Still, there is pizza

By Soncirey Mitchell
Reader Staff

We ate soggy, New York-style pizza at the strip mall after burying Nana. One minute I was scattering rose petals in the rain — a cinematic expression of grief — and the next I was plucking olives off of congealed cheese.

I loitered outside in the wind, waiting for the rest of my family to enter. I was terrified of walking into the parlor, with its peeling vinyl booths and formica tabletops that had hosted myriad little league lunches, and having to answer the question, “What are you all celebrating today?”

I didn’t know how to grieve, but I was convinced we were doing it wrong. My Nana was the first person to die whom I remember loving, and somehow I expected it to be more than it was. 

My family sat around drinking Coke and glancing up at the muted TV playing ESPN. We talked about garden fencing and college. I mopped grease off each slice with a mountain of napkins.

Popular media always portrays death as a grand adventure — the ultimate sacrifice or at least an event that shakes the souls of everyone left alive. Reality is mundane.

Death is death just as pizza is pizza. Both are elements of our existence that make appearances in our lives at random with various levels of fanfare. On some level we understand that they’re always present, but for the most part we’re focused on work and vegetables.

Humanity likes to pretend that dying is a monumental occasion because it’s the last thing any of us will ever do. There’s a terrifying amount of pressure to make it mean something and therefore claim a small measure of immortality.

But then, of course, we’re dead, and it doesn’t matter anymore. There are still pizzas and pigeons and birthday parties in the world we left behind. Life goes on despite our absence.

The dying can come to understand that death is really just another chore, but the bereaved rarely achieve the comfort of such clarity.

When a loved one dies in some unforeseen, unimaginable circumstance, there are clear steps to be taken by the grieving. You get angry at the drunk driver or you question why God brought on a stroke in your healthy sibling. Hysterics are appropriate, and you’re entitled to a breakdown or two in the grocery store.

There’s a comforting theatricality that comes naturally and shows the living — and the dead, if you believe that sort of thing — how much you cared. Following the familiar patterns feels like getting an A+ in grieving because it’s how our culture understands loss.

For those left behind, losing someone to a horribly ordinary death can be so much worse than the alternative.

There was no one to curse when Nana died a perfectly fair death after a life well lived. There was no wailing to show the world how much I loved her, because we knew the end was coming and made peace with it long before we parted.

So Nana died laughing in bed, and I lived to stand on a curb and dread the judgment of strangers. It was nothing like the grief I’d prepared for. It was unsatisfactory. It was ordinary. It was the realization that people die every day — always have, always will — and there’s nothing anyone can do about it except keep on living.

We’re all just left with pizza and an unknown amount of tomorrows.