Weeping for Gloria
L.C. Hill
Gloria Vanderbilt died yesterday.
Just over a month ago, I visited my dear friends in California. I go see them a few times a year usually. We’ve fallen into this wonderful habit of watching a movie or catching up on some mutually liked television show after a day of wine tasting or sightseeing that only friends who have become family can do. We ended up watching Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt and Anderson Cooper, the HBO documentary about the famous mother and son.
I found myself quite enamored with her. I was fascinated by her life. But, more than that, I found myself watching very closely their relationship as mother and child. This isn’t surprising for me. I have spent a good part of the last decade of my life doing that because of my relationship—and more importantly non-relationship—with my own mother. The dynamic is always fascinating for me to study. Either the relationship is so similar to the one I had with her that I feel camaraderie with strangers. Or, which is usually the case, they are so very different—close, accepting, vulnerable—that I can’t relate at all. Under the latter circumstances, I find myself looking closely for clues—clues about what I did wrong to miss out on the kind of relationship I’ve heard you should have with a parent.
After learning Gloria had died, I felt a real sadness in my chest—the kind of heart-heaviness you only feel for someone you loved. I watched Anderson’s video obituary for her and I cried. Not my usual too-sensitive-to-watch-dog-rescue-videos-on-Facebook kind of crying, but the kind of crying one does for their mother. The kind of crying I have rarely offered my own mother since her death just over a year ago.
I realized immediately that I’m grieving the loss of something I can’t really wrap my fingers around and touch or put a name to. I’m grieving for Gloria because it’s safer than grieving for my mother. In a lot of ways—ways that are difficult to describe—it makes more sense to me. I am terribly sad for Anderson. How wonderful it must have been to have her as a mother; but how wrenching it must be to lose that.
I don’t really know that particular brand of loss. My mother chose to end our relationship six years before her death and her reasons, whatever they were, were more important to her than I was. I grieved for a mother that was still living. By the time she died, I had found a great deal of peace with it all. I found out it wasn’t complete peace. But it was good enough to sustain me through those years without her.
No one tells you there is no map for grief. I’ve heard the people I know, who have found themselves in it in some form or another, express confusion over the fact that it isn’t following the proper road. In other words, they aren’t experiencing the denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance in an orderly fashion—as if they expect this one particular part of life to be orderly even though the rest of life isn’t. But I remember thinking the same thing. I remember wondering why my emotions weren’t doing what they were supposed to do. I remember beating myself up over it.
The most important thing I’ve learned is this: Do not let anyone tell you how or when or in what order to grieve. On its best days, it’s a moving target, a blur. Don’t even let them tell you who to grieve for—whether it is for your mother, or yourself, or for a stranger like Gloria Vanderbilt. Grief is deeply personal. It is the thing you carry in whatever way is manageable. If your only way through it is to cry for the lady whose jeans you once wore—and not the woman who gave birth to you—so be it.