GRIEF: a meditation

2.7.10

            You’ve been dead for thirty-six days. I’ve been living like a shark since you died. I’m afraid to stop moving. I can’t stop writing. I’m typing my fingertips raw.

            I don’t know what else to do. I have to scream it out of me. I’m being poisoned.

            I want to vomit on everyone’s shoes. I’m not sorry. I want to smear the yellow, puss-filled bile all over their sanitized, pearly-white pages. I want them to smell my grief and wretch up their food.

            I want them to feel what I feel. I’m really pissed off.

            I thought I knew about pain. I was wrong. I knew trauma. I knew heartbreak. I knew rejection and humiliation. I knew loneliness and hopelessness and a deep desire to die.

            But this is my first taste of vicious loss. You are just gone. You do not exist anymore.

            There was no warning. I had no chance to say good bye. Our last conversation—on Christmas Eve—was an argument, sort of.

            You were depressed about your choices. I suggested you see a therapist. You refused. We argued. I was worried about you. You knew I was. I pushed you because I loved you. You knew that too.

            I have a digital recording of that last conversation. We recorded ourselves talking a lot. You actually insisted that my MacBook recorder stay on whenever we were together.

            So now I am left with hundreds of hours of recordings. I have an archive of our talks. This is a mixed blessing. I love hearing your voice. But I also hear myself resisting you for hour after hour. I hear you trying to wake me up. I sound foolish and paranoid. I sound like I doubt your love for me, like I’m always looking for signs of your impending departure. I thought you were going to abandon me.

            I’m sorry. I can see clearly now. Your death incinerated the dust from my thoughts. I finally understand what you’ve been telling me for decades. But you’re gone. I can’t share it with you. I didn’t learn fast enough. I’m so sorry.

            I should have tried harder.