a poem: sneaky grief
Sneaky Grief
You plan and plan for the days that will hurt.
You circle them on a calendar in your mind.
A Christmas. A birthday. A hallmark holiday. Those are the predictable days.
Those are never the days it comes.
My grief – I never have its flight information.
Never know when to expect it at the train station
or how much trunk space I should plan for its luggage.
It notoriously overpacks.
My grief – it’s like the last person I want to run into at the grocery store.
I round the cereal aisle and there they are.
My cart slamming into theirs.
“Wow hi! It’s been awhile, huh? How are the kids?”
While I plot the quickest way out of this hell.
There was one time I was sure I saw you.
It hadn’t been long.
Maybe nine months or so.
And it was cold.
One of those early spring chills that make you curse the groundhog
and his stupid shadow.
I was home, in our house.
And after I woke, I walked through the living room –
saying good morning to the loose floorboard before the fireplace.
The room greeted me in return with soft slants of sun
catching specks of dust and life that hung in the air.
I headed towards the kitchen
on a mission for coffee
and took inventory of the rest of the house:
Were the dogs up? Were the girls?
As I rounded the corner I glanced out onto the back porch.
There you all were.
Bundled up outside.
Standing around the table in coats,
hands wrapped around steam-filled mugs.
There was Jennie,
the sun hitting her face as she laughed at something you said.
There was Mom,
with her back to me, tending to something on the table.
And there you were.
Your strong stance topped off with your beanie.
You faced the door I stood on the other side of.
The cold never bothered you.
You would play with us for hours in the snow
building igloos and waxing sleds to gain speed on each run down the mountain.
You would offer us your layers as you pulled icicles off the edge
of the roof to devour like popsicles.
I guess I wasn’t surprised that you were outside this cold spring morning
laughing with our family
taking in the morning in the backyard
until, wait.
Wait.
You were dead.
You haven’t been here in months.
Did I dream your white-soled shoes on the side of the road?
The telephone calls we made home – to your sister, to our friends?
Going to the crematorium to see where you had been taken?
Did I dream the funeral?
I haven’t had my coffee yet so maybe.
Maybe maybe maybe.
Maybe?
Maybe.
But slowly, maybes turn to clarity –
like someone slowly wiping a rag back
and forth
over a dirty window.
Your profile started sharpening.
The nose – it is wrong.
And the height – you were never that tall.
And that beanie – it’s close, but it sits lower than yours ever did.
It isn’t you. It’s a neighbor.
You look nothing like him.
Or rather, he looks nothing like you.
And there it is.
The sneaky grief.
I will run into this over
and over
and over.
Never suspecting that grief will hide
somewhere as silly as a wool-knitted beanie
or in the cereal aisle.
Too much sugar.
I stand there
in the doorway to the kitchen
and I close my eyes as tears begin to fall.
I laugh - I can never cry like this on a Grief day
circled on the calendar.
Tears only come when the surprise –
the absurdity of it all –
shocks me from my body
and plants me back
in the hazy in-between
where I am convinced you are here
and I am positive that you are not.
I sob as I fill the french press with freshly ground beans.
I sob as I watch them fight,
then slowly surrender,
to the steaming water.
I watch a moment longer as the water swirls and swallows them up.
And then I press it all together.
I bring it outside
with two mugs
to offer a neighbor a coffee.
That thing doesn’t look anything like your beanie.
But it’s okay.
It looks everything like it, too.
by katie cunningham