Easter Sunday I visited my grandmother's grave. I don't know if other people take photographs of graves but we do. I have a photo of my grandmother laughing and sitting on her tombstone - she bought it years and years before she died. Anyway she had a wicked sense of humor. I miss her tremendously. She taught me to drive a car. She pierced my first boyfriend's ears. She showed me me how to do long division.
Mourning rituals. He said I was grieving, I drank vodka. My aunt she built little shrines to her dead daughter all over the house. I wore Donna's clothes for two weeks after she died. Sister says the pain never fades you just get used to it...grow up twisted around it like a vine. My dad says wounds heal on their own.
I can't imagine your pain and I don't want to. But secretly, I do. Grief is sacred. No, it isn't. Its as universal as dirt. but not like this. Yes exactly like this. I dream her all the time. I don't want to do this again. I will have to do this again. It's not the same for everyone.
I Post Pictures bc one day i am going to forget. and i am going to look back and say oh, i was there. and you were there with me.
2 comments:
Don't want the pain to go away OR get used to it. It's a part of her that lives on in me that I get to feel. I need it to be there. It's her. It's a tiny tiny hurt compared to the pain she had every day on her life. The hurt inside me is a Cathedral, built brick by brick stone by stone, tear by tear for her. She found me broken, and she rebuilt me.
It is so different for everyone. Some people need their pain to transform into something else, some don't. Some say it waxes and wanes. I don't believe there is a right way or a wrong way...but the fact that people - after a stunning loss - get up off the floor, from that pool of tears and snot and go back to work and pay bills is some amazing human power that awes me.
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