Worlds

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.  How are you? They ask,  because they truthfully want to know.  They bring books and ask you to go on walks.  They plan the memorial. They stay by your side on that day of celebration. Like birthday parties, a memorial celebrates a life. 

The memorial is when people start to float away. They must get back to their lives. They must get back to the people in their lives. My phone rings less. The walks get shorter and scarcer. The carefully wrapped casseroles stop appearing in the kitchen. The flowers start to wilt, dripping their leaves on the tabletop.  Like snowflakes and people—flowers melt. 

How are you doing?  The soft voices that asked the caring questions start to evolve in tone, speed, intonation. And  topics. Conversations evolve into the talk of life. The lives of the living. 

But I can’t, I do not, return to my life because my life isn’t there anymore. And never will be again. My life—my world— has been demolished.  

My friends go out for dinners. They take day trips to lakes. Some of my friends eat at home, or at the home of friends. They return to their worlds. Silence now permeates what used to be our home. My house is now empty of noise.

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 my friend’s existence? In the beginning, there’s disbelief and shock. The phone begins to freeze, it no longer brings me silly messages from the now dead person.

I start feeling more feelings. These feelings of grief slowly start to fade. Every day I awake and acclimate to this strange new life.

Then—then things start seeming kinda normal. I notice that the world is continuing. I cry less. I lol. I listen to a podcast. I eat breakfast. Then—when I’m kinda functioning without that constant feeling of emptiness, loss, grief—that is when the death hits me. I’ve returned to the normal headspace. 

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 the now scarred skin:  severed arteries and punctured organs and smokey images. .

And I knit and I knit.  A scarf for Darlene. Darlene will smile. I’ll feel her smile in the yarn coming alive in my hands. 

I can’t, I do not, return to my life because my life isn’t there anymore.

Now I’m writing the epilogue.