I say hello

It has occurred to me to undertake a project:

Write a story in which grief shows itself in an unexpected way, or becomes a tangible object. 

It was grief I was describing in a story I wrote just before this one, “You say goodbye…” I hadn’t expected to call what I was feeling at the loss grief, because nobody had died. Not literally, anyway, although my oft-mentioned writer Rosalía de Castro referred to the viudas de vivos, widows of the living in her poetry. Women left behind to tend to fields and home while loved ones embarked for the unknown. Nevertheless, thoughts, while not living beings, can die, or a home might burn to the ground. These sorts of things create pain, but we do not grieve; we simply feel terribly sad or enraged. In contrast, the loss of a spouse or partner who felt the need to undertake a divergent direction is in fact similar to the death of that person who is no longer a part of one’s life. Widow of the living, absence and silence that constitute pure torture. Agony like a Käthe Kollwitz sculpture. Like Kristallnacht. Like July 18. 

Definitely, it felt like a death had occurred because the original no longer existed, not as pale copy nor as a faded photograph. Sometimes I even imagined there had been a real death, not just a metaphorical one. That way the loss could be attributed to a physical end of a life rather than, say, my shortcomings. It was easy to take the blame, but I fought that tendency off. For a time I hated myself for even wishing harm on a person, but the desolation, the abyss, continued and expanded, attempting to lure hatred over the threshold. That definitely could not be allowed to happen.

I started to read about mourning customs, then learned about keening (caoineadh in Gaelic lands), beliefs in some cultures like the abellón, where dancers circle the deceased and buzzing like bees to aid the soul in its transition. Or covering mirrors, coins on faces, buttons on tongues. Endless rites of passages, countless Rivers Styx, helping me to remain afloat.

Grete Weil’s Meine Schwester, Antigone came to mind as well. It’s a story of survivor’s guilt at not having succumbed to Nazi cruelty like so many in her community. The narrator lays her agony over the pages of her book and readers understand her grief, which is mostly due to not being able to accompany them, for having lived. Grieving for the loss of moral self, a death of one’s own, so to speak. I didn’t feel much guilt, if any, but still a huge hole, an enormous room of blankness, loomed before me. Funny about that: the immensely empty feeling was something spread before me, beckoning, teasing, promising.

All this was numbing and yet continuing to exist was necessary, so I began to fill in the air that had suddenly become full of nothing, suffocating yet not killing me. There were a number of options. Among them was not creating an altar, nor was keeping another’s belongings (ones left behind). Having these tangible objects would only enhance the grief. (Note: I even refuse to return to my mother’s grave so as not to see how she ended up. When an animal leaves me, I put a living plant on the spot to send down roots and grow toward the light. Wreaths and cut flowers feel like a punch in the gut.)

Note I said these tangible objects, ones that can be held in the hand and placed in a certain spot to wither. I needed to grow something in my empty room. I needed to make something. As part of the building materials, I would use something still with me, much of it acquired through books and conversations that were from the lost world. I would take the material and rework it, and did so, then declared it mine.

At that moment I began to write words, as many as possible. The writing was a new (for me) language that opened so many doors, some leading to enormous rooms, other to little, intimate corners by a fire. I was still me, but different. I often wondered if I was living inside a fake me, one who was better able to endure the pain, or if I had finally become the real me, living a new world that had always been there. Now open and gentle. Learned long after being read to on my mother’s lap, the new words could be shaped now to fit my paths and desires. There was room to have roots as well as bloom. What had died had been fertile ground for herbs and flowers.

My condition has not always been the same as when I was an enormous room holding things inside, forever untouchable. Now I was no longer feeling shattered, was even beginning to melt into the surrounding granite of my chosen city. I was not a pilgrim in the city where so many of them go without ever really meeting anybody except the famous saint in the form of a statue, and I never would be. Nevertheless, I was convinced that I was where I was meant to be when I was born fifteen centuries ago, maybe longer. I was building a place of residence, a space to rest the mind. This solace of centuries. A tangible object that even had an official name. A name on a map. 

This place of mine has a lot of stones from at least Roman times, maybe before. I have given names to about seventy percent of the stones and have stared at the Romanesque doorways, inscribing ideas on the arches. Sticking thoughts and poems around the doors. These are invisible, of course, and words are all the glue I need. I walk forever, reading the names of buildings in my mind or looking up histories of streets, buildings, museums, fountains, churches. If I am speaking with someone on these walks, my voice leaves my mouth and sends syllables to façades, small squares, the praza. These all remain at their sites of contact and echo as I pass by.

My tangible object isn’t an object, it’s a city. It holds everything I need, is both glittery and grotesque, although I can’t tell you what shape it is. It feels like the universe as far as size. Like those born here, I don’t always know what route to follow to get from Point A to Point B, but I get to the place I need to get to, using the sense of having moving granite beneath my feet to guide my steps. I can wind my way through narrow passages full of visitors and reach my destiny on time. I can count time moving through the air and am never lost. The names of the many little neighborhoods, most without signs to identify them, are all familiar to me. Museums, cloisters, saints are old acquaintances. The patios interiores have smiles and are not surprised when I return, never as a pilgrim, intending to continue our conversation.

When I am here, I am home. A world reworked, redefined, combined to look exactly the same as before, but better, much better.