Grief is a strange thing

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Grief is a strange thing

People come and go like leaves on a tree. To try and avoid that loss only makes you avoid true happiness. We die. But as Snoopy always says, on the rest of the days you live... you only die ONE of the days. I always loved that. Grief can be a good thing if you let it in. When you don't argue with it like a drunk husband, much good can come from its stillness. —Jann Arden

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How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting

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How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting

She laughs lightly in that social way. She is older now, and so am I. I don't want to think about how criminally, absurdedly cruel she was to me when my baby died. I don't want to recall, as I'm sitting here across from her, all the forcible bootstrap-pulling. Grief was superceded, upended, re-formed. Grief became compost, making the earth stinky and rich, and from it new things emerged and became green. I feel love, longing, but not upset. Not anymore. I watch her face. My Relic revs his engine and scowls from underneath his toque.

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Stray cat sings back

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Stray cat sings back

Nine years later, there’s peace. There really is. People say Time heals and you fantasize about Wile E. Coyote anvils dropping from the sky. What’s-her-name and her however-many Stages of Grief. Denial, begging, anger, acceptance, a neat bow, something-something whatever. Screw you, what’s-your-name. My grief is not linear. But here’s the thing. From a long way up—I’m whispering now—it is, sort of. Grief is not linear. Time doesn’t heal. Not at all. Until it does.

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Outside/inside

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Outside/inside

My eyes are still brown, deep-set like my grandmother’s, and I still have her upper lip, and chin. I never grew more than the five feet I reached in high school. I still prefer to dress in solid colors. Long pants almost year-round, since I still don’t like to shave my legs. I wear sensible shoes, brown or black. I’ve worn the same coat through more than a dozen winters now. So I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking, from afar, that I am the same girl.

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