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.
She looked at the little plastic box in which the replacement battery arrived. It was a mundane battery for a phone. The type of thing that comes in whatever wrapping paper or cardboard box, usually a bundle involved in bubble wrapper tucked into a box way bigger than necessary. Not this one. It came into a perfect PET box made to size, secured inside of it with a transparent tape and the top of the box had a white ribbon to make it easy to hang the box on a store display. The label was clearly indicating the product contained in the box, its features in big font, to leave no doubt about the battery and its purpose in life. Of course, for a mail order, the same could be accomplished with the bigger standard cardboard box, the bubble wrapper and proper labels. There was no need for the pretty transparent box, the perfect silver label with black letters in large font and the white ribbon on top. But that perfect box lay on her dresser now emptied of its content, since the battery is already in use. She couldn’t throw away beauty. Nevertheless, there she was. She had lost what was most beautiful to her: her children. Both of them had surpassed her expectations of beauty in different ways. Both were brilliant people, with beautiful hearts, beautiful looks, beautiful feelings, beautiful passions, beautiful dreams. So much beauty beyond to what she deserved. Like that pretty little box was too much for a mail order battery. It was even dysfunctional. A lithium battery requires certain safety measures for its transportation. At the end of the day, the pretty package would have to be put into a bubble wrap yellow envelope with safety labels stuck to it, hiding all that beauty to be transported.
That’s where she failed. She was in such awe of all the beauty in her children that she didn’t cover them with layers of safety labels, bubble wrap, brown paper packages, cardboard boxes… She wanted to share them and their beauty with the world, without realizing that the majority of the people just throw away the pretty little transparent box the moment they get their hands on the battery.
Some would say that the battery is what counts. Maybe her children had their batteries hidden and protected in so many safety layers that the world thought there was nothing more they could extract from them and the beauty should be sacrificed for the sake of efficiency. To make room for more batteries.
She can’t see them anymore. She can’t hear their voices. She can’t touch their skin or detect their scent when they hug her. They can’t hug her anymore.
She looks at the pretty little box and wanders for how long she will be allowed to keep it until the world thinks it’s not appropriate anymore: “Does the pretty little box makes you happy?”
She remembered, as a child, her mom went with some neighbors to a factory store of a textile plant in town. They were selling yarn by the pound, with slightly imperfections. Her mom came back home with a ton of yarn\, some weird colors and black. She was going to make a queen size bedspread.
A queen size bedspread of granny squares is something that takes an eternity. Her mom didn’t have that type of time. She taught crochet to all children and put them to the task of helping her. A bunch of 4” x 4” squares started being produced. The central square in black, around it shock pink, another round of black, highlighter yellow after that, black, another round of shock pink, finishing with black. If it was today, she would say a 3-ply yarn. Each square took forever.
If she made a mistake, her mom would unravel and make her do it again.
All of them making granny squares, nevertheless a queen size bed spread is something of a mammoth task. Even with all the help, how could they do it?
It was to cover her mom’s bed. She remembered all the children jumping on that bed Sunday mornings, chatting with her parents. Her mom would stand up and go to the kitchen to fix breakfast and get things ready to go to church. Dad would tell them jokes and make tricks. The bed was the largest full-size bed in the world. Mom, dad and all 5 children would fit at once. The world was perfect then. No need for colorful bedspreads.
Maybe they started the bed spread after her father had passed away and they had to move to a smaller house.
She closed her eyes and saw the children, now 7, going to dad’s bed on Sunday mornings, and then every morning at end. His skin dried and itching. They had to brush the flaky skin and then plaster him in moisturizer, to give him some relief. Her mom was away, taking care of other things. There wasn’t going to be church for awhile.
Back then, she didn’t know why her mom had that fever of making the bed spread. And those colors! Who would think about combining them together?
The granny squares started to accumulate. There was never enough squares. Her mom never started assembling them together.
The children were growing, leaving the house. Her mom held on to those squares. There wasn’t enough for a bed spread yet, but the remaining yarn found its way into other projects. The black was used first, because it was the more acceptable of the lot. The pink became receiving blankets, the yellow made baby booties, hats, mittens. There were scarves made. Her mom moved to different places, each one smaller and more lonely. The squares moved with her. At some point she started putting together the squares. There wasn’t enough left for a bed spread. Not even a twin size.
When her mom passed away she inherited the granny squares. All she could get was two pillows. One square 4x4 and one rectangular 3x4. Not even two pillows of the same size. Life is a bitch.
She now knows... Her mom on that craziness of granny squares and that infinite project.
She too now let her pain get entangled in the fabric of knits and purls. Bags with unfinished projects abound in her house.
Counting the stitches numbs the running thoughts. She had enough pillows, anyway. Let's not waste the fabric and the fillings. And the feelings.
She goes on estate sales in search of other granny squares left behind. Other unfinished projects that started to placate who knows what sorrows. She puts them together with her mom’s squares.
When she dies, maybe there will be enough for a bed spread.
She couldn’t look at herself in the mirror. What her reflection showed was that her children were gone and she had to face their absence on her face, on each pore of her skin, on her stare…
Even taking a shower was painful. Lathering her body would touch a proof of life years, each inch witnessing a transformation into womanhood that her daughter would never experience.
The labor of breathing filling her lungs with air that would never be smelled by her son.
She should remain silenced, because no sound or song or story would vibrate in her daughter’s ears. No use she had for any hearing now that their voices were silenced.
Alone, immobile, each second of her remaining life representing seconds of an age that her children would never live. She felt that staying alive was usurping a time that had been robbed from them.
She had the impression of having understood why people die.
It was the same way of why they kill.
There is that fleeting moment in which you hold life in your hands. It's so fragile!
An idea crosses your mind that you could end it right there. No matter if it's yours or someone else's, but something stops you from doing it.
That is, until that pain that inebriates the mind takes over and all you want is for life to go away.
That's how you crush the little chick in your hands, or the dreams that are agonizing in face of the impossibilities.
And there goes your soul, forever hopeless.
