Category Archives: grief

Dearest Girl,

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Pfft. I started to write a short story about you and your fairy godmother. She is a larger-than-life-take-no-guff fictional lady who lives in a real house in a real town where we both had our hearts broken.

She had a red-brick house with an actual turret in the middle of the cozy little town Kipling called Muskrat–Kipling, who might have advised handing you over to Baloo or Bagheera had you and I met up with him in our peripatetic trips about town.

I would let you run (fast as you can) to each stop sign (but wait for me there), most alarming for the people in their cars, always concerned you would just keep running.

I realized I could not finish the story. You can’t know a fairy godmother is trustworthy on the first or the second or the 500th day. You can’t know until

You figure out for yourself why and how she stares down all comers

As the most beautiful music

Spills out over the lawn, into the dark, dark night.

The Harrowing of Hell

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We ask liturgical questions, why must the dead pretend they are anything else, here in the depths of the world where we have waited so long? We resemble our former selves, only shadows now, constructing chalk outlines of the world which has gone on without us

When he breaks through we watch in awe, chalk outlined arms raised, like children who must be helped into

The clothing of this beautiful

Hereafter

Uriah

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He has found a little stream, dips his feet into the water away from all the others. When I ask him about all he has lost, he shrugs as if to say

Lost wife

Lost country

Lost king

Lost friends

But he has new friends now, even among the children and grandchildren and great grandchildren of his erstwhile wife.

He recites these my-life-for-yours words as if the man who wrote them had written them for him…

….He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him. [18] The lot causeth contentions to cease, and parteth between the mighty. [19] A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle. [20] A man’s belly shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth; and with the increase of his lips shall he be filled. [21] Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. [22] Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing , and obtaineth favour of the Lord . [23] The poor useth intreaties; but the rich answereth roughly. 24] A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly:

…there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

Let us wait here, darling

Until he comes.

Close

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Days before the Passover lamb, John the Baptist mends her long robe, pours oil over wounds with words which make sense only to the dead, faith the fire we warm our hands by,

Let me in, let me in says the moon and the wind, let me in to the stillness of everlasting, as even now the children begin to

Lay down their outer garments, their palm branches, as we all sing, hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

We are close now, so close .

Eulogizing Joe

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Methuselah lived 969 years, which means that at just over 100, my grandfather was a spring chicken, as lifespans go. That notwithstanding he got a lot done. Married, participated in at least three wars, fathered children, buried some. Lost a wife, found another, called me his oldest unmarried granddaughter for as long as it applied.

I loved him in all his iterations, in all his familiar imperfections, but I know Someone who loves him more.

The One who is the Road

The All and Only

Road Home.

Psalm 116