MIRROR
11.1.20
What I’ve learned from you, in Death; There is nothing humble about Grief. She struts the refuge of your sanity at her own time, within her bidding, at her calling. Siblings teach you the value of sharing that way.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not angry, or bitter, not anymore. Grief, after all, is Love’s gentle reminder to not take up too much space. Admittedly, in your case she may have overcharged the noose tax of bearing the unbearable.
Another thing about grief; she’s not without mercy, she’s the first to weep for our original sin. In a way (a completely unpredictable way), that’s how she whispers her presence in our lives. All contraction and expansion. Sometimes present enough to touch, filling up the hole love dug in subterfuge. Still, we have the audacity to call it “empty.” There’s nothing empty about this. When she visits she unpacks lead on our feet, deposits salt in our eyes, and fills fills fills fills until we’re so full, even the starving wouldn’t dare touch another meal. It’s birth, or, rebirth in your case. Labor pains so horrid, they’d make any mother think the outcome of pregnancy is the origin story behind exorcisms.
I thought I’d had grief figured out. But to know grief is to know love, life, death. To know you, but I forgot you. Grief draws me a map to find the bits of you I neglected; I find crossroads and rest stops in songs you liked, books you read, habits you could never really kick. Do you still bite your cuticles?
I made the mistake to treat this sadness like any other meal, humble pie, sugar loaf. Grief is broth to the sick – you can’t separate the marrow from the spoon, and there’s no leaving the table until every last drop is drunk. And drink you must.
Refuse Grief’s medicine, and it will be your marrow’s turn to steep the water.