I hear and see the need to do.
“I’ll get ice."
"Do we have enough chairs?"
"Let’s pull cars up to make more room.”
All the fussing and doing, because what else is there to do? Keeping hands busy and worrying about little details that don’t matter now, nor will they ever. The real reason, I can see now, is that once the 'doing' stops, you have to notice the glaringly obvious absence. That one person who would normally be at the center of all this commotion, tying all of these people together. So you fuss, and plan, and clean, and distract. You have to, to keep your heart pumping and your will going.
Noticing me in the garden, he begins to stumble over across the road and raises a hand to gesture hello.
“So I’m sure you’ve noticed all the cars at the house lately,” he calls out still approaching
I nod.
“Jackie died last week,” he states numbly stopping in the middle of my yard.
I nod.
His voice is heavy and light at the same time. His eyes are looking at me, and even though I barely know him, I can tell he is not here. It's like he’s looking at my face but can only see hers. I know this feeling, though I couldn’t describe it at the time I felt it myself.
w h a t d o I s a y n o w?
No one experiences loss the same, and honestly there isn’t anything to do but busy yourself until your heart is ready to process and mend itself.
“I'm so sorry. We are here for you if you ever need anything,” is all I’m able to manage, then start internally kicking myself at how dumb it sounds in my own ears. He invites me to their house, his house... this afternoon for a gathering, "of course, we will be there."
Turning back to my weeds and dirt, I busy my hands and wonder at how strange it is to be in such a place of grief and then notice a shift. A friend and I were talking about Jackie the other day, and I remembered how last year seems like a blur to me, when I was so wrapped in my own grief that I don’t know what happened in March or September. And this year, while it’s still with me, the load seems lighter, like my brain said, 'ok you can feel and see and remember again.' Seeing Daniel in his blur of fresh grief brought me back to that intense sensation of numbness and remembering the doing, just to keep feeling purposeful.
Shuffling through the dirt I see an acorn cracked open and starting to sprout. I feel it’s hard smooth shell and notice the cracks where the tender green bud miraculously nosed it’s way through. Seemingly impossible, it’s found light.
And I remember the quote from Cynthia Ocelli:
“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”
