Reflections on Grief
When I first met Grief he was angry at me, and I at him. We screamed nonsense at each other for days, weeks, until my voice gave out. Then he began to claw at my chest and my eyes and my throat. He swallowed me whole and ripped me to pieces. My fingers were bloodied and my joints displaced. He was relentless, pointing and laughing and jeering, “GONE. GONE. GONE.” I ran from him, yet he always pursued. He terrorized my house, lurking in every corner. Corners that soon became untouched and dusty in an effort to avoid him. At some point, slowly and all at once I convinced him to grant me a bit of distance, just outside the walls.
He lingered outside, peering through the windows and beating on the doors and taunting me from the porch as I came and went. He became a wallflower. A terrible thing, but a terrible thing I knew. I almost never noticed the thumping on the walls or the shadow on the sidewalk. I did my best to ignore him and he was courteous enough to turn his taunts into whispers. One day I came home to him sitting on the porch swing, and he waved. He didn’t spit or yell or point or laugh. It was a short wave with the ghost of a smile, a shaving off an olive branch. Something possessed me to invite Grief in and offer him tea. There we sat, Grief and I, drinking jasmine green and peeling oranges in silence. There was an uncomfortable, unfamiliar kindness in his eyes.
So it began; the tea and the silence took the place of the screaming and the malice. Silent sitting turned into dusting off the corners of my home and my heart that Grief forced me to abandon. He helped me get boxes off the shelves I couldn’t reach and sort pictures into piles. He watched reverently as I read letters and hugged sweaters close to my chest. At my kitchen table I told Grief my name, and the names of the people who brought him to me, and he became my friend. He told me stories of all those he has tormented and befriended. Now he keeps me company often; we play blackjack and he lets me win. Sometimes he brings his brothers, Love and Rage, and we all sit together. I cry. They wait. I’d like to think they enjoy my presence as much as I’ve grown to enjoy theirs. Because somehow the same Grief that used to jeer and claw and rip and ruin now holds my hand. He takes too much milk and sugar in his tea and he cheats at cards; but he holds my hand and does not scoff at my tears. Grief is a better friend than enemy, and I’m glad I invited him in.