by Jane Grillo
As a child I had very little experience with actual death. Most of my knowledge came from movies. My mother, who was European old school, raised her children from a strict Catholic tradition. My father was European old school too, he just worked and puttered in the garden and stayed out of all parenting decisions. I was a surprise, arriving as my parents were reaching their 40s. They were tired. My two sibs were in their late teens when I came along, already dipping into their own lives as adults.
It was the late 60s. Dad had finished our basement and the den, known as ”Downstairs”. That was where the TV was. My mom did not drive, so TV was her entertainment, companion, and my babysitter. We watched everything.
Chiller Theater came on at 11 pm on Friday nights, and my mom was a late night person. My dad would go to bed at 9, but my mom would stay up late and… I think she liked the company for the scary movies, so I got to stay up too. On one of these nights, Night of the Living Dead came on. My mother unknowingly gifted me with a lifelong fascination with zombies. It was old-timey, black and white but it was terrifying and, I vividly remembered the message within, of a black man taking the lead, and his (spoiler alert) tragic, senseless end.
“I think that's the great thing about zombies, is, you know, going back to even 'Night of the Living Dead,' they've always been a tool for kind of holding up a mirror to us and showing us something about ourselves that we might not otherwise know.” ~ Jonathan Levine
I still don’t remember anyone we knew actually dying. I don’t remember experiencing true grieving in my blissfully suburban raising. My parents never discussed it. Family members who passed on were a continent away, without our presence at a funeral or at family gatherings. My brother came home from Vietnam and married a stewardess from California and moved away. He never discussed the war and how it changed his life, like my parents never discussed the war and how it ruined their home country of Malta. I grew up ignorant of grief, and suffering.
I remained fascinated with zombies, who were dead but still lived their lives. I remember thinking how much the living people I knew in my community, who kept their bread white, just like their neighborhoods, moved through their day, untroubled by the violence and death occurring in the world. I thought they were dead inside like the zombies. I was a young kid trying to understand the draft, the hippies, terrorism, pollution, racial hatred and I had made a secret friendship with a trans person. I would sneak out to see all the things my parents were hiding from me.
One of my practices was to see every zombie movie I could see. I saw all the Night of the Living Dead sequels and then the movies started changing… from gory to funny. And my understanding of the social metaphors of zombies became even more influential in my opinions of the world and people’s ways of walking through it.
My teenage definition of the walking dead was the people all around me because, to me, they cared only about feeding themselves while the world around them becomes more dangerous and cold and heartless.
And then, I experienced my first death… a boy who had been a childhood friend who killed himself after coming out as a gay man. I never got the details because I was living in a new suburb, having been moved out of the old neighborhood. White flight had taken me away from my childhood world and old friends. The AIDS crisis was beginning. On the east end of Long Island, where gay people were just learning about the risks of their polyamorous lifestyles, fear moved through the community like the virus. AIDS was creating a population of walking dead. I witnessed people walking in terminal sickness and their beloved, in grief. Like a zombie… slow moving, with no real purpose other than seeking to fill the emptiness, the need, going on and on endlessly, with no real hope.
My forties heralded the unexpected specters of grief and pain, and I was, myself, living a zombie existence.
I was dealing with the 24-hour struggles of a medically fragile, late-in-life baby, a recalcitrant teen, and a husband who was dealing with his own struggles. I had to leave a job, and a life, that I loved to take care of this child. I found myself buried at home, like my mom. I had become sleepless, and forgot to take care of myself. My life had drained down to caregiver machine. I grieved for my old life and freedom I didn’t know I had.
The whole zombie apocalypse mythos had become a measure for me. It was about survival through the worst adversity. It was about hope. It was about the spectrum—from the most depraved, cold, and violent we could be to the most human, loving, and hopeful we could be. I often considered people by how I thought they would be in a zombie outbreak. Personally, I wanted to be a first victim. Life was wearing me down, I walked with so much grief the last few years, I did not feel like I could keep fighting to be alive. I wanted to be the first round gone… I didn’t care if I walked the earth as a zombie because I wouldn’t be aware.
Self-awareness is agony.
But today… years after trudging along, I am on the downhill journey of my fifties, and I wish for lots of road ahead. I have met so many challenges. I have seen amazing acts of human kindness and courage.
I think I would be one of the survivors now. I would choose to hang on, keeping the zombies at bay in favor of a life well lived.
Jane Grillo works in the world of disability advocacy, primarily as the parent mentor for White County Schools. Disability issues are pretty much the main topics she writes about these days. She is the web editor for parentmentors.org. She has also worked as editor for several Georgia weekly newspapers. She is proud mama to two grownups; daughter Sam, who is married to Eric and lives in Michigan, and Joe, who has spastic quad cerebral palsy, and is just embarking on his adulting journey after recently turning 18. She lives in Sautee, GA. with her husband, Jerry, Joe, dog, Sunny, and cat, Fatty, and the woods, and the moonlight.
What's your favorite walk?
My current favorite walk is the Hardman to Helen Trail which is a handicap accessible paved trail. Other accessible trails on the list of favorite walks are: the Shortline Trail (near Tallulah Falls, GA) and the park adjacent to the Mellowdrome in Asheville NC.
What do you do for yourself when I need comfort? I hug my dog Sunny. Dogs are fabulous therapists, non-judgmental, attentive and will happily go with you for a walk (or encourage you to take them on a walk) if that is what you need. I also find being outside and walking amongst the trees and seeing the natural world literally helps ground me and find my bearings. If you walk the same woods enough, the living things there become familiar friends to you. Yoga works too.
What's your favorite quote?
“And sometimes, against all odds, against all logic, we still hope.” Unknown