What my grief looks like

I am taking a free on-line writing class, and one of our prompts was to write about what our grief would look like if we took it out of us and looked at it…it’s an interesting thing to think about.

Grief – that black, slippery mucosal membrane that lines the inside of my stomach.  I would do anything to get it out, vomit, wail, scream in the shower, smoke a pack of cigarettes.  A slippery marble ball, I can’t grasp it, it is constantly sliding through my hands, rounding out and hollowing more space in my body.  The more I try to stand on top of it, the more I fall off.  When she died I was right there, slipping through the pain and dreams of her loss, unable to grasp the gravity of the moment, rolling in the profundity of the voids that had been left behind, sounding like empty school halls echoing with bells, that sharp bleak sound.  Grief, it ties me to sounds and beliefs I don’t have in the daylight, it makes me hug myself, hold myself, steam drips off my tears and the holes pierce wider and deeper into me.  It is a soulless creature, a bare light bulb in a hungry room, a child sitting on the floor leaning against the corner of her bed.  It is thick and black, so as not to let the light in, it is the sound of metal hitting the floor, and the taste of blood in my mouth.  Grief is a dark wind blowing me back when I need to push forward.  She hits at the softest spaces, the most happiest of places and rips them apart like a tornado.  Entering my grandmother’s sweet room like a Hefty trash bag grief comes and smothers the life, the light, the rose-scented everything, the sound of bagpipes outside, the cold gentleness of her last hand-hold.  Grief slips over me, bouncing from ear to ear, ruining my vestibular balance and ringing something awful inside of me.  Grief lays it on thick like Vegemite, salty and timeless.  Grief comes at me, doubled over in the shower, hot bodied and helpless, the ball of emotion filling the tub around me, it’s membrane sucking the smile out of me, like Ursula robbing Ariel of her voice.  Grief pauses only so I can catch my breath, then goes on to make me breathless, not in a high school romance sort of way, but in the Quentin Tarantino way – violent breaths and hearts breaking.  Grief tumbles around me until I push her back inside, until I push her back inside. 

Yalo...

March 1^st, 2014

I used to feel that by coming to Peru, my friends would change and we would forget the things that we had done together, forget that sentiment of togetherness that bonded us so tightly.  Now, an older and more mature reality seeps in and I realize that those moments are moments and not much more.  I can’t recreate them so I should enjoy them.  The girls I used to hang out with have somewhat disbanded– we will never share the same bond we had before.  My friends from high school sort of did that thing at the end of the Sandlot movie  – some have disappeared but I still recount those stories with them with a smile on my face, and I’ve gained new friends that I hold onto tighter.  My penchant for not wanting to let go of memories leads to a kind of depression, until I’m three or four months into some new thing and I realize it’s pretty neat.  Sometimes I think it takes longer, sometimes I get so caught up in the memories I already have that I forget that in that moment, I am making new memories. 

Today, I killed Yalo (my lamb).  Well, not really me, my host mom hired a hit woman.  It was oddly not shocking, and right now I have recipes for mint sauces up on my screen.  The woman performed the deed very beautifully, showering the ground with blood and sacrificing a few drops to the Apus, or mountain gods.  I held him during his last breaths and last kick, remembering fondly the memories we had together laying in my bed, napping together, feeding him grass, swimming in the Inca pool, going shopping together on the way to work.  That was so long ago, and because I have those memories of him doesn’t negate the fact that he is now what he was then – an animal meant for eating.  I don’t feel sad, in fact I didn’t feel much beyond pure fascination at what happened today.  We kept everything.  A piece of his hair fell off to the side and I had to grab it at the insistence of my host mom and make sure that we burn it, not just leave it there.  We kept the blood, to boil and make a dish with potatoes.  We kept his intestines and cleaned them out – what is left over from that will be taken to my host mom’s farm to make fertilizer.  We gave the hired killer his stomach and intestines to do with what she pleased.  I’m keeping his leather and fur for a seat cover, and we’re making a stew out of his head and feet.  He will feed my host family and their family for a few days.  My host mom asked, as we were charring his head by an outdoor fire to take the hair off, if it gave me pain to watch him die like that.  I said not really, just sadness over the memories lost (which they already were when he grew up and became a head-butting maniac).  She said it hurt her a bit, as he was her “companero de la chakra” (farm-companion).  Juanita, the other lamb, paced back and forth in her cage, making sad noises and watching as we cut the hair off her ex-lover’s feet. 

I’ve seen people and animals come and go, and realized the importance of holding onto the relationships that last – and the importance of holding on to me throughout those times when I am being left or leaving, when I am going or returning – of holding on to the memories while not forgetting the inevitable excitement at what is to come.