I am my own world. My spinning world of love and grief and memories. My world of my worlds. My world of my words.
At first, it’s a party. People come over. They bring food and flowers and booze. They clean. They cook. They bring books and ask you to go on walks. They help plan the deceased’s memorial. They stay by your side on that day of celebration. Like a birthday party, a memorial celebrates a life.
And then. Then people start drifting. They start floating. They must get back to their lives. They must get back to the people in their lives. The front door stays still. The phone is less noisy. The walks—shorter, scarcer.
The carefully wrapped casseroles stop appearing in the kitchen. The flowers start wilting. Like snowflakes and people—flowers melt. How are you doing? The soft voices begin to evolve in tone, speed, intonation. Topics. Conversations evolve into the talk of life. Lives. The lives of the living.
I see them on instagram. I see lakes and trees and, locally grown produce—smoking grills. I see lots of plates of food. Their worlds are still spinning, spinning, spinning.
Now. For whom do I cook? Who do I cook with? How do I comfort others? How do I adjust to a new life without their existence? In the beginning the disbelief, the shock, the phone that is a brick in my hands—these distractions numb me from grief. From grieving.
Then, things start seeming kinda normal. I cry less. I lol. I listen to npr. I begin to move without that encompassing emptiness of loss, grief, memories—and this is when I start to bleed.
I no longer have shock or disbelief to numb me. I no longer have the fresh, bloody cuts to bandage. All I have are what’s under my now scarred skin: severed arteries and punctured organs and smokey images.
In the 80s I was a kid at a new school. Lincoln elementary, Cupertino, Ca. That’s when I met Darlene. Darlene died in 2022.
In my mind, Darlene will die again. I’ll wake up and I’ll forget she’s dead and I’ll process her loss again. Again. Again. Again.
Once—I had a mother and a father and a sister. I had a first husband. I had a baby in my belly. I was in love with a soccer-playing waiter. I had a friend who always checked on me. I had a dog.
I’m showing not telling but nobody’s watching. I feel like I’m washing away. I feel like a melting pile of snow. I feel like I should be in the forest, climbing redwood trees. I feel like I need a nap but I can’t sleep. I want to feel because I don’t know. I want to die. I want to live. I want to live a different life. I want to write something good. I want to write something well. But I don’t know what good is, and I’m convinced nobody knows what good.
Today. Again. I stare into my bathroom mirror. I stare at a woman who looks like an older version of me. I don’t want to look at this woman and her wrinkles and grey hair strands. I remember I’m a nesting doll not nesting.
I cannot return to my life because now that life is an older version of what was my life. There will be new versions. And more new versions. And more new versions.
My life—my war zone—keeps getting blown up. Loss is a grenade. Sadness is shrapnel.
I measure every Grief I meet (561)
I wonder if it hurts to live –
Michelle O’Kane 