Synapses

Grief is not a peanut allergy. The uninitiated may think it is. It may seem like it’s painful, quick and manageable. When your peanut allergen lands upon that IgE antibody, a mess of inflammatory mediators is unleashed, you suffer until you stab yourself with an EpiPen.

Peanut allergies fall under what are called type I hypersensitivities, and grief is not that. Oh, no. Grief is a type IV hypersensitivity. There is nothing instantaneous about type IVs; they have a tendency to build and build until they cry havoc and let slip the cytokines of war. There’s no quick solution, no EpiPen, no avoidable trigger like with the type Is. The trigger for Type IV is a poison plant that flourishes within. Also, there are flare-ups. Without warning, there are flare-ups.

See, I think about immunology all the time. I suppose it’s supposed to be a little sad because of the unabashed nerdiness of it all, but I don’t care. That’s why the nerdiness is unabashed. Thus, being a scientist was a source of great pride for me. I was a scientist; I now say using the very un-simple past tense. Please don’t say that “you’ll always be a scientist.” Don’t be droll, darling. I am not a scientist. Not like that, not in the way that counts.Kittens are not called biscuits just because the cat whelped in a tandoor (I did not come up with this). I don’t want to rob that construct for people who are no longer doing benchwork. My absolutist definition of a scientist applies to me, and I was a scientist.

But that’s over now. That guy who had good hands (to perform experiments a sharp brain, and a good handle on the volatility of his bipolar disorder is dead. I watched him die until I put him out of his misery myself. Grief is all he left me. Not purpose, not identity: grief.

I try to stay upbeat. But there are flare-ups. Immobility on some days, random crying spells on others. Sometimes when I hear friends who still work in the lab talk about their accomplishments, their experiments, yearning floods my lungs (I suppose my type IV is rheumatic-flavoured). It’s akin to watching the guy you have loved for so long walk into the sunset with someone else, kiss someone in the doorway of a majestic old house as the gloam settles and snow begins to fall…you witness him be with anyone but you.

“Why can’t you love me?” you want to ask, and you know he’ll just shrug. He can’t. He just can’t. You know this. That’s why you asked can’t, not won’t.

I was having lunch with a friend today, and as we took tea afterwards, talk turned to The Iliad and grief. Do you remember how Achilles grieved Patroclus? He affixed Hector’s corpse to his chariot and dragged him around the walls of Troy, rubbing salt into Trojan wounds. Day after day did he carry out this inglorious errand. Maybe Achilles thought that this would bring him some kind of closure for Patroclus’ death. Anger doesn’t do that, though. In a recent translation of The Iliad (which my friend is reading), the translator suggests that Achilles cannot fathom how such sadness, such loss could descend upon him. He’s a demigod, a hero for the ages: how could this happen to him? Grief is for lesser beings.

I suppose, in a way, I am dragging around the corpse of the guy who died, the scientist. Day after day, I drag him around, arrogantly wondering how this could happen to me. To me? I’ve surmounted so much since the age of 18 when I moved here, my life neatly packed into two suitcases. My papers got me a lot of immunology street cred. I remember being 27, juggling 5 wildly different projects in the lab and a community theatre one thrown in to keep things humming, and I would still find time to get a workout in: a bronzed Apollo running around the Wisconsin State Capitol building in the sluttiest shorts. Me? Really, me? But I always land on my feet. I always have a solution. I’ve been the Achilles of my own story. Why is this happening to me?

But, like Achilles, I am going to let that corpse go: I am going to wash off him the grime of my disappointment. I will dress the cuts that my misplaced rage gave him. I will cover the bruises where my hands pressed upon and punched his chest willing his heart to come alive again. I will bury him. We shall both be free, and I will figure out what happens now.

This is, hopefully, the last I shall speak of this.