~Amy Gerstler
Here on my lap, in a small plastic bag,
my share of your ashes. Let me not squander
them. Your family blindsided me with this gift.
We want to honor your bond they said at the end
of your service, which took place, as you’d
arranged, in a restaurant at the harbor,
an old two-story boathouse made of dark
wood. Some of us sat on the balcony, on black
leather bar stools, staring at rows of docked boats.
Both your husbands showed up and got along.
And of course your impossibly handsome son.
After lunch, a slideshow and testimonials,
your family left to toss their share of you
onto the ocean, along with some flowers.
You were the girlfriend I practiced kissing
with in sixth grade during zero-sleep
sleepovers. You were the pretty one.
In middle school I lived on diet Coke and
your sexual reconnaissance reports. In this
telling of our story your father never hits
you or calls you a whore. Always gentle
with me, he taught me to ride a bike after
everyone said I was too klutzy to learn.
In this version we’re not afraid of our bodies.
In this fiction, birth control is easy to obtain,
and never fails. You still dive under a stall
divider in a restroom at the beach to free me
after I get too drunk to unlock the door. You still
reveal the esoteric mysteries of tampons. You
still learn Farsi and French from boyfriends
as your life ignites. In high school I still guide you
safely out of the stadium when you start yelling
that the football looks amazing as it shatters
into a million shimmering pieces, as you
loudly admit that you just dropped acid.
We lived to be sixty. Then poof, you vanished.
I can’t snort you, or dump you out over my head,
coating myself in your dust like some hapless cartoon
character who’s just blown herself up, yet remains
unscathed, as is the way in cartoons. In this version,
I remain in place for a while. Did you have a good
journey? I’m still lagging behind, barking up all
the wrong trees, whipping out my scimitar far
in advance of what the occasion demands. As I
drive home from your memorial, you fizz in
my head like a distant radio station. What
can I do to bridge this chasm between us?
In this fiction, I roll down the window, drive
uncharacteristically fast. I tear your baggie
open with my teeth and release you at 85
miles an hour, music cranked up full blast.
What is so hard about grief is precisely this: (note from the author when her poem was posted on the Poem of the Day (emphasis mine):
“An elegy that blends predominantly real and a few fictionalized details, this poem was written in honor of a friend who I met way back in fifth grade, who died last year. The loss of this bright, adventurous, beautiful woman who’d been my friend since before either of us wore a bra, since I had braces and hair down to my hips and she was a tall leggy pre-hippie with a cool nickname, who’d coached me through so many ‘firsts,’ (first drunkenness, first crushes, first sex, first drugs, etc., etc.) who had been such a beacon, is hard to process. Poems being one of the ways we can attempt to speak to and of the dead, this poem is for C., who was always 10 steps ahead of me.”
How do you speak of the dead and how do you keep your loved one alive?
Everyone going through grief will tell you, in lucid moments, that talking about your loved one is bittersweet; it is like that bruise you touch to ignite the memories. Of course, it is painful to recall your loved one is no longer here. But whether we like it or not, especially in the first few years of loss (yes YEARS), the knowledge that your loved one is gone is with you like the air around you. Those loved ones linger in every word, every memory, every breath. And, the thought that others will forget what is foremost in your mind, is even more painful.
It is so very interesting how the memories have come to me over the last six years. As we approach the sixth anniversary of my sister's death, I am remembering the months before her death. We were all desperately trying to survive the death of my brother, gulping for life like someone drowning gulps for breath.
And then she was gone. No, then she was in the hospital and we were having to let her go.
I thought I had borne the greatest pain when I watched my brother's body dropped into a grave. It changed my relationship with cemeteries. It made me hate the place that took him to forever.
But this was so much more painful. So painful in fact that I tried to turn off life all together.
We were on the third day of being in the hospital when a friend noticed I hadn't eaten.
I remember that, but most of the rest of those days I do not remember. I only remember pain and hollow and a horrible headache. My head recalls the pain, as I write this, it explodes in the same pain.
In the past few months, I have been able to approach the memories of those days. Not full on remembering, but tentative glances through the portholes. I am still not sure what is real and what is distorted.
But there are other memories, too, that pop into my mind. Memories that are now only mine - of time with my sister and my brother - stories that only we three knew, that only we three remembered.
I wonder how I will learn to say good bye to them, or if I have to... and it hurts.
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