GRIEF
Word Count: 300
“Well then,” the doctor said, “just stay out of the sun.”
She nodded, expecting no more.
The grief was something she didn’t understand and took advice from friends who urged her to seek help. Now her thinking was confirmed. When a lover dies you melt inside. You melt and all that you can really do is hide away from direct sun.
He was only weeks from coming home. He’d written how his buddy Chas had been blown into pieces indistinguishable from the jeep. Red blooded bone and metal all the same yet somehow someone knew how to put the puzzle pieces together and bag them up and send them home. She wondered how.
They wouldn’t let her see him. Handed her a medal as if that would be proof enough. The casket was not enough. The service, the pictures, the weepers, the folded flag. She still ran to the mailbox every day. Every day until she felt herself go soft inside, liquify, seep away. Her toes bled out ice water into puddles left as footprints where she walked.
Her voice became an echo. Alone at night she listened to her heart beat like a drum. The neighbors were reluctant to complain of noise. They understood and yet they wondered how.
Her pale skin lost all color. Her hair turned frosty white. She felt no pain and yet she knew the pain was overwhelming as she melted from within, hollowed out into a fragile shell of crystal that was as clear as it was opaque and opalescent.
When she could stand no more and no more stand, she left her home and sat out in the moon and hooted softly with the owls. Towards dawn she looked up at the sky where it broke into horizon and waited for the sun.
This is so touching and eloquent, Susan.
Thank you, Katie!
you have touched beautifully on the fragile nature of loss. ‘fragile shell of crystal’ is perfect imagery. and i am sure that many of us know ‘hooting at owls’. thank you.
Thanks, Billie. I think the instant I saw Sabin’s hollow ice cube I felt it.
beautiful last paragraph, a suitable crescendo to a heartbreaking piece. like the harmless beginning…great buildup.
Thank you, Marcus. Sometimes that critical opening line doesn’t let even the writer know where it’s heading.
Susan – such a joy to wake up and read your incredibly soft and soulful stories of life that stir my emotions. S.
Thanks, Shirley. This summer has been quite a journey for us all I think.