There is so much crying in basketball
Crashing under some grief waves during the holidays
The first round of holidays in the grief-era was WEIRD.
I had a lot of anticipatory grief because who knows what this will look like. If we eat turkey at Thanksgiving does that mean it will still feel like Thanksgiving? If we put up a Christmas tree will we feel super festive? If I bake a billion holiday cookies can I make a fort out of them to protect me from my griefy-ness? How many cookies do I need to eat to feel less griefy?
In the end it wasn’t actually the holidays that got me.
What got me was going to a UVA basketball game. And this is when dear reader I learned that grief does not care when or where you cry.
The Friday after Thanksgiving I headed up to Charlottesville with my uncle. I got us tickets to a UVA basketball game, an activity my dad and I both loved.
We watched the games together all of the time. When UVA won the NCAA tournament in 2019 he was the first person I called, so excited and absolutely screaming at him through the phone while I was dancing around a crowded DC sports bar. He loved it. We loved it. We loved it together.
I hadn’t cried over Thanksgiving. I was surprised to say it was actually fine.
And then I sat in the John Paul Jones Arena to watch an exhibition game. I looked at the banners around the stadium and I went completely numb.
Amongst the hustle and bustle of alumni and students dressed in blue and orange, I felt crushed under the weight of my grief. I didn’t cry buckets - how would I explain that to the family of 5 next to me just trying to enjoy their nachos? But, dear reader I was drowning in grief waves.
Later, after UVA had thankfully beat out Holy Cross by double digits (I still maintain though the ref made some horrendous calls), I remembered a Reddit post that my grief-y friend Ben sent me.
It was about grief waves just like this one. The ones that come out of nowhere. The ones that should not be here because hey Thanksgiving was literally yesterday and you were doing SO WELL.
The writer of the post, u/GSnow, says about these grief waves “After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out.”
I was wiped out at JPJ Arena while also screaming at the ref (honestly how is it NOT a foul when the player fell on the floor?). The day I got into UVA was one of the best days of my life and I think my dad’s. He wore UVA caps, socks, and sweaters all the time. He told everyone, including the cashier at CVS, that I graduated from UVA. He taught me to love basketball. And together we loved UVA basketball.
So dear reader, that grief wave may have started by a tiny ripple that was being at a UVA basketball game. But it became a giant 100 foot tall wave because being there brought up how proud I knew, and know, my dad is of me.
It’s bigger than just the game. It’s bigger than not being able to share the game with him. It’s knowing what it feels like to be someone else’s joy. And that person is no longer on this Earth.
I hope this Reddit post gives you comfort and grounding in the grief waves this holiday season, and at any time of the year.
Big hugs and a life boat to help with the grief waves from me to you.