Content Warning: grief and loss
I look at my best friend of ten years
in the low light
of our cozy, familiar dorm
She knows me like the way home,
No directions or explanations needed.
I have something to say,
a horrible realization
and I almost swallow it
My gut insists that I do
The worst things happen to me
when I go against what it suggests
My therapist called this
unwarranted pattern recognition,
Confirmation bias.
I stare at her a little longer,
debating the words, and say,
“You know,
I’m not as miserable as I was last year.
I used to cry all the time
about the stupidest shit
and now I don’t.
I think I know why.”
Deep breath.
Glance.
Plead with her stare for mercy.
“Why?” she asks.
I pause again,
this time thinking
of a way to say this
diplomatically.
But I can’t.
I haven't seen grief in awhile.
Would it hurt her feelings to admit this?
“Because last year I was sad he was gone, and this year I’m not.”
And there it is. What healing has done to me.
As I write this I listen to songs
That dreg up how I felt after he was gone
Because it is getting harder and harder to remember
My mother says I was built for survival
But right now survival feels like amnesia
And I am staring at old pictures of him
Trying to remember the sensation of daughter,
How child felt,
And I cannot.
What a great discredit to the little girl
Who carried my load when I couldn’t
Grief, that sweet skinny thing
Wearing my childhood blonde hair
and my most favoritest sneakers.
She assures me that she remembers everything,
That the fights and the love,
The raw fucking love that burned
like hydrogen peroxide on a skinned knee
It’s still there.
She’ll hold it for me
until I’m ready to pick it up again.
When I was still her and I was the brave one,
We were keeping a litter of kittens in our garage
My most favoritest one got sick and died,
And despite being raised Jewish
and scared shitless of its lifeless body,
I insisted we send her away with love.
I couldn’t look at her,
So my father carried her for me
in a dainty purple filing box
And we buried her
before we’d settled on a name
in the Catholic church’s abandoned weedy field
In the shadow of a cross
I could only believe in for her.
Whatever road she took to heaven was fine with me
As long as she was leaving safely
And decidedly untouched.
Just like the fish I’d killed by feeding it too much
and insisted on a burial and wake for,
I’m starting to think that love is killing something
And it’s also avoiding the aftermath of it
Love is agreeing that one day,
You will be hurt by someone
Either they will go or you will,
And loving them
is just agreeing
to the consequences.
I remember having a pool party funeral for him,
Which didn’t seem ridiculous if you knew him
We all sat around telling stories
And playing with my cousin’s Hot Wheels
on the warm pavement around my Dad’s pool
My grandma brought a huge Costco birthday cake
with everyone’s name frosted on it
An apology for missing so many of them
Dad’s name was on there too,
But we left that slice be.
Grief shows up in weird ways.
So we celebrated everyone’s birthday
and tried to not talk about how much we loved him
Or just how much we had lost
Sometimes it is more comfortable
To love from behind the bulletproof glass
To leave the slice of cake on the tray
And eventually throw it out
With the best of intentions.
So we blew out candles
and left it all where it was.
I remember riding my bike
and being careful to not go over
The gravesite of a kitten I’d forgotten the name for
To leave her where she belongs
My dad would mow the lawn
around my fish Snappy’s humble tomb
A crop circle of weeds left around him
And I didn’t hug him when he laid there
In his hospital bed
flatlining.
We leave things where we think they belong.
I got out safe from it.
I wish I hadn’t.
Maybe then I could remember
the name of the lake he’d take me to,
Or how his pillows and work shirts smelled,
But I can’t.
Maybe shrapnel creates a memorable scar.
Maybe pain creates the pattern recognition,
like my therapist would say.
“Chloe, your history means
you look for the first sign of trouble.
Your brain puts it in a filing box
and whenever it happens again,
the pain makes you remember
so you know when to run.
That’s why it comes back so sharply.”
I don’t go to the river where we left his ashes,
I ride my bike around it.
I still won’t open the patient's belonging bag
of his shredded clothes
Just put filing boxes of junk on top of it.
And this is what healing is.
It’s when the knee scars over
and I’m missing grief’s little face
She always comes back but I never know when,
So I wait for her until she turns back for me
To take the guilt away for awhile
Being sad sometimes feels better
than this abundance of joy I possess.
Birthdays and my lover usually do the trick
When I am happy and you cannot see it,
I can remember you more clearly.
The fear you’re missing out gets to me
And then you’re there again
Watching the candles get blown out
From the murky corner I feel you in
You would have loved him
just as much as I do, Dad
I wish I could tell you I’m alright now
That I’m happy, despite the jealousy it'll dredge up
I would say you’d be proud of me,
But I won’t kid myself.
You are where you are meant to be,
Despite all the love you will miss the warmth of.
There is a slice of birthday cake waiting for you.
I’ll save the love and the cake until I see you again,
in whatever road or filing box you took out of here.
I suppose I’ve avoided the worst of it.