Tuesday, January 29, 2013

A Grief Shared & The Past Comes Knocking

An old friend and I had lunch on Saturday at a pseudo trendy place in our town.  As the entree was being served, my friend's story of her mother's recent death spilled across the table between us.  I listened full tilt forward and left my fork where it lay.  My friend began to cry and I saw that sharp pain in her green eyes blaze, something I had seldom seen in those eyes over our many years as friends.  I watched and listened riveted to my chair.

Her story was much about her shock which is still seated in her heart and the cascade of words about the lack of a last will and testament, her cousin's deception and betrayal in a matter of days, the changed locks to her mother's house and an archaic law that tries to tell my friend that she is not her mother's daughter.

For my friend, there is still time to catch her grief and she will.  For me, I was haunted by her story which led me to the vivid memory of my mother's face and her body the night she died.  For me, I was right back there the day after lunch with my friend, hollow and raw with the vision of my mother's slackened face and half closed eyelids shockingly still. I was right there by her bedside.

I began to cry driving to work only to realize as I drove that my friend's grief is a shared one and still so very sharp for me. I was surprised at myself and yet knew that the past can always come knocking and it does again and again, sometimes without a proper introduction.