She lived in a four-dimensional house
Everything had length, width, depth
And grief
Every nook and cranny full of losses
And absences.
She can barely hold back her tears
Noticing her fading memories
No matter where she turns trying to leave that house
She only finds an eternity of nothingness
She then turns into herself
Like a black hole that is doomed to disappear
Under the weight of her grief
She reflects on the futility of love. One cannot earn it, cannot save it for better times, for emergencies. All one can do with love is give it with no assurances that any of it will come in return
As a matter of fact, even the love one gives can’t reach the object of affection for sure. One can give love, but such love may never be received or even acknowledged.
And it requires so much energy.
She placed one of her best hats on her mother's head in the coffin. How pretty her mom looked in that hat! Her mom would have liked to see herself in the mirror with it. Not much of a hat, more like a fascinator, a small cascade of lavender feathery flowers with a net containing them on the base.
"Are you going to bury her with the hat or do you want to take it back with you?" What a stupid question to make to a grieving daughter that had just traveled for 14 hours to be there just in time for the burial!
While she admired her mom in the coffin, her daughter approached and sang a mournful tune. A beautiful voice that no one besides her had heard before. An improbable Italian tune that amazed everyone at the funeral home. Never again would anyone hear her daughter singing like that. Her daughter died two years later, without ever singing in public after that.
She remembers the scene as she puts on a winter hat. Late nights, when both she and her daughter couldn't sleep, both haunted by different demons, each one in a separate room, she would hear her daughter practicing tunes. She yearned for talking to her about it, to share with her what she knew about singing and music, but doing so would only open an even big chasm between the two.
The constant buzzing in her ears now dampens the sounds of the memories she might have in the deep recesses of her brain.
She was laying in bed. It was cold and she felt as if the hand of a small child was touching hers. It felt like her daughter, as a child was telling her in a terse way: “I love you! Now go on”
No mom, no sweetness. She then remembered the tears she left her daughter shed growing up. What for? Tears were supposed to teach one a lesson. They make one stronger for adulthood. Had she known her daughter would die so young, she would prevent every tear. Not a single one would ever roll down her sweet face because there would be no need for lessons.
As a child she found grotesque that image of heels permanently marred by the imprint of the spools. But the fact that the girls back then treasured the wooden spools, keeping and trading on it was somehow sweet.
From now on, she could never ignore a wooden spool.
She is looking at a pile of old journals. She finds some of her reflections from the time she had lost her son:
"I'm looking for a poem
to dress myself with,
to cover the private parts of my pain.
Poems there are many,
but poets,
very few.
I lost mine.
So I pile the poems
that are scattered around
trying to find him
to no avail.
Time dilutes the memories.
The good ones.
The sad ones.
Until all it is left
is my dried-up soul."
----------------------------
"When I lost my son
I lost my solitude
I'm surrounded by his death
All the time.
I want to be alone
to remember him
but all my memories
are blurred by the big
sad stain of his death.
When I lost my son
I lost all my friends.
Most of them don't
want to be stained
by his death.
The dear, dear ones
I can't bear their emotions
any longer.
If they are happy
it seems so frivolous,
if they are sad
it seems so frivolous.
"Tell me about the son you lost?"
Oh! You didn't lose any. How would you know then?
When I lost my son
I lost all my wishes
my future doesn't make sense,
because my son will never be present.
I lost my companion
in long chats at night
in phone calls
filled with intelligent conversations.
I lost an important reference"
-----------
"I wish I could have embraced you at the time of your greatest suffering, but all I can do is submit myself to a similar suffering, living on the verge of hopelessness and death.
My desire is that when I get to that critical moment, I'll see you and we will embrace each other"
----------------
At this point, she stops thinking. She knows that there won't be such a moment. Her children are gone and there will be no embrace, no permanence.
She reflected on how people fussed about holidays, memorial dates, birthdays... How they attach themselves to big events. How all these big things clutter the vanishing memory that clings to remain relevant in her brain.
It's the little things that hurt the most. That folding of the laundry done in silence, that underwear that doesn't need to be bought, the socks that will go lost forever, the shoes resting in the closet with no wear, the recipes that go un-tasted.
Maybe she didn't buy enough underwear, perhaps a forgotten birthday present. A lost phone call.
In these insignificant moments, the absence is most evident. No memory can exactly convey what her daughter would do, and what her son would say. Those moments in which she looks around and there is nothing but a cat and dog that got tired of waiting for her and resorted to curling on the bed.
