topic/grief

On Wednesday I glanced out the window and saw a shadow. It was high noon and sunny. A young bear had come down from the mountain. He had found the red sugar water of a hummingbird feeder and was sitting on his fat ass, lapping it up. The sight was a joyous one for me; it was the bear that Sarah had been looking for her entire life. I pushed her chair to the window. I looked at my daughter's empty eyes. I looked at the bear. It was so big, so real, so alive. I put my arms around my child and cried. "Please, see the bear, baby. Please."

“Mother,” she said, as she jumped on the trampoline. “Mother, I didn’t want to leave you, but I had to go with Father into the mountains. Mother, you told me to take care of my brother and I let him fight and he lost his legs. Mother, I let you down. Mother, you said you wanted to die in my arms and instead I watched our house burn with you inside as I fled to the mountains. I told Father I wanted to get off the horse and die with you and he gripped me to his chest and would not let me get down. Mother, I would have died with you, but you told me to go. I should not have gone.”

I took a step toward her. Her eyes were open but they did not see me. In the dark, I thought I would always remember this night and be profoundly altered by having seen her this way. But it was like one of those dreams where you think to yourself while the dream is happening that you must remember the dream when you wake — that if you remember this dream, it will unlock secrets to your life that will otherwise be permanently closed — but when you wake up, the only thing you can remember is telling yourself to remember it. And after trying to conjure up details and images and coming up blank, you think, Oh well, it was probably stupid anyway, and you go on with your life, and you learn nothing, and you don’t change at all.

If I had to make my own analogy, I’d say grieving is like being a lemon that someone has taken a zester to. “Ouch,” says the lemon. The lemon’s skin is raw. But the air grows a bit more fragrant and life appears fresh and vivid amid the pain.