Grief Tilts the World Just Enough to Make It Subtly Different

When we lose someone important to us, our perceptions are altered causing our every day environment to seem slightly off kilter and no longer entirely familiar.

Today is one that the words seem hard, and when I think of the loss so recently suffered, I fall completely silent. It has been a strange day. The beginning of it was taken up with a solid hour talking of the incredible person that left this world still less than a week ago, followed by feeling like every word had left me.

With COVID 19 still on the rampage, the isolation had left me not realizing just how different my world now felt. The need to pick up prescriptions forced me from the safety of my apartment turned cocoon. During the 45 minute walk to the pharmacy, I felt out of it. But it was more than still being a bit in shock, still grieving for a loss I can’t understand.

My surroundings looked and felt different. I don’t know quite how to explain it, except to say that the trees didn’t look quite as treelike, and the colors all seemed off somehow, some more faded than they should have been, some not quite the right shade, some more garish than normal.

Once I arrived at the pharmacy, I saw that the line was at least two dozen people long. If I hadn’t really needed the prescription, I would have turned around and returned home. Instead I had time to think and to write just a bit. The exercise of calling up memories and entering them again was a beautiful experience though it did bring a few tears and would have brought far more had I been back home with no one around to wonder about them.

I’ve never liked typing on my phone, and for poetry I prefer to write in a notebook or journal with a favorite pen so being in the drugstore, I asked the woman six feet ahead of me (social distancing, of course) if she would hole my place in line, then I went and selected a small notebook and fountain pen with a nib. What came out was in large part a flow of parts and pieces of memories that came about through free association and which were for me and not something I will be sharing.

But then my thoughts and memories began to form themselves into shorter, sharp bursts, resembling poetic phrases until the phrases became more representative of my thoughts and something that would allow me to share a glimpse of who this amazing person was. I am still working on making them into poems that don’t come across as abstract since they’re based only on my own experiences, instead of “you had to be there,” types of stories.

It seems that finally a week later, I’m coming out of my shock, though this new phase makes the pain closer and the tears more frequent and more forceful. At the same time, even as the pain seems to be more intense the positive feelings associated with years of memories are also more frequent and stronger. I know from having lost people who were important to me before that there is usually a subtle shift that happens over time as one has to accept that someone is no longer here, that the hurting and grief is replaced by the love and connection you will always feel with regard to them. The predominant feeling is one of thankfulness that you had them in your life for however long it was.

I am finding the tenor of my poetry and journal entries is also starting to shift, as a reflection of the shift that is happening as part of the grieving process. How much of this poetry I will be sharing I don’t know yet. Some is extremely personal and speaks more to who I am rather than who the person I lost was. And sometimes I don’t want to try to make everything clear enough for anyone to understand. Sometimes I just want to write what’s on my mind in the way that it comes out even if it’s only understandable to me.

I also don’t want all of my writing to become about grief and this specific loss, though perhaps my words might resonate with someone else who is going through something similar. So I will likely continue sharing some of this with you to honor a man who helped me see things differently and who was a role model for all who new him.

In Recognition

We lost him Amidst a worldwide pandemic He wasn’t lost to the virus But because this astounding soul Unique in degree of empathy Of compassion Of true and complete goodness That defines the rare golden hearted Which is without blemish Had outgrown the limits That sought to contain it

And so Too large to still fit Within the confines of an earthly vessel Unable to remain tethered Held captive By sunken stakes In Adam’s earth It shed all that had restricted it And kept it bound here To the world That those of us who can’t understand Still reside within

Once freed it sang And danced And did joyful somersaults And continued to inspire Although no longer a physical reality To those of us left behind Who with fisted hand Beat the breast And rend the cloth And cry tears at what feels to be An insurmountable loss That has left the world A little less well off And the heavens now Far greater

Natalie Frank has had her poetry featured in several anthologies including Untimely Frost. Her fiction has been published in Haunted Waters Press, Weirdbook Magazine, Siren’s Call Publications, Lycan Valley Press and Zero Fiction among others. Her collection of poetry, Disguised I Breathe, In Love I Hold, can be found on Amazon under her pen name, Taye Carrol.

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You can find links to all of the articles, stories, fiction and poetry I publish on Medium here. Thank you for reading and for supporting Mental Gecko.