Nicole Markert | The Quiz in the Grief Packet My Counselor Gave Me

February 2020

Nicole Markert

The Quiz in the Grief Packet My Counselor Gave Me

1. Following the death of a close family member, how long would you expect yourself to grieve?

a. 0-3 months b. 3-6 months c. 6-12 months d. Until you release a wet rattle that cracks from the depths of the throat.

2. How long do you think society would expect you to grieve?

a. As long as it takes to get you to clock back into work and get wet espresso grinds underneath your fingernails. b. As long as it takes to respond to posts with red heart emojis. c. As long as it takes to say his name without people looking at you like that one time you said fuck and it echoed in the small CCD classroom in the back of your old Catholic church. d. As long as it takes to escape the thick quick concrete that begins to pour after his leaving.

3. Would you express intense feelings of grief publicly?

a. No, pretend you are unfazed that the last time you kissed him, the cheap funeral home foundation too light for his skin stained your lips. b. Yes, faze out in class or conversation when others talk about how they can still wrestle and fight with their siblings and can still breathe with tangible pink lungs. c. Depends, does sitting on a dirty toilet seat in Applebee's digging your fingernails into your wet palms count as public?

4. How long after a death would you begin to worry that someone is grieving abnormally?

a. When a few days go by and they say they are fine. b. When a few weeks go by and they say they are fine. c. When six months go by and they say they are fine. d. When years go by and they say they are fine.

5. Which survivor do you feel is at the greatest emotional risk during grief?

a. The father who lost his bloodline and smokes a little too much pot to numb his brain. b. The mother who writes journal entries to her dead son, margins wrinkled and wet. c. The younger sister who folds her grief like origami and shoves it in a drawer. d. The grandmother who grips the armrests of her motorized wheelchair during the elegy and wonders why he took her place.

6. What do you think is the first step you, a survivor, must complete in order to heal?

a. Accept that his body is ashes in a shoebox shoved in old wooden dresser upstairs in his small blue room. b. Don’t think about the times he would drive you to the gas station because you craved Arizona iced tea. Be like a goldfish; only remember the past three seconds. c. Scream until your vocal cords are raw and then collapse on the concrete floor in the basement where he used to make his music. d. Fill your mind with useless information: most lipsticks are filled with fish scales, frogs can throw up their stomachs, and everyone has tiny mites that live on their eyelashes. e. Tell yourself that you will look forward to tomorrow morning’s breakfast even though his bowl of cheerios is gone. f. All of the above.

Last year, for the first time in years after my brother's death, I went to counseling. When I began seeing my counselor, she asked me if there was anything that I would like to try to begin to process my grief that had simmered for years and began to just boil over. I mentioned that I loved to write, and the next time I saw her, she gave me a grief packet with journal prompts inside. However, right before the prompts began, there was a quiz that you would take. It's purpose was to dispel myths and preconceptions about grief. I become enamored with that idea and I felt called craft my own grief quiz; I wanted to show that grieving is different for every person that experiences it.

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