My Life in Grief

I absolutely, freaking hate the saying “Life only gives you
as much as you can handle.” If that’s the case, then just
call me Atlas, baby, because apparently life thinks I can
handle the weight of the world on my shoulders.

I’ve endured a laundry list of traumatic events that has
made everyone close to me wonder exactly whom I pissed
off in another life. Maybe someday I’ll write a memoir, and
I’ll go into a bit more detail about some of these events later
in the book, but for now I’ll give you the CliffsNotes
version.

Age eight: Dad moves out and parents start a nasty divorce
that will take years to finalize. My mom never talks to my
dad again and will not be in any location where he is. She
misses birthdays, graduations, weddings, and basically every
major event for my three brothers, my sister, and me.

Age ten: My grandfather, whom I adored and who lived
next door to me my whole life, dies. His funeral is on my
tenth birthday.

Age fourteen to twenty-two: The rest of my grandparents die.

Sudden Losses

Age twenty-three: The day before my due date with my first
son, I discover that my husband has been having an affair
with a coworker for over a year. It completely rocks my
world.

Age twenty-three: My thirty-two-year-old sister Shannon
dies unexpectedly in her sleep from pneumonia, leaving
behind a five-year-old child and a two-year-old child.

Age thirty-nine: My sister-in-law Heather dies of
transplant-related brain cancer after a long illness.

Age forty: On Valentine’s Day, I find out that my husband
has had another yearlong affair with a different coworker.
We get divorced. Within two years, overwhelmed as a single
mom with three young kids, I run through a million red flags
and marry my second husband, creating a blended family
of six.

November, age forty-three: My dad dies of a heart attack in
his car on his way home from work.

November, age forty-three: My stepmother overdoses on pills
and alcohol on the day of my dad’s funeral and dies.

Death of a Daughter

February, age forty-four: My ten-year-old daughter Libby
dies in a tragic car accident. My son Max, 18, was driving

the car and ran a stop sign and their
car was hit by a truck. He suffered a head injury but
survived. My middle child, sixteen-year-old Grayson, was
supposed to be in the car but took an extra shift at work.

March to August, age forty-four: Separation and divorce from
my second husband, returning me to single mom status.

October, age forty-four: My twelve-year-old Husky Koda dies.

April, age forty-five: My mom dies after a long battle with
pancreatic cancer.

When I say I know firsthand how much grief sucks, I
truly do. I’ve had a front-row seat to a lifetime shit show of
“What else can Brooke handle?” It definitely hasn’t been
easy, and it definitely hasn’t been fun. But the thing is, I’ve
survived, and I’ve managed somehow to come out a little
stronger and wiser on the other side.

(Okay, maybe I’ve come out a smidgen more cynical, too.
But that just makes me funnier and more relatable, right?)

Studying Grief

How have I managed to, as they say in the deliciously
sappy TV show, This Is Us, “take the sourest lemon that life
has to offer and turned it into something resembling
lemonade”?1

That’s a complicated question, but for starters,
I think being a nerd helped me walk this horrible road. I
have always loved reading, writing, and learning about new
things. When I find myself interested in a topic, I dive into
deep rabbit holes and study as much as I can about it. In the
past, my interests were always suitably nerdy—studying the
Wars of the Roses and British Tudor history, for example.

Now I study grief.

Excerpted from Grief Sucks: (But Your Life Doesn’t Have To)