never enough
Have you noticed that other people’s lives become louder in the wake of loss?
Their joys become louder.
Their love becomes louder.
Not to them, to you; the one who is grieving.
I found myself wondering if people knew how good they had it. If they know how fragile it all is. If they knew how badly I wanted to trade their small, fixable inconveniences for the scorched earth my life had come to resemble. Do they know how to cherish it; how to be present for it? Do they know what its like to have to conjure up a person’s touch? Have they committed their scent to memory in case stock runs out? These things don’t feel like finite resources until one day, a day like any other, the clock runs out.
This piece came rushing to me as I was making my nightly trek to the cemetery to visit Chris one summer evening. It was the kind of piece that demanded my full attention with no time to waste; threatening to leave as quickly as it came. I pulled over and jot down what I could before the couple and the poem they inspired disappeared from my line of sight.
A couple walking down the street is holding hands as I drive by
I wonder how long they’ve been together
and come up with a story for them in my mind.
30 years or more
I decide.
At 25mph
I crane my neck to get a good look at their hands
Studying how they fit together.
I see a loose entanglement of fingers
Wrists are relaxed and dangle as they walk.
Eyes forward to the setting sun
which seems far away
But that’s hard to know for certain.
There is no sense that there's anything to grip to keep from slipping away.
There is no sense that this ritual is being threatened.
But I know there never is.
I wonder how many days
they could close their eyes
and rely on what’s been stored in their mind and heart
to imagine how it feels
in this conjoined state
on a visceral level;
the channels of a fingerprint
the curve of a nailbed
until it starts to fade from their memory.
I wonder how closely they’re paying attention.
I pray it’s enough.
But I know it never is.
So true! Dani I stare at couples all the time.