Pink Sleeping Bag

I rolled out my new pink sleeping bag on the gold shag carpet, grabbed my pillow, and snuggled in to watch the game.

The sleeping bag was a Christmas present. It wasn’t for camping trips because my family didn't camp. My father once said he spent the better part of a year camping across Europe, and that was enough for him.

I pointed out that people were actively trying to kill him on that camping trip, so maybe it might be different for us without Hitler involved.

It didn’t matter. We weren’t camping people.

So this sleeping bag was destined for slumber parties. On the inside it was a cream color with tiny pink polka dots. The outside was a pink paisley design.

Definitely a slumber party sleeping bag.

I settled into its soft cocoon to watch the playoff game between the Rams and the Vikings.

My two closest playmates were the two brothers who lived behind me, one a year older and one a year younger than me. One year we divided up the NFL teams to choose the ones we each would root for.

Since Curt was the oldest and it was the sixties, he chose the world champion Green Bay Packers. One of my chosen teams was the Los Angeles Rams.

And now in the year of our Lord 1969 the Rams were in the playoffs led by their great quarterback, Roman Gabriel.

A new sleeping bag. A playoff game. What more could a nine year old girl want? 

Well, a ten point halftime lead, for one… which is what the Rams took into the locker room. It was happening!!!!! We were going to do it!!!!!!

In the second half, my excitement turned to anxiety as Minnesota drew closer and then, in the fourth quarter, went ahead by 3. The Rams lost 23-20.

Tears christened my new sleeping bag as I felt the horrible thud of a season ending defeat. I remember that I couldn’t understand why my mother couldn’t understand why I was so upset.

We don’t even know if we’re going have Roman Gabrial next year. This was our best chance to win the Super Bowl, and now we’re out completely. 

I was bereft. My mother, who’d dreamed of raising a ballerina daughter, was mystified.

I was  more prescient than perhaps a nine year old should be. Gabriel stayed a few more years but they never got back to the playoffs. They didn't get a Super Bowl win until a QB called up from stocking groceries led them to victory in 1999.

By then, they were the St Louis Rams so did it even count?

It seems to me that we are quick to judge and categorize our grief, what is appropriate and what is being too emotional, what losses are worthy of mourning and what losses don't really qualify as real losses.

Like, a football game.

And it’s true that in the grand scheme of things which team won the Super Bowl didn’t, in the words of Casablanca,“amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

After all, I was a child of the sixties. By the time I was nine I’d seen the riderless horse in the president’s funeral procession, felt if not understood the convulsion of grief from Black folks when King was assassinated, and was told in passing by my neighborhood buddies that Bobby Kennedy was dead after they delivered the morning paper to our neighborhood. So framed by my times, the first time I saw CBS news cut into my afternoon TV with what would prove to be a regular afternoon news break, my first thought was, “Who’s been assassinated now?”

The Rams lost, and the sun would come up on Monday morning.

The world would keep spinning, and life as I knew it would go on.

And yet I would not, for the world, tell that nine year old girl that she was being silly for crying.

Lots of things can break your heart. 

Sometimes your heart gets shattered, and the pieces can never be put back the same way again. Sometimes it’s a compound and complex fracture that requires time and support to be whole again. Sometimes it’s more of a bruise than a break but the thing is, you don't know that at first.

All you know at first is that it hurts, and you don’t know if the pain will keep getting bigger. All you know is that something that you wanted so badly isn’t going to be yours, and when you're nine years old you don’t know much about new dreams and new chances and grieving and healing.

Why do we feel like we need to justify our grief?

Over and over again I tell clients that there is no national ranking of grief, that if your loss is in the top twenty your grief is justified but if not, you’re being weak, whiny, a drama queen or any other word we use to punish ourselves for feeling.

Over and over I tell clients that all that matters is that it matters to you, but I can feel their reluctance to accept it.

The loss wasn’t big enough or special enough.

It was too ordinary.

It doesn’t count.

But it does. 

It doesn’t have to be the end of the world for it to count.

A girl falls off her bike and skins her knee. She runs to her dad because it hurts and it’s bleeding a little bit and it hurts.

The dad could tell her to suck it up and get back on the bike. It’s no big deal. Or the dad could tell her that riding a bike was obviously too dangerous, and after such a significant fall she ought not do it again.

Or if the dad is wise and full of heart, he embraces her. He gently washes off the dirt. “Yes, you scraped your knee but sometimes we get boo boos like that.” He wraps her up in his arms. He lets her tell him how scary it was without ever minimizing her tale. And then he helps her get back on her bike again.

It’s a strange thing that happens. When we are allowed to name our loss and to have our grief witnessed, the reality of what we feel is validated. We can let go of those shaming voices.

When we can receive comfort and not condemnation, many of our everyday losses become as light as a passing cloud skittering across the sky.

What that doesn't happen, those losses get tangled up with shame and over the years we chide ourselves for feeling anything at all. When the big losses come we don’t know what to do because we were never allowed to practice with the smaller stuff.

Wrap that kid up in your arms, even if that kid is you.