Mary Pembleton

Grief's Apprentice

I’m so delighted to have Mary Pembleton be the inaugural guest contributor. Mary has pretty much held my hand through the launch of Beyond, cheering me on, so it’s fitting that her words are here at the beginning. Also: Mary is one of the most gifted writers I know. Check out her achingly gorgeous essay for Modern Love about her mother’s suicide. And her also achingly gorgeous essay for LARB about first love and grief.

How lucky are we to have our own achingly gorgeous lyric essay about grief as a teacher.

Mary lives on a mountain in Asheville NC with her two sons, husband, and two dogs. She knows how to pull a garden out of scratch. And how to pull the most glorious beauty out of the deepest suffering. I love this essay for so many reasons, one of which is it inspires me to consider where grief lives in my own body—and also what unzips my throat.

If you have a moment, please share in the comments where you carry your grief as well as what makes you roar.

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Grief’s Apprentice

My goodness I was a wily child when I arrived in grief’s classroom. Quiet and unschooled and utterly closed. 

I hid in the folds of other bodies, in bittered fermentation, in skunk and smoke. 

Sullen. Alone. And aching for the reprieve of a downpour, of a drenching, of a bone clanking throw down without an iota of understanding of how to unclench and let grief wrack my body. 

Was it the loss of control that I feared? Was it the breaking? I shouldered on, not yet knowing that what grief intends is a pause to settle into the bonebowl of pelvis where life dwells heavy and strong.

No knowing that it is from here that grief grows into a roar that unzips the throat.

—Mary Pembleton