“That looks like a joint,” I say. “Yup,” she says.
All tagged grief
“That looks like a joint,” I say. “Yup,” she says.
Miss Harvey announced that Bobby’s parents wanted to dedicate a tree for him. He was in our class before he died.
“First,” I say, “we need to beat the cream cheese until it's smooth.”
Not quietly at ninety, a few mourners, a cleric using dismal platitudes. But disastrously. Throngs crammed into pews.
Relief licks my bones. Our infant son will not die.
“There’s nothing more that we can do here, ma’am,” one of the paramedics said.
The afterlife of our relationship is sprinkled with ash. I’ve started smoking to keep my lips busy.
Three texts. Nine words. "The baby died. I’ve miscarried. There was no heartbeat."
Months after my 37-year-old husband dies, I discover the borrowed Vivaldi album tucked among our other LPs.
I’d bought them specially, sought them out, in search of the style you liked.
Walking the shoreline, I observe how the wind behaves—like a relentless, fussy mother, scouring footprints, scrubbing the sand smooth, only to have the tide return …
I refused to look around me, didn’t want to see, but the piles of roadside logs couldn’t be ignored.
My sister lies dying. She cradles a rag doll. “It looks like you,” she says.
While we thumbed outdated magazine pages in the doctor’s waiting area, we wondered if our baby would be all right, if there were additional vitamins or a prescription we might need.
Tears stream down the face of the woman behind us. She repeats softly, “I don’t know why I’m crying! I’m just crying because you’re crying.”
The cries rise to a crescendo just as the casket is lowered into a pit. A chorus breaks out in lament against a stifling air heavy with the scent of grief.
My Mum is getting shorter so I pull it down and look up “red-backed shrike” in the index. On page 42 there is a delicate watercolour of a grey-blue and brown male, sharp beak, vicious reputation.
In the morning on my birthday, my mother texted “Happy Birthday.” Texting instead of calling … strange.
I know. I dreamt it last night. A giggling tow-headed toddler girl skipping away from me in a meadow. That’s how I knew last time.
Mom pushes in between her two Ragdoll cats, Sophie and Angel, feeling their warmth. She squints at the light coming in through the beige blinds and abruptly shifts, causing Sophie to jump up.