The short answer to why I haven’t written is grief. Obviously, I guess. Lately, grief has felt a bit like a large box in the middle of the room that I keep meaning to move but never get around to addressing, so instead I stub my toes on it ten times a day. It’s there, it’s lurking, it’s present. But it’s also my own lack of direct address that makes it so.

In some ways, the last month has been the easy mode of grief. When my dad died, I was on a plane within twelve hours of receiving the news, child in tow. We spent a month at home, and I looked after my mum as best I could and parented my kiddo as best I could and tried to knock things off the enormous post-death checklist as best I could and checked in occasionally at work as best I could. In short, I distracted myself.

After an epic 25-hour travel day (thanks, global pandemic), I got home to this home — do other adult humans refer to more than one space as home, or is that just me? — and I handed off kiddo to my husband and they went off for an afternoon adventure of haircuts and dance class and suddenly I was faced with the horrifying reality that, no longer distracted, I would have to feel my feelings.

Absolute bullshit.

I can feel myself beginning to unravel, and I think the truth of the last week is that I am not so emotionally stunted that I didn’t know this was eventually coming. I’ve been tired, and I’ve been intentionally tiring myself out to keep from having to grieve too profoundly, too deeply. And writing taps into all the same introspective parts of the self. So too tired to grieve was also too tired to write. And here we are.

I am back at my desk today in a formal capacity; back to writing and thinking and trying to do brain work. But I also recognize that I need to not use that as another form of distraction and escape. What is the balance?

I’ve recently apparently become a Person Who Orders Books About Grief after a lifetime of eschewing self-help as a genre (I once quit a book club because they made us read Untamed by Glennon Doyle and everyone loved it and I hated its story of wealthy white lady problems so profoundly that I knew these could never be my people), so I guess it’s new frontiers all around. I am currently reading It’s Ok That You’re Not Ok: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand by Megan Devine and The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss by George A. Bonanno. Will report back.

I actually planned out this whole month of blogging ages ago and so I have lots of topics that aren’t my dead dad to talk about. I really hope to get to them. But I’m also grateful for this space to process and reflect. And grieve. It’s so hard to grieve. No one tells you that part: just the feeling of feelings, the space for sadness, is so hard to allow yourself to undertake. I think, for me, this part starts now.

Honestly, I already do. I haven’t seen a lot of follower haemorrhaging thus far, but I am feeling the tweaks to the algorithm. I have a small but very engaged community on Twitter, but since sometime late Friday I’m lucky to get a single like on any tweet, and the analytics data seems to show a big drop in how many people are seeing my content. Turns out, shouting into the void is actually no fun; people have got to shout alongside you. I have to assume this is related to the changes to prioritize verified users in everyone’s feeds, and since that man would have to pry my last eight dollars out of my cold, dead hands, I guess it just rolls this way.

I’m sad about losing Twitter because it has been a big part of my professional life ever since I joined as a graduate student in the late-2000s; when I ended up in a department where there wasn’t a lot of support for the work I wanted to do, my handful of pals in my department helped me see Twitter as a place to build a larger community. When I started blogging, I found an audience for my ideas on Twitter and found challenges to those same ideas there, too. And when I found myself in a brand new discipline as an educational technologist, I found the professional network that would see me through the challenges of the first year of the pandemic. Among those folks, I would find good friends.

Twitter as it once was was a social media that made sense to me; I’m not cool enough for TikTok, not hot enough for Instagram, not patient (or maybe just angry) enough for Facebook. I never really used MySpace and I don’t know what Friendster was and I remember thinking FourSquare was cool until the internet reminded me that it’s a harrowing place to share personal data. But Twitter and I always clicked well: the text-based medium, the tonal balance of hope and cynicism, the general preference for sharing failings and grievances over successes. These are things that speak to me.

I became confident in my public scholarship on Twitter; I was invited to publish in collections because of Twitter; and almost all of my keynote invitations have come first as Twitter DMs. It’s a critical space for my career. Or at least it was. It’s hard to get external links and non-retweets seen right now if you’re an unverified user, and that’s sad, because I don’t know who I would be as a scholar without the critical conversations and corrections that helped me find my voice. I did really silly things on Twitter like a live-blogging of the reading experience of Ian McEwan’s terrible novel about a sentient fetus or a multi-day debate with Norm MacDonald about the state of Canadian Literature or the weird time I was on the BBC because of a viral tweet about Jon Stewart’s retirement.

The weirdness of Twitter was always in the possibility of this kind of thing happening. That doesn’t seem possible to me under a regime where anyone can pay $8 / month to have their voice amplified and everyone else can get buried by them. But what do I know.

The think about Twitter that I find hard to replicate elsewhere is the happenstance of a space shared collectively by so many people who, once upon a time, anyway, were often flattened to share equal weight. This obviously (1) is shaped by subject position, because for some marginalized folks Twitter has always been a hellscape and (2) turned out to be a flattening that from about 2016 on pretty much ruined the world. And I get that, I do. But the pre-2015 days, when Twitter really did feel (to me, anyway) like a Town Square? No other existing tool comes close to tapping into that feeling. Because it was never an echo chamber to me — it was always a place where I could find scholars and writers and experts with all kinds of different perspectives and read them alongside each other. That had a great deal of value to me.

Maybe Twitter will survive all of this. Seems unlikely, but who expected Facebook to still be around after we abandoned it to our parents? But even if it does, it’s hard to imagine it gets back to the silly, strange place it was when we were all a little sillier and more naive, and before the presence of misinformation and flattened expertise was so obviously deadly.

I guess that’s the question: will I miss Twitter, or do I already miss the person I was in those years, before grief and pandemic life and disappointment and existential dread reframed how I understand the world? I can’t really know that, I suppose.

But I can keep hoping I make it to the end of Twitter without ever being the main character. So far, so good.

I’m not doing a good job. I’m mostly just cutting everything back and raking everything out and hoping for the best — and hoping I am not killing anything. But it feels like doing something, which is a pretty powerful drug these days.

I’m thinking a lot, as I do this, about the kinds of jobs my dad always did and how much I didn’t pay attention. I don’t know how to bait a mousetrap (thanks, YouTube) and I don’t know how to use a pruning saw (but I know now I was doing it backwards for at least the first part of Friday). All these things I never attended to, because Dad was either there and just doing it, or on the end of the phone to ask for help when I needed it. His absence is palpable. We haven’t picked snow tires yet this year. Who are we going to run that by? Or oh god, what about when we have to buy our next car? Who do I call next time I need to reformat my Mac? And why did I never pay attention to the mousetraps?

We are experiencing unseasonably warm weather here and while normally a 24 degree (Celsius — I don’t know what that is in weirdo temperature) in November would fill me with existential dread, I’m struck by how lovely the weather has been here — pretty much non-stop — since the day after Dad died. There is so much to do and so much to learn and it’s nice to think that Dad didn’t want me to also be cold and miserable while I gnawed at the trees with a backwards pruning saw (I eventually figured it out.)

On Friday, when I was in the garden pulling out some rogue blackberry bushes that had grown roots at both ends (sorry, is that a thing?), I realized that the AirPod that had been in my pocket was now… not. As often when I am working on a task with one part of my brain and parenting with the other, I had one earbud in on the side mostly to the garden, and one earbud out on the side mostly to where my five-year-old was playing. But the other AirPod was… gone. I searched everywhere, but between the leaves and the loose soil and my pile of debris, I gave the whole thing up for lost. As I lay in bed Friday night, I idly Googled the cost of a single replacement AirPod and gently choked on it as I drifted off to sleep, listening to the rain surely drowning my poor beleaguered AirPod in its garden grave.

Something to know about my dad is that he was an Apple fanatic. Like, since the start. My first computer that was mine-all-mine and not a family hand-me-down (in 1996 or so) was a Mac Color Classic that someone at Dad’s work was getting rid of after getting a Performa. Oh, how I adored that computer. From that point on, Dad had Macs and I had his old Macs. I was thinking about that as I searched for my AirPod: “Well, maybe this gorgeous weather has nothing to do with Dad, because Dad would not be involved in my losing an AirPod!”

On Saturday, finally finishing raking out that section of the garden, I looked down and saw… my AirPod. Perfectly protected from the rain overnight by the pile of leaves I hadn’t moved. It’s perfectly functional and somehow still clean and looking like new. Magical. Miracle. Dad?

Two theories: one, Dad saw the cost of the single replacement AirPod and was absolutely not having it; or two, he wasn’t going to let me have my AirPod back until I got out there and finished the job.

The job is done now for another year, Dad. I’m not sure I’ll get used to doing Dad Jobs, though I’ll try to muddle through them all as best I can. The dog doesn’t like the way I make his breakfast and I never remember to clean your grandson’s water bottle as carefully as you did. Every day I find a new way you are missed.

But thanks for finding my AirPod.

Two. The worst part is telling people and the only worse worst thing is finding out too late that the person you’re talking to doesn’t already know. You will suddenly understand why everyone used to care about the obituary pages so much and you will wish you had a QR code on your forehead that people could scan for the necessary information.

Three. Being alone with your thoughts is overrated at the best of times but it really sucks when you’re grieving. Consider having one AirPod playing a fatuous podcast at a barely-perceptible volume at almost all times that you are alone. That way, you can learn about the history of birth certificates or the role of the gold standard or something instead of thinking about how the worst thing that ever happened to you has now happened and you will be forever changed. Because that is a real bummer.

Four. This is for those on the periphery of grief: when you deliver food to a grieving person (and you should), consider three things: portion, timing, and vessel. First, the portion should be proportionate to the size of the grieving family. Second, everyone will deliver food in the first two-three days and then never again, so consider waiting until week two or three for a visit (but maybe don’t plan for a visit-visit — a drop and run is an underappreciated gift on its own). The first and second point are interrelated (I have spent more time in a tetris game with our tiny freezer and/or intercepting deliveries than doing anything else). And finally, package your thoughtful and generous gift up in something disposable. I am sorry Mother Earth, but this is one thing you need just take on the chin. The washing and returning of vessels is a lot, my people. A lot.

Five. Also for my periphery peeps: don’t compare your grief. Even if you think the situation is so utterly similar to your own. Even if it is literally the exact same series of facts on paper. Death is simultaneously the great equalizer and a totally unique experience for each of us. When you tell someone in mourning that you know exactly how they feel, you risk making them feel erased in their most vulnerable moment. So just don’t do it. Save that for your group chat.

A corollary to five that is very important: this is not just like a thing that happened that wasn’t the death of a beloved person. It just isn’t. I know how much you loved that vase. I do. I beg you to stop talking.

Six. Whatever relationship you had to eating and caring for yourself before, it’s fucked up now. Sorry.

Seven. You will maybe be surprised to know that the dog is as sad as he is. The dog is so, so sad. The dog is incomprehensibly sad and the whole family is engaged in a project of distracting the dog. When the dog is distracted, he is himself. When he is not distracted, he is sad. Distracting the dog distracts us, too. This might be his MO.

Eight. You, unfortunately, are not a dog, and thus distraction can only work so well for so long. Eventually, you’ll need to do the work of processing this immeasurable loss. You can feel that need the way you feel something in your peripheral vision before you know for sure it’s there. Present and not-present. Schroedinger’s emotional labour. It’s not clear what this process will look like or when it will come. It feels like there might need to be guacamole? Or gin? The details are hazy. It’s coming, though — both a promise and a threat. But not, like, now. Now is still the time for distraction.

Nine. You can’t predict when you will dissolve. A song lyric. A line in a news story. A bird you don’t know the name of but he would. Other people being kind is the worst, and the least predictable. And then over and over and over again: that feeling that you should text him about this moment, send this picture, remember this for the next FaceTime. That recipe he would have loved to try. That person who would have made him roll his eyes. That overriding sense that there will be so many things — big and small and significant and foolish — that you want to share and a missing person to share them with.

Ten. You’re in this for the long haul.

The benefits of this, it seems to me, would be many. I love a creative constraint and I love a goal. I have felt my thinking stagnate over the past few years, as the pandemic sameness of my still-cloistered life takes its toll. I would like to think a little bit about a bunch of stuff and see what gets me excited — lately, the idea of penning a conference proposal gives me hives, which is partly because I can’t imagine attending an in-person conference in a pandemic and everyone is rushing back to in-person, and partly because my thinking is so slow. The agility of my previous writerly self is gone and I wonder what will come next.

Anyway, it all seemed like an awfully good idea, and then, on October 19th, my dad died suddenly.

I am unmoored.

I’ll share here an excerpt of the obituary I wrote for my dad — how is that even a real thing I had to do? — because sharing who he is — was, but also is — helps.

Robert Gray of Merrickville passed suddenly at home on 19 October 2022.

Bob, as he was best known to his friends, was a true and eclectic autodidact — equally comfortable plumbing and wiring a heritage home, discussing the great theorists of psychology, or tinkering with and reviving any Apple product. His knowledge was far-ranging and he delighted in opportunities to share it with people he in turn could learn from, ideally while also sharing a laugh. Bob was known for his quick and sardonic wit that outshone his sometimes curmudgeonly first impression. He loved supporting music as much as he loved listening to it, whether at the pub or dragging gear across Eastern Ontario, roads he knew so well from years spent rallying with Gill as his navigator. He was most in his element before a classroom of undergraduates; ankle-deep in the cold waters of Bay of Fundy; on the race tracks of Mosport, St. Jovite, and NASCAR; or puttering in his garden with his constant companion, Kushie.

He leaves an absence that will be felt most acutely on Formula One racing Sundays; his favourite holiday, Groundhog Day; or anytime politics and life are being discussed.

You would have enjoyed him.

Anyway, the idea of picking up the writing plan seemed impossible. It still does, honestly. I feel like I am moving through molasses all the time.

But.

My dad was the number one supporter of my public scholarship. He also loved old-school blogging. I remember that the website he ran off a server in his office for all of the 1990s and most of the 2000s was called “autodidactics in action.” He provided me with my first access to computers in 1988 and my first email address in the early 90s. He signed me up for computer camps as a tween. When I got my first paid blogging gig at the launch of Book Riot in 2011, he read every word (even the ones he vehemently disagreed with). When I put my tenure portfolio on the open web pre-adjudication, no one was prouder — I know, because I know how hard he tried to explain it to people who had no idea what tenure or the open web meant.

Writing this post is impossible — tears streaming down my face as I do it — because the idea of writing words that Dad will never read feels impossible. Like writing his obituary, it is something that should be happening to someone else.

And yet at the same time, I know how if he was here and I launched this mini-project, he would read every single post — and subscribe to the RSS feed, and wade into the comments, and chat with other people there, and enjoy the participatory web as he always did. And that’s why I’m going to try to follow through.

The reality too is that Twitter is less usable every day under the new leadership, and recommitting to blogging feels like an empowered act. Dad would have liked that, too. Own your hosting; own your platform. That was his ethos before it was a movement.

I miss my dad. I also really miss writing. I can only have one, as it turns out, because this shit just is not fair. But I know he would like this project.

See you tomorrow?