Chapter 1: Microscopic Versions of Trauma

Departures of Grief by Marial Leisge

Chapter 1: Microscopic Versions of Trauma

Long before grief becomes a story, the body has already begun taking notes.

It remembers in smaller, stranger ways: a smell that makes you leave a room, a song you cannot listen to anymore, a staircase that unsettles you before you understand why. Microscopic versions of trauma, maybe—things that happened earlier in life and somehow stayed tucked away inside us.

As we become adults, even parents, trauma and grief become far more complicated. They happen in real time while simultaneously awakening memories and experiences from our own childhoods. 

When I became a mother, my son unknowingly tossed me into an entirely new reality. As he grew, so did the size of the mirror he was holding up to me, forcing me to look inward and taking me on a mental journey so vast and so deep that it sometimes felt like a terrifying dive into the darkest parts of the ocean. 

The only way I have been able to keep my composure through mothering is to perceive it as a wild adventure. Then April arrived, and the walls began giving up their secrets.

It has been revealed to our family that our son, Otto, had been exposed, and had been living in an environment riddled with mold. The next day, we pulled back the basement carpet and found what had been living behind our floors and walls. Our finished family room - nearly fifteen hundred square feet of the life we had built - was gutted to the studs. The HVAC was remediated. Dumpsters filled. Belongings began to take their last walk of the plank.

The hardest part was not the demolition. It was realizing that the place I had trusted to keep our family safe, had been burdening us all. Suddenly, every unexplained symptom, every difficult night, every developmental question and every instinct I had been told not to overthink returned for examination. 

There were moments when the evidence felt validating. There were other moments when validation felt almost cruel. Being right did not make me feel powerful. It made me responsible for what came next. 

For months, I lived in two realities. In one, our home had been remediated and we were supposed to move forward. In the other, my nervous system continued to scan every wall, floorboard and air vent for danger. The house was declared clean long before my body believed it. 

We made impossible decisions about ordinary things like our favorite books, artwork, toys, prized possessions…and the pieces of our life that never looked dangerous. Somewhere inside that surreal universal roller coaster, I began noticing glimmers. Signs. Signals. Or maybe it was simply the mind doing what it does when the world no longer makes any sense.

Was I just searching for a thread strong enough to follow? It led first to my father.