve. Doesn’t your chest feel lighter. Isn’t your head clearer. Aren’t you able to get out of bed, please your parents, enter the outside world again?”
It was true. I was finally beginning to act like a human being again. The wounds in my heart were empty punctures. The grief that had trickled out had finally bled to a stop.
But.
“I want my nan back,” I choked. “I want my memories back. Please. Give them back to me.”
“Even if it means mourning her again?”
“Anything.”
The Grief cocked its head. “Fine. But we have to make another deal.”
“Like I said. Anything.”
“This time I don’t want your grief.” The creature paused. “I want your guilt.”
Waves of terror washed over me. I could feel the dread seeping into my limbs, pinning me to the bed like iron as the guilt its words awakened began to fill my lungs and choke them until I could hardly breathe–
“No,” I gasped, my vision beginning to blacken. “You can’t do this.”
“You must give me your guilt.” The Grief spread its arms wide. An unseen breeze rippled through its short fur. “It is the only way I can give you your memories, and the only thing I have left to consume.”
It felt like the world around me was falling away. My bed, the walls of my room, the floor, everything except those stars twinkling on the ceiling had faded away into blackness. The Grief and I were the only things left in the world.
“Please,” I begged. The Grief did nothing.
The stars above me began to glow. They glowed brighter and brighter until the blackness around us faded into white. An impossibly clinical white, the kind that brought dread to my stomach. From somewhere unseen, a beeping began.
“This is your guilt,” the Grief said. Faint objects were beginning to materialise around us. I recognised the framework of a room and a bed. “Are you willing to tell the story?”
The scene around us grew brighter and brighter. The sound grew stronger and stronger. I saw three figures standing beside the bed, but it wasn’t until I saw who lay there that I began to sob.
My nan’s red hair was the only speck of colour in the room.
“I was so afraid,” I gasped between sobs. “Nan had been sick for weeks. It was so sudden. One day, she was fine, and the next day she couldn’t breathe. The hospital put her in an induced coma, things were so bad. And for a few days things stayed like that. But one night, everything went wrong.”
The figures around the bed were crying. The smallest, a girl with short brown hair, could barely stand.
“The doctors called us in the evening. They said it was time. My parents were there. They held her hands. But I was scared. So very scared. And when I saw all the tubes connected to her tiny body - when I heard that awful beeping - when I smelled that chemical hospital scent - I couldn’t stand it.”
The brown haired girl took a long look at the bed, then turned and ran.
Tears cascaded down my cheeks. “I wasn’t there when she died. My mum found me afterwards, hiding in the gift shop. They said she wasn’t in any pain when she passed. But I should have been there. My selfishness kept me away from her last moments in the world. I never got to tell her how much I loved her.”
The Grief was taller than me now. Its stomach was bloated as it reached out and took me between its arms. I flinched as it pulled me towards its gaping mouth and monstrous fangs, but I didn’t scream as it swallowed me whole.
***
I woke up in my own bed.
The Grief was the size of a frog again. It sat beside me, waiting. It took me a while before I knew what to say.
“So now you know why I don’t deserve to heal.”
It sighed. I noticed its mouth was toothless again. “And now you know why that isn’t true at all.”
“What are you talking about? I… abandoned my own grandmother. I deserve nothing but the worst.” I buried my head in my arms, but the tears would no longer come.
“You did what anyone would do in one of the worst moments of your life. Your nan would never hold it against you. Now, take a deep breath and think of all the good memories you had together.”
It was like something burst in my chest. All the things the Grief had swallowed washed over me. My nan’s smile and laughter, the scent of her perfume, the warmth of her embrace, the colour red. Everything came back in a rush of imperfect serenity.
“You have fed me with your grief, and I thank you for that. But now, it’s time to take that grief and grow from it. Live a life that your nan would be proud of. People always say that grief lessens over time, but that’s not true. We just grow bigger and bigger around it. That’s what you need to do now. Make your nan proud. That’s worth more than a single moment in a hospital ward.”
Lifting my head felt like the heaviest thing in the world.
“But what if I don’t deserve it?”
The Grief sighed. “Think of your nan. Would she want to see you in misery, every day for the rest of your life?”
I shook my head. Some kind of weight was beginning to lift from my shoulders.
“Of course not. Grief is a form of love. To grieve your nan, you must remember how much you love her every single day. That way, she will live on in the memories you have of her. It will never be enough, but it’s the only way to survive.”
There was nothing else I could say. I looked up at the stars, then down to the starry eyes of the Grief. Only one question remained in my mind.
“What are you going to eat now?”
The Grief only smiled as it disappeared.
***
It’s been weeks since the Grief left. Every day, I do something to honour my nan. Sometimes, I spray a bit of her perfume and the scent brings back a hundred memories. Other times, I simply glance at the photograph of her hanging in the hallway and it’s enough to make me smile. Today, I decided to paint my nails red.
I still feel grief. I still feel guilt. But the Grief taught me that I don’t need to only feel these things. It’s okay to be happy and excited and inspired and still mourn at the same time.
I think my nan would like that.