Sometimes grief looks like a vase¹ of flowers² from your well-intentioned friend when your grandfather finally dies. Don’t take finally to mean at last but rather as a means to ending the mental torment of a man too good to sit in a hospital bed after he’d become akin³ to a potato. You think of him and every potato that’s ever sprouted roots in the dark. You think of him before all this with the potatoes and there he sits in his recliner in his house before someone else signed the lease. You think of the last time he called you by name and it prompts you to listen to old voicemails and in each one he drops the a at the end of Cieneca for a cheerful eeee.
Sometimes grief gets embodied in a pocket knife branded with the star and stripes of Cuba. Although your mom says he was never actually stationed in Cuba and you have to tell her that doesn’t matter. He gave you a piece of history as he wanted to remember it and you’ll re-tell his stories as fact, no matter how warped. A man who couldn’t tell you what day it was, shifting through memories as old as him, warrants a little imagination; a little acting. Before the dementia, even in his old age and your adolescence, he would let you win at cards. He would throw away any good hand and fall over backwards when you’d drop a pair of bullets⁴; acting like the feeble-minded man he’d soon become.
You feel guilty for the lack of grief you feel, so you layer in sweater and coat and earmuffs and you walk to CVS in the snow. You focus on the heat your nose and knees radiate as frostbite sets in⁵. As you scroll through pictures only one forms a lump in your throat, so you print it out and tape it above your desk⁶. Now you have a constant reminder he’s gone. You stare at the glossy square like it might turn to video, but it doesn’t and your face remains dry.
You try listening to music in a language you don’t understand like you used to do with him. The faint plucking of tender chords under a voice so weighed down with emotion puts you in the headspace to grieve. You imagine swinging your pink polka-dot Sunday dress to je voudrais lasso la lune pour vous in his living room, but the memory only makes you smile. So, you listen to that same song until you can hear it in his voice; until you can understand every word through sheer will. You learn how to play it on guitar since you can’t learn the words and you softly strum it for him in your room in the dark at night until you sprout roots⁷.
Maybe you haven’t been able to grieve because you hadn’t been there when he died. You have no real proof of his passing. If you had stood by your mom’s side in that hospital room, witnessing his last breath the way you had witnessed your grandmother’s, maybe then you would’ve fallen to your knees; forehead in the dirt, like your brother⁸. Or maybe it’s the places you’ve tried to grieve. Listening to your mom cry over the phone while sitting on your friend’s couch wasn’t the right time. Lying awake in bed, not even a foot from your roommate wasn’t the right time either. Or when you sat, cooking in a bath for hours⁹, shielded by the swirling patterns of the shower curtain, wondering about souls and God and how tied to destiny the time between each drop from the faucet is. Not even now, as you scratch each corner of your brain in a direct attempt to cry over the loss of your grandfather.
You could watch the beginning of ‘Up’ and pretend the tears falling are finally for him. You could call your mom and say I know I didn’t cry then, but can you hear me now? I feel it now– the way you felt that night; I’m sorry we couldn’t grieve together; I think I’ll always regret that, but I was at Ria’s and I just couldn’t, not in front of my friends; I couldn’t ruin their night, I mean, Mel really loves that Pete Davidson special¹⁰; she’s made us watch it twice now and I couldn’t drown out their laughter with my tears, it would’ve been cruel; although, what I did to you was cruel, acting like you weren’t sobbing to me over the phone, just to save face– I’m sorry.
If you could stomach it you would go to church and light a candle for him; grieve through prayer. Maybe you’d even go during mass. Sing and kneel and sing and kneel, all for him. If you were home you would be going to church with your mom this Sunday instead of dropping acid with Alessandra but you're here and she already bought two tabs. You wonder if mentioning acid and God in such proximity makes you a bad person. You wonder if your mom will wear her lace veil to church; the one she pins to her long, fair hair at funerals. You imagine her sitting with her perfect posture in a pew towards the back, mourning her father’s death in silence, to herself, to God, to the stained glass windows casting color¹¹ over her grave face. You imagine sitting next to her, bored and swinging your little feet in those Mary Janes like you had at your grandmother’s funeral. Those shiny black shoes always pinched your toes.
¹A repurposed liter of Pepsi.
²Stolen from Jewel Osco, a little crushed.
³Yes, related by blood.
⁴Aces.
⁵A two minute walk.
⁷Akin.
⁸Allegedly.
⁹2.
¹⁰Granted, only when she’s high.
¹¹“The divine light of God.”
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