With a broken-down oven, in a hotel kitchen, on an uninhabited island
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Cheryl Strayed is the author of the memoir Wild. Her essays have appeared in the Best American Essays series as well as the New York Times, Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Salon, Tin House, and elsewhere. She is the co-host of the podcast Dear Sugars, which originated with her popular Dear Sugar advice column on The Rumpus. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
There are some things you can’t understand yet. Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding. It’s good that you’ve worked hard to resolve childhood issues while in your twenties, but understand that these issues will need to be resolved again. And again. Some things can be known only with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of them have to do with forgiveness.
“He lives in San Francisco now,” she interrupted me, understanding immediately the apprehension in my voice. “I’ll give you his number,” she added, her words slow and steady and intentional, as if we were speaking in code.
And we were. She wasn’t just telling me where her son lived these days. She was telling me that he wasn’t dead.
We are not allowed this. We are allowed to be deeply into basketball, or Buddhism, or Star Trek, or jazz, but we are not allowed to be deeply sad. Grief is a thing that we are encouraged to “let go of,” to “move on from,” and we are told specifically how this should be done.