Tales of Grief
Some from friends, some from artists, some from me.
Death is natural. Corruption is natural. And “ruin is the impossible habit to break” (Mark Strand). Some stand in the wake of a real death, but each one of us has some experience with bereavement. It may seem strange to bring up such a topic amid all the color and life of springtime, but mortality, and our reminders of it, are ever untimely. Here is a collection of grief, in a few of the many forms it takes.
A Strange Vision
“Sometimes I think my whole life has been a strange vision.”
He picks up the trash that careless people leave in the bushes, on the lawns and on every pavement. He fishes the compostables out of the garbage can and shoves them into his pockets. They’ll make a good offering for the forest. He picks up a seed pod from the dirt, rubs it, and puts the seeds in a little bag. He knows what they are and where to plant them. He has about 40 species sprouting in pots and buckets on top of his car. He plants something new every day. When they get big enough, he’ll find a patch of dirt in the forest or along the road to plant them in.
“The climate commitment event was stupid,” he says, “Just a bunch of bureaucrats patting themselves on the back for doing nothing.” He turns off another hallway light.
He says he hasn’t cried in twelve years, and I believe him. I’ve never known him to express a single emotion. He says he had his tear ducts removed in the KGB. He has a resting scowl and keeps too many secrets. I tease him for spending his off hours committing crimes, instead of what he’s actually doing: planting flowers and turning off every unnecessary light on campus. He reminds me of another friend, who said: “I wish I could cry. It might refresh my eyes.”
Short Films and Koi Fish
“Despite years of practice, it is hard to want nothing.”
– Peikun Shi, “As if Lost in a Fog”
An elderly monk stumbles up the stairs of an apartment building in a bustling city. “He’s a fish out of water,” my friend whispers, “Like the koi fish.” He is referring to an earlier scene, where the monk found a koi fish floundering on the pavement and gently returned it to the pond. “Ahh,” I reply, and feel foolish for not making the connection myself. “Anytime there’s a koi fish in an East Asian film, it has some kind of meaning,” my friend explains, with a laugh.
The film is about the young and the old, each yearning for a piece of the other’s world. It’s the usual idea of yin and yang complementarity, and the inherent incompleteness of the individual. The maiden tires of the materialism of her world. She wants nothing. The monk touches the maiden’s hand and so breaks his vow. It is hard to want nothing.
Goodbyes
“I feel so miserable without you, it’s almost like having you here.”
– Stephen Bishop
Going to the store is a goodbye to the little Latino market that we still call by the name of its former owner, who worked with my grandfather. I say goodbye, without thinking, to that particular bend in the road. To the bank I submit a “Change of Address.” Cooking dinner is a goodbye, to the six plates to fill and the loud kitchen. Waking up is a goodbye, to the ceiling and the shelves on the wall. Everywhere, I am confronted with departure.
Is it too much to ask for constancy? People say it’s a good thing, but I never asked for change.
A figure recedes into the darkness. I watch it disappear, willing it to hesitate, and wonder if I will ever be the same. Some goodbyes are pulled from us gently. Some are wrenched.
I’ve said goodbye to everything, and I am all that’s left.
Memories and Letters
“How can I explain the feelings of confinement, jailed in a crumbling body, from which there is no escape until death?”
Do we ever get better at grief? We practice it enough.
“When I was a little boy, we celebrated Washington and Lincoln’s birthdays on the day—February 12th and 22nd. Our teacher would decorate the classroom with memorabilia of each president, and she would read stories about their accomplishments. Now, these holidays are lumped together, and I wonder how many students could say why there’s no school on Monday and Tuesday? It’s become just another day off we consume with our pastimes without a thought of commemoration. I realize my age is showing, but those traditions of yesteryear are precious, and hold lots of good memories for me. When we overlook the reason we do anything, there’s a risk of losing it altogether.”
“One of the hardest disciplines is living each day as an entity in itself, improving the things we can and trusting God for the rest. I’ve frittered away too much of my life, occupied by things of no profit, distracted by peripheral scenes that pass as a cloud without rain.”
“No matter how many years we exist, life is an enigma to some degree. The different periods of life create ways to mask our insecurity until it’s all stripped off by old age, which cannot summon the energy to keep up the façade.”
“I wished to send you another Easter poem, but in the process I found this one about trees, and it occurred to me that they experience something like a resurrection every year:
The Trees
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In full-grown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
- Philip Larkin