Stuck in Suck City
I can tell you that grief changes, time heals, and you’ll get through this. That’s all true, but none of it is happening now. Now, everything sucks and everybody sucks and the whole world sucks. So what are you supposed to do while you’re stuck in Suck City?
Well, the first thing is simple: get out of bed. If you get out of bed in the morning, you’ve won. If you’re able to take care of your other children, you’ve won. If you’re able to get to work in one piece and function, you’ve won. If you’re able to stop sobbing for a few minutes, you’ve won. What you’ve won won’t be apparent for some time (here’s a hint: it has to do with the realization that you have the tenacity to keep going), so for now just take the W and call it a day.
The second thing isn’t as easy as the first, but it’s not terribly difficult: do something creative—whatever that means to you—to express and channel your emotions. It will feel like a relief or a release or whatever it is you need to feel. And the best part is that you don’t even need to know what you need to feel, because doing something creative—painting, drawing, journaling, dancing, gardening, you name it—has its own built-in rewards and surprises.
When Rob died, I started to write about him every day and never really stopped. It was the only way I knew how to grieve. I’ve written about all of the most important things that have happened in my life and about all the people I love and have loved. Rob has always been right at the top of that list, as your children are surely on the top of yours.
When I wasn’t writing about him, I was thinking about what I was going to write about him. It became an obsession, the only way I could cope with the excruciating emptiness of a world that kept turning without my son. Writing kept me connected to him, and I needed that more than anything. I needed it like I needed air. Every word I wrote was like taking a breath. It was like breathing life back into Rob.
The third thing is difficult, but if you’re able to navigate the first two, I believe you owe it to yourself to take a whack at the third: face what scares you the most. Whatever that is. Be the hero in your own horror movie. Your grief is a scary beast, and it will hurt you and make you cry.
Grief hides in the shadows and creeps up on you when you least expect it, and when it does, here’s the trick: don’t fight it. The worse your pain gets and the deeper you can immerse yourself in it, the better and faster you’ll move through it. Believe me, I know this is easier said than done.
There are no shortcuts, and you can’t avoid grief for very long. I thought I could outsmart it or just go back to the early days of grief and deny it, but the scary beast is patient and lying in wait. Avoiding it just prolongs the whole process of healing. Like love, you can’t hurry grief.
And it’s perfectly okay to be afraid. We’re all afraid of the unknown, of what comes next for us, of who we will become after we’ve endured the worst life has to offer. Grief asks more of us than anyone or anything has ever asked. The surprise of your life will come when you discover how much strength and courage has been hiding in your broken heart.
If this all sounds overwhelmingly daunting, it doesn’t have to be. Like all large and imposing tasks, it’s best to break it down into smaller, manageable pieces. For starters, think about what scares you the most. It’s different for everyone. Maybe you’re scared that as time passes, you’ll forget your child’s voice or the way he or she laughed. Or maybe you’re scared that you’ll never be happy again or that your family will never be the same. Or maybe you’re scared of not being able to cope with the loss and that you’ll remain miserable permanently. Or maybe you’re deeply scared to return to the day your child died.
Whatever it is for you right now (and for certain that will change), look it in the eye every couple of days and stay with it for as long as you can. Dip a toe into the hot spring of your broken heart. Then do it again in the next few days and see if you can stand it for a few more seconds than you did the day before. You’ll find it gets easier—never easy, but easier—and then one day, the scary grief beast will fade away like a distant childhood memory.
I know that life without your beloved son or daughter feels unbearable during the first few months after his or her death, but it won’t always be like that. Suck City isn’t where you live. It’s just a place that you’re visiting right now.
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My time in Suck City actually began the day Rob arrived in Los Angeles, almost two years before he died.
I didn’t want him to come to LA. I knew it would be a horror show because it was always a horror show with Rob. I made up all kinds of excuses why he shouldn’t come—he didn’t have any money or a job or a place to live, and I told him that he couldn’t stay with us in Venice because Maura worked from home, and we just didn’t have the room.
Mainly, I didn’t want him moving here because of the drama that would inevitably come along for the ride, and the high anxiety and debilitating worry that I would suffer as a result.
So, of course, Rob headed west the next day. And Rob being Rob, he decided to travel across the country by train. The first act of the drama began after his train pulled out of Chicago. I got a frantic phone call from him saying that he needed to Venmo $750 to some dude he’d found on Craigslist who was going to hook him up with a share in an apartment in downtown LA. He said he didn’t have a credit card and there was someone else interested in the place and he had to act fast. He swore he’d pay me back as soon as he arrived. The whole thing sounded sketchy, like many things Rob said and did, but I went ahead and “lent”him the money.
It was really happening. Rob was going to be living in LA. The apartment sublet, unsurprisingly, turned out to be too good to be true. I’m not sure if it was a scam exactly, but apparently the management got wind of a bunch of illegal sublets and posted an eviction notice on their door. Rob had been in town for less than three weeks.
He said he might be able to find something with one of the other guys who was also being tossed, but that didn’t pan out. After one night on the street, he called me early on a hot Saturday morning in June and said he had nowhere to live.
With me being me and Maura being the most loving and understanding person in the world and after crying to Caryn that I couldn’t let him “bottom out” and live on the street, we decided that Rob would come live with us.
I drove downtown to pick him up and found him waiting outside the building wearing a pair of Chrome Hearts sunglasses that I had given him, the same style that David Duchovny wore in Californication. Rob had a few large boxes that were falling apart, overflowing with crumpled clothes, and a backpack almost as big as he was jammed with all kinds of stuff: more clothes, his high school yearbook, old concert ticket stubs, a few beer glasses with our last name etched on them, and his oddball collection of BIC lighters.
On the ride home, I told him that if he was going to live with us for a while there were two conditions: (1) He couldn’t drink. (2) He had to go to AA. He was less than thrilled, particularly about the idea of attending daily meetings. I saw his face turn into “the other Rob,” where the dark side lived. He did this weird thing with his jaw that looked like he was readying himself to take a punch, and his eyes got wide and angry before a kind of purple rage spewed out.
“I’m not going to goddamn AA, Dad! You can stop the goddamn car right here and I’ll get out now,” he said while we were driving in the middle lane on the 405 Freeway. “You can just leave me on the side of the goddamn highway!”
“I can’t stop here, Rob! And remember? You called me! I came to pick you up! These are the goddamn rules!” I yelled back at him, banging the steering wheel with my fist.
We were both silent for the next twenty minutes.
“Okay, I’ll go,” he finally said in his softest voice while staring out the window.
Larry Carlat is the author of A Space in the Heart: A Survival Guide for Grieving Parents.